chemical kids & mechanical brides

Kiada

She listened as he added little bits and pieces to her story, her ears flickering with the amusement that danced beneath the icy hues of her eyes as they continued their walk in the deep mist veiled world of the Labyrinth. When he laughed at her mentioning that she yelled at Kisamoa, it twisted a smile along her lips. She shrugged when he mentioned he wouldn’t try it, and nodded to him. “Probably wouldn’t be a good idea.” She admitted with another small chirp of a laugh, glancing over toward Rixen.

Yet as she continued her tale and looked to the antlered man beside her, she noticed the concern that flashed across his face. Kiada wasn’t alive during that time, but the tales were there – the ideas that a god could simply appear and make you their willing slave was something she worried for when she was a child, but times had changed and whether or not the Moon Goddess was the patron of her second herd, she still didn’t trust the goddess in the slightest. She did trust Kisamoa, and perhaps that was her being naïve or because she somehow managed to fill the hole in her heart with the time she spent with the strange god. She bobbed her head to Rixen in agreement. “I suppose you never know, but I do hope that he wouldn’t do that.” Thoughtfully, she offered a small smile.

But then as he asked about what she’d earn at the end of the challenge – and that burrowing drowning feeling threatened to appear again, it took her a few moments to actually muster a response. She lowered her head slightly while Khairi continued to fly from above. “Well, a couple of seasons ago, Kisamoa tried to right some of the wrongs he’d done. He lit up these lights in this strange river I’ve never seen again, and tried to summon the dead.” She paused, glancing over to him. “It didn’t go as he planned. They came back wrong and ruthless, trying to kill us and him. He fell into the River, and rather than leave him there like everyone else wanted to do, I went in after him. If he had raised them then he could fix them. But the river wasn’t like normal water, it was deep and full of death and bodies and…” She shuddered slightly at the memory before shaking her head and stopping her walk completely to look upon Rixen with bright icy eyes.

“I went into the river, it showed me my death, and when I was done I found Kisamoa and helped him regain strength to close the river. And finally, when we resurfaced, he could close it, but for stepping in the river I have this feeling that I’m constantly drowning.” There was a small laugh that left her lips, though there wasn’t any merriment hidden beneath the tone. “I’ve gotten used to it for now, but it makes me cough constantly in the morning and at night. The first few months after getting it I couldn’t sleep or talk with it.” She added in quietly, before the conversation shifted to where she brushed his shoulder. The fur was soft beneath her own velveteen muzzle before they kept walking, and she offered him a solemn smile. He spoke up before she could though, mentioning that giant black wall on the outskirts and she nodded with a small (actually cheerful) laugh.

“I wonder if it will go away with the hope lights.” She pondered aloud before he began to speak of her trial. She offered him a brief roguish grin and a shrug. “I don’t know, one day I just wished it would go away and I felt this tendril of darkness – like the tar from the tarpits on the inside over my heart and it told me what I needed to do. It’s the weirdest thing, honestly.” Kiada shrugged, but nodded when he spoke of a herb. “Here’s hoping, otherwise I might want to burn my tongue off.” And as if in answer to her joke, she sparked a small amount of flame from her spine with a wink in his direction.

"Talk."

img by Mar <3 || coding by Smitty <3

@Rixen <33