The ground trembles underhoof, quivering with a certain rhythm reminiscent of singing. It brought her lips to quirk up in a smile, her chest slackening as the tightness about her heart began to dissipate, filling instead with joy instead of rigid fear. She should have known - the earth always forgives.
He rises like a plant himself jutting through soil and shale. It causes her to stagger back, awkwardly rising from her bow as she tries to avoid the shrapnel of his appearance. It was needless however, as he came nowhere near striking her, but a mortal's habits tend to die hard. Perhaps those of a god's as well, if the emptiness of the shrines yet the presence of the Earth was anything to go by.
He speaks, and Willow feels as if it is not the monument of a horse before her, but every grain of sand and speck of dirt vocalizing. With so many small particles speaking at once, their insignificant voices individually, become something impressive united. He is the echo of mountains toppling in the same instant that he is the echo of them rising.
She smiles.
Her green gaze drifts on him easily, at once comforted by his arrival. She thinks surely now, that is indeed Nepenthes in a different form. Her gods remain in Prim'sylvia, but they exist all throughout the globe, disguised in what ways best suit the majority of those that worship them. They are one and the same however, this she now recognizes to be true, and it humbles her in as much as it lifts her up.
For the first time in a long time, she doesn't feel so far from home.
"Thank you, Nepenthes," she murmurs, favoring her name for him over the simplistic title used in Helovia.
"As always you are too kind, and your knowledge extending further than the longest roots of the largest tree." She compliments him, eyes reflecting the genial grin sliding onto her muzzle. Her pulse quickens as her heart beats with a certain affection for the deity. It is not love in the sense of pollination or seedlings unfurling beneath the shade of their mother's boughs, but it is something akin to such a sensation, like the love of her leaves for the sun.
"I have no right to ask this of you," she begins more seriously now, her head dooping like her willow tree with her humble shame.
"...Yet I feel I need your guidance, as my hooves as of late feel as if they are as liable to wonder over a cliff as not. I-I am worried that I am not doing right, be-because I would have though I'd have the wisdom of magic by now, b-b-but I don't. Yet Ermine, so much younger than I...." she trailed off, realizing how jealous and insignificant her problems sounded now that she was muttering them. She lifted her gaze suddenly then, searching among the weathered face of the god, hoping not to see anger or impatience in the lines of his facade.
"Ermine has already discovered his talents, and I am afraid that I am still without. I am young yet at 23 season turns, but have I not learned more than most in my short time? Willow the wisdom of my magic not come to my mind until a certain age, or do I think incorrectly of my experiences?" She finished with an exasperated huff of air from her nostrils, ears flicking uncertainly atop her head. Her gaze, which had drifted back to the ground, was risen towards him once more.
"I do not wish to seem greedy or foolish Nepenthes, but perhaps that cannot be avoided. I just need to know I am doing what is correct. That my actions will lead me to the eventual blossoming of my skills, or if I am digging my roots in sour soil." She had always felt certain that leaving Prim'syvlia to explore the world and learn of other cultures was the best course of action, but lately she'd been feeling as though she'd betrayed her home and wondering if she was now cursed.
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|reach| [earth god]
