shenanigans, tomfoolery, escapades, and mischief

Erebos had been buzzing in anticipation the whole journey over from Halo to Torchline, on the promise of prospective friends. Even as he’d stayed on his father’s back, clutching thunderbird feathers, his energy had been a frenetic, unwinding thing with a chasing grin, hopeful to make new acquaintances. Halo wasn’t always buzzing with a massive means of kids, especially his age, and Idalia was still an infant and therefore not very fun. Orsino had been less impressed with the jaunt over, but he’d ensured the frost fox was in good hands too, so when they landed on sandy soil and into coastal exchanges, his eyes had been wide open with wonder.

So he and ran along the dunes, feet so versed for the snow more than a little confused by the sand, configuring his steps into something more obliging for the speed he wanted, his companion screeching behind him in icy pinnacles. His father wasn’t far behind, a careful and pragmatic eye, but his intentions had been placed upon the identical twin (!) lads nearby. “Hi!” he waved, all enthusiasm and glee, before tripping, nearly falling, then pushing himself back up. Not to be daunted, he gave a toothy grin. “I’m Erebos!”

erebos

and then we dream so much

Calan

Calan’s head popped up from behind the dune at the sound of someone coming, his sandy fingers still curled around the little driftwood stick he and Carlo had been using to score a very serious-looking circle around the hermit crab. The creature had already ignored three carefully arranged walls and a shallow trench, which Calan thought reflected poorly on its appreciation for engineering, but the new arrival was much more immediately interesting.

He straightened, brushing his palms over his shorts before his eyes found the boy with the excellent name and then travelled, naturally, to the man some distance behind him. Deimos was enormous. Properly enormous. Taller than either of his dads by enough that Calan had to tip his head back to take in the whole of him, and he briefly wondered whether that made hiding things in the top cupboards impossible for Erebos. Still, being huge didn’t mean anyone had to make a fuss about it. Calan lifted an arm in a broad, official sort of wave. "Not to worry, we’ve got it from here!" he called, with all the confidence of someone who had successfully sent both of his own parents away using nearly those exact words on several occasions. Then, turning back to Erebos with a grin, he jabbed the stick toward the sand at his feet. "Hi. I’m Calan. That’s Carlo."

The crab chose that moment to scuttle directly through one of the carefully drawn barriers and disappear beneath the edge of a dune. Calan watched it go with narrowed eyes, then looked back at Erebos as though the escape had been a planned demonstration. "We were catching that, but it’s probably fine. It knows where we are now." Squinting at the white spikes of Erebos’s companion in the sand behind him, he added, "did you bring a tiny ice monster from Halo?"

you are a victim of the rules you live by

Code stolen from Queen Sky