» Lost & Found

WAKER

You don't even know the name of the place you've ended up in, but you've learned one thing, and it's mind-blowing—your normal isn't, necessarily, anybody else's normal. You've got nubby little horns hidden in your storm-blown mane, you're dipped in blue, you have fangs, you have wings. None of this is strange to you. Everyone has fangs. Everyone has wings. Right? Actually, no, because some of those gathered have no wings, and you're stifling the urge to ask Taivas to gape as wide as she can, just so you can look into her mouth.

The wailers didn't have wings, so the lack of them on some of those gathered isn't shocking, really. No, what's gotten to you is the idea of any one of those living here—whether it's Taivas or the monstrous creature summoning them—coming to your homeland and saying what the hell is this weird shit?.

"I am," you respond, distracted, when Taivas prompts you. "Thanks to you," you add after a moment, and only your distraction keeps it from being the cheesiest thing you've said all year. Just imagine how bad it would've sounded had you looked at her intently, batted your lashes, crooned it at her.

Instead, you're too busy thinking of the shadow-beast striding across your rain-slick plains, leaving a trail of filthy blood in his wake.

A girl, the strangest mix of black and gold and white you've ever seen, steps in front of everyone. You don't quite catch what she says, but it seems she knows the creature, for she greets it with a kind of fondness—it's evident in her expression, the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her ears. Mystified, you let your eyes linger on her as she approaches the dragon-stallion (another of those things that are terribly out of place to your sense of what's possible and not, but no one else seems baffled by him). She drifts away, and your attention with her, as another bizarre creation strides onto the scene. She's to the point, naming the ever-shifting thing Kisamoa, and you frown slightly. Kisamoa? It sounds very tame.

Kisamoa responds, in a voice so at odds with the one he had called them with—you almost recoil from the sound coming from his malformed jaws, your ears flicking uncertainly upon your head. How is this thing possible? What is he made from? You almost don't want to know.

Silence lingers again, like they're all straining to catch something, but whatever it is, it's not there, and maybe it wasn't meant to. Kisamoa begins to speak. Despite your doubts and uncertainties and homesickness, you listen, enthralled.

Honestly, you can't be anything but charmed by the grotesque thing with the gentle mind-voice and halting, uncertain words. You figure he has to be in constant pain, or else bizarrely powerful to be held together with such magic, but he seemed just a huge, lost monster. You almost want to hug him, to tell him it'll be alright, we'll find a way.

It's not the southern rampart, but it needs saving, so you'll damn well save it.

You and your.. little ball of hope, suddenly hovering contentedly by your shoulder, bathing your heart in soothing light and the idea of tomorrows. And, you tentatively think, your friends. You and your little ball of hope, and your friends. You don't know the name of anyone but Taivas, who joins in the murmured chorus of thanks.

You don't feel like thanking him. You're not sure what you'd be thanking him for if you did, either. For the hope? The, what seems like, painful honesty? The 'here, take this thing and now save my world' thing? You open your jaws slightly, shifting them so you feel the comforting press of your fangs sliding against each other.

You want to touch him.

It's a bad idea.

So you don't. "Okay," you say, feeling loud and brash and like a lightning bolt in the soft rain of the others, "we'll fix this place. Somehow. We will."

I'm a healer. That's what I do. I fix shit. I fix sometimes impossibly broken shit. You look at Kisamoa, and wonder yet again if there's any fixing him.