“Mother!” paws scampered across stone floors. Claws clicked and scrabbled. Eos had only enough time to lift her tea off the table before thirty pounds of charcoal-and-gold fluff slammed into the edge of the table and scrambled atop it. At his side, another fourty leaped up beside him in a perfect pounce, all rosewood curls and inferno swirls. The young toa dipped his horned head in greeting. “Mother!” the charcoal announced, tail in the air, voice a squeak. “You’ll never guess who’s arrived!”

Eos stared past her son, at ‘his’ guest. Duke Desrosiers must be visiting. Given that the boys weren’t joined by the daughter of the duke… Tristan ducked from her gaze with a familiar hard swallow. “Oh?” she said, pulling herself from her thoughts with a smile. She held the tea set above her head. “Who?”

Taliesin, her dear sweet Taliesin, with his golden eyes fixed firmly on her and all his little teeth showing, swayed his tiny, stiff tail violently as a vazoi might. “Nooooo! You have to guess!”
He was perfect. Eos smiled, laughed as warmth swelled in her chest. Her little cub…

With a curl to her voice, without taking her eyes off of Tristan, she answered her son’s game. “Alright, alright… is it Duke Aneirin?”
The rosewood’s eyes went wide with offense at the suggestion, his jaws parted with no sound. Meanwhile, little Tali dropped his tail, affronted that his mother had, as predicted, ‘not been able to guess’ who was visiting.

“No!” he squealed, throwing himself to his side. The table, sturdy enough to handle even Cado’s strength most of the time, rocked, and behind Taliesin, Tristan had to stumble to keep his footing. “NO! Not the mean duke!!! It’s someone FUN!” he rolled, clawed at the air in front of her nose.

“Hmm…” Eos shifted in her seat, arms aching from holding her tea level over the boys. “I see, I see… What about Uncle Cado then?”
Clearly, this was a far more favorable comparison to Tristan, as he straightened himself up, ears pricked. One paw lifted and pressed into the curls of his chest, Tristan’s eyes widened and ears tilted. Eos recognized the question of ‘me?’. Taliesin, however, was having none of it.

“Moooooooom!” he howled, “you’re wrong! All wrong!” claws stretched to the ceiling. “You have to guess better!” a kick of his feet and he rolled back to all four paws. And there went the cookies she’d been enjoying, clattering to the floor. Her son was, per usual, unrepentant, stomping his paws. “Beeeetterrrr!” he threw himself onto his belly. “Uncle Cado is so exciting you’d already know!!”
While that was true, Eos wasn’t about to admit it, and the way Tristan’s ears drooped made her heart sink.

“Okay, okay, okay.” she shushed. “So it’s someone exciting, but not too exciting.” she shifted her grip on the tea tray. “Exciting enough that you’re throwing my cookies on the ground, but not so exciting that you’re with grandma.”
Taliesin squeaked a protest.

“I did NOT throw your cookies!” he leaped down to the floor with a heavy thud, and scrambled for the fallen sweets. Tristan remained standing atop the table, long tail tucked tight under his belly and eyes Fixed on Eos once more. She sighed, a warm sound to her own ears, and reached down to ruffle between his horns--and howled at the sudden Pain in her right claw as her tea tray tipped, pot and cups of boiling water tumbling for her and Tristan’s heads.

Tristan’s pupils narrowed into slits and he slammed himself down on the table with a sharp inhale. Eos threw herself forward, guarded as much of the trembling cub as she could with her neck and tried to focus, reached deep for the magic but there just wasn’t time--tea splashed. A clatter, Four little pops. And her own magic seized on… cups moving… upwards?

“Mom?” Taliesin’s voice emerged from behind her. A thud announced him jumping onto the table. Something about it… muffled. Opening her eyes, Eos slowly turned to look at Tali. His eyes gleamed with magic, and his ears were drooped low. “...Are you okay? Is Tristan okay?”

In response, Tristan wriggled out from under her chin to tuck himself under Tali’s. His tremors visible even to the naked eye.
Eos breathed a sigh of relief, and slowly extracted herself from…
…Under the gleaming red-black bubble of greheli that had formed around her. She blinked. Her teacups and pot had stilled in midair, coiled in green magic. Scattered about, spilled tea hung above the barrier, similarly stopped in time. Eos took a breath and looked to Taliesin. Oblivious to the strangeness of this situation, her rasped his tongue between Tristan’s ear and made small, soothing noises. “...Tali?” Eos reached up--the teacups and pot were wrapped in her own green magic, and she gathered them and the would-be-spilled fluids back into them.

Taliesin chirped an acknowledgement, but had moved onto biting his way down Tristan’s frill. Tristan flopped down atop the table to give him better access, the tremors giving way to a wheezy, fullbodied purr.

“Did you… cast magic?” Eos tried, as she set the set back on the tray.

At once, the red-black bubble Popped. She set the tray down now that the boys were to the side, and gathered her set atop it. Her chest heaved with a sigh and her limbs trembled, the strength leaving them. Taliesin hesitated. “I… don’t know?”
She knew that tone. Sighed again.

“You aren’t in trouble.” Eos extracted herself from the tea to look at the cubs. Tali had his tail tucked, his fuzzy black cubdown fluffed and eyes wild. His reflective bubble glimmered between them. Tristan studiously groomed Tali’s shoulder, as if to soothe him. “That was very impressive. Thank you.” she reached down to gently ruffle between her son’s ears. The bubble between them Popped and he surged up into her paw with a deep rumble.
Tristan watched her, and slowly relaxed as well and, fluid as a snake, hopped up onto the chair beside hers, and with a flurry of his paws, asked if he could have some tea.

Eos decided to take it as a sign that playtime was over, and that after the scare, the boys were ready to just. Relax.
She’d find some other game to play with them later. Where they wouldn’t nearly get boiling water dumped on their heads.
They'd talk about Tali's magic later.