>>5866982“The Deepwoods sages, the High Priests of Sun and Moon, and the Council of Elders in Iternagreyn as well, they are all in agreement: there’s a great, terrible danger coming, Ezreal. Coming from the humans in the west, and the south.”
She places a hand upon yours, an unexpected act of tenderness that you nearly pull away from in surprise. Instead, your focus broken, her fingers pass through your flesh. Your mother’s eyes widen at that, and it’s SHE who flinches away, looking at you in shock and horror.
“It’s fine,” you mutter, willing yourself to corporeality again. “It’s just… A side-effect.”
“Oh Ezreal,” she says, bringing her hand to her mouth to hide her gasp. “What have you… What has that place DONE to you?”
“Mother, I’m—”
“I’m back!”
You both look over to find your father, lugging a great, hardened and dyed gourd full of water atop his aged—but magically-strengthened—shoulders.
“RUUUDOLFO returns, bearing the more splendiferous and delicious waters of this most noble land!” he boasts, setting it down with an audible grunt of exertion and quickly wiping away his sweat. “Do you, ah, have mugs, or glasses maybe, or… Little tiny gourds, I guess?”
Your mother laughs a little, and rolls her eyes, rising to go get some cups. You can’t help but feel she welcomes the excuse not to dwell further on what you have learned, and done, and become. Suddenly quite tired, you cannot bring yourself to bring it up again. After quenching your thirst, you, your father, and Muffins retire. You recline upon the surprisingly-comfortable bush-grown begging, in the perfectly-temperate abode without need for blankets. Your mother, with a final backward glance and a whispered prayer of restful sleep, vanishes back behind her curtain of willow-branches, into her own bed.
Muffins shoves his way onto the bed beside you, and you wrap an arm around his torso, scratching his neck between his two mammalian heads as the serpent-tail wraps around your leg, and together—in spite of your father’s snoring, which you are now well-accustomed to—you sleep.
