I miss her shivering, hearing only the name of the finest God in all of Helovia. It makes me smile that she hasn’t met him, a sad sort of smile that wonders why she hasn’t. He’s never far from where she is, not like he is from me, now. As a colt I’d often tiptoed along the rim of the lake to peer into the cavern at the mirror (and mad Zikar-Sin’s backside); when mother finally took us to the Veins to meet whichever God we wanted, it had been to the Spark’s severed stone that I’d gone to kneel.

I don’t think I ever even looked at the others. It was not until I stood along the rim of the Starpool, swirling with the spirits of the dead, or within the presence of the Moon that I’d even considered that the other Gods were worthy of my notice.

"There are old tales which say he brought the other Gods to Helovia. I think everyone should meet him at least once," I state, in a matter of fact way. Mother had told me as much, or maybe it was father; it could even have been moon-eyed Zikar-Sin, with all his stories, or some other face that has blurred away with time. Either way, the story was that Time bloomed into existence, and from the crackling might of his power, he had brought the others into existence. Why that made the Gods siblings and not father and children, no one could tell me; at least until I went to the Nightwalk, and learned of the First Gods, who must have gave the Spark his, well, spark. Everything else was sort of obvious to me (though I take for granted the fact that it wouldn’t if no one had bothered to tell me in the first place). The Earth made Helovia itself, so obviously that was important; the Sun feeds the fields with his light, and they fill our bellies. The Moon casts seeds about the world with her winds, while reminding us all to be grateful for the blessings of her Brothers as she casts shadow down upon us all. "It makes the stories easier to believe, that’s for sure."

The stories that were all on a wall in the caverns, not far from where we stood now, etched by some long forgotten person into the stone itself.

All those thoughts on creation topple down as her words chide my choice of words; meeting her eyes, which are sad, and hardened at the thoughtlessness of what I’ve said (what did I say, anyway?), my ears fall to the side of my head. I did know what it did to people, though, because I told them what to do; Volterra, for instance, had been forced to summon a table to save his gut from his own hoof, and Gaucho’s dumb bird had flown right at his face as I’d commanded she do.

Does she mean this residual effect that seems to throw walls up between us, sheer and glass, almost unperceivable, but for her lack of smiles and playful hints? She used the word “suffer;” it settles into my thoughts as the word to focus on here, while I fail to notice the most obvious fact that someone had been cruel to her.

Could it really be that bad to have someone control you? I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had someone else tell me what to do with much effect at all.

I, at last, decide to shrug my nearest shoulder to her.

"You must choose unkind company, then. I’ve only used it on people who asked or deserved it," I explain, hating that I feel like I have to defend myself, and still not entirely sure how mention of a God’s joke has translated into this womanly change of emotion (I hate girls sometimes), "magic has no morality. It didn’t seek to make you suffer as it was willed into existence. The person who wielded it maybe did, but not the magic, and not the God that gave it."

Glad for the approach of my buck and his passenger Marembo, my humor returning somewhat at the combination of Duir’s near collision with my side, and the fang bedazzled grin of the polecat. I try my best to let that feeling spread, to push aside the ugly knowledge that the world is cruel and small, I look back at Rexanna as she blessedly allows the conversation to become more amicable.

Watching the sultry sway of her gold draped figure, even Duir cannot help but admire the shine of the gilded trinkets and chains which run along her body, or the ease with which she moves. Standing in a clearing, I watch with curiosity building, the buck alongside me literally prancing in place with excitement. Pretty to look at sounds wonderful to him, and I admit that I wouldn’t mind seeing something pleasant, and not hurtling towards me, as well (like Gaucho’s splendid fire bears).

An ear numbing crack of noise breaks through the clearing; Duir squalls in his heinous deer voice, hooves splaying beneath him as if to flatten his body to the earth in terror, and my ears pin down atop my head as my front end rises from the earth in a startled, partial rear. Lion’s tail sweeping around my haunches almost protectively as I land, I look up at the secondary, less loud boom which erupts from the red projectile, some of my fear (and loathing at its presence) is absolved in the awe of the bright embers which dance across the heavens.

I’m still staring with my mouth open, silent mouthing the words, “what the fuck?!” when she concludes her words with an obvious fact. Her smile is the sort of sideways thing that makes me think she’s mocking me, but my heart is honestly hammering too hard inside my chest to allow a scathing remark to immediately lash through the air towards her.

"I imagine," I almost mumble instead, still looking up at the tendrils of dark smoke which coil about where the heart of the sky eruption had been. Duir, on the other hand, literally dances in place, eager for her to do it again. Please don't oblige him, I almost plead, but refrain, as it would require admitting that I’d found the entire experience disconcerting, in the first place; looking at her at long last, I find an awkward smile lingering on my lips, a small chuckle closing my words. "Be a good way to startle a lingering covey of bats out of your chosen cave, that’s for sure, if you didn’t make the cave fall in while doing it."