Яikyn

Arriving alongside me, quiet, comfortable, is Erebos.

Duir, knowing him from my memories, the ones played most often, the best ones, does not feel his usual rise of wary worry and distrust, instead looking towards the dark stag with the awe of seeing someone only previously glimpsed through borrowed, mental glances. The wicked little kitsune is given the deer’s usual greeting, his ears alert, forest toned gaze eager, and cheerful.

You’ll see he’s not so kind soon enough, I think with a faint smile, despite the clenching in my breast at the sudden appearance of my blade brother. Having been avoiding him, mostly to avoid the awkward conversation about how I’d managed to get kicked out of home, and the potential wound left by his subsequent departure from my life, I find that, now that he’s here, right beside me, I’m not sure what I want to do.

Part of me wants to roughly shove my shoulder into his, delivering a well placed, only slightly painful bite of manly greeting on his warrior’s pelt. Another part wants to flee, leaving this shore, and its conversing Gods, far, far away from me.

Instead, I allow the silence to bridge us, a single, connected glance of his deep, midnight blue gaze against my own gilded one, his raised brow answered with a rogue’s grin, before we look back to the Gods, as one.

It is not long then before Själ joins us, her arrival barren of the greeting usually offered between strangers. I assume, then, that she must know Erebos, almost entirely assured when she settles opposite him. Sharing a grin with Tiamat as she passes, an ear tilts to catch the snow speckled, dark mare’s inquiry.

"They seem to have noticed the stranger in Helovia," I say with a bemused grin, gesturing to Kisamoa with my horn. I have more to say on the matter, like I generally do, but Mordecai’s arrival steals my words.

Feeling that same, hot rush rise back through me as she saunters near, almost ignoring my friends to demand things as she always does. Was it embarrassment? She was quite barbaric, to use a gentler word for the often rancorous mare, and her broken use of Helovian common, in presence of a prince, none the less, sort of does tighten my chest. At the same time, however, I can’t help but wonder if it’s not something more, mostly because, well, her terseness has become somewhat endearing to me over the past weeks.

"Mordecai," I greet her with a quick chuckle, gesturing to the side not accompanied by my friends alongside me (mostly to get her to stop being awkward as fuck), "he calls himself Kisamoa, and claims he wishes to heal the Marshland, as instructed by the Earth God. Many of us went into the heart of the sea at his behest most recently, and came to no harm…"

This time, it’s not a bossy magpie of a mare who cuts short my chattering, but the Goddess. Swallowing all my words and diverting my attention to femininity incarnate, I listen with great interest to what all she has to say, especially when she begins to reshape the shore with her magic. Forever in awe of the might of Gods, dryness steals through my mouth at the powerful image of what she has created for us. Secretly drawn by the promise of seeing the sea again, I find my thoughts are drawn down, down to the rippling, silvery realms of Kisamoa, and the myriad sea beasts, dancing ethereally over colored stones, and fronds.

in every heart a hole