[God Quest] wherever sweet time takes us

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper moves ahead of Colt as they reach the summit, the hush around them thickening. The air feels different here—not just quiet, but expectant, like the whole hillside is holding its breath.

He approaches the shrine without hesitation, but not without respect.

Long slender and ringed fingers reach out and brush across the surface of the altar with uncharacteristic care. It’s not the swift, indifferent flick of someone clearing a bar top. It’s reverent. Slow. Like wiping sleep from the face of something holy. Each sweep sends a small cascade of dust scattering into the air, sparkling briefly in the slanted light like the remnants of a vanished star. Beneath it, the stone is polished smooth, worn by wind and worship both.

He doesn’t kneel, but he stands straighter, taller. The usual crooked grin is tempered now, replaced with something quieter, older. There’s always something watchful in him—sharp as a blade tucked behind a smile—but here, it shifts. The shadows coiled at his feet still, and his features soften just enough to hint that he’s not just speaking to a goddess.

Once the altar’s clear, he clears his throat softly and tilts his chin upward, gaze fixed on some point above them where the mist thins into sky. "Hey ma," he says, quiet but sure. The words land easy in the silence. "Didn't bring an offerin' as I wasn't plannin' on coming to you all the way out here, but—" He gestures over his shoulder with a lazy roll of his hand, voice curling into something drier. "I did bring somethin' awful pretty."

---

Vesper has completed the quest given to him in thread shadows from the starlight

1. Complete a training thread using his shadows  [SE][Training] and it makes me wanna take a back road
2. Use his shadows to make something easier mittens off Used his shadows to make shoving snow into Iskra's mouth easier.
3. Use his shadows to make something harder [SE] lickety-split Used his shadows to make walking harder for someone by wrapping them around their ankles
4. Go somewhere where there are hardly any shadows and see how it affects things. you've got to stay pretty while you can Went into the Fingers at midnight

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

The confusion and curiosity cocktail only deepens as he strides towards the shrine instead of a sealed tomb. Not a grave, he'd said, and sure enough as shit this is not that. She's never been to this shrine before. She might have connected the dots, like a constellation on a boy's face, if she bothered to know many gods besides Frey. She know of them, the way you know yams and sweet potatoes aren't the same thing, but can't really describe why. For her family and for her, Frey's continual support of the land and the animals on it had always been enough. Safrin's power is unmistakable, but it is unknown, to her. Bright and fierce, but dark and terrible too.

She's quiet as he steps away from her and approaches the shrine. One leg crosses in front of the other, resting on her toes, while her hands slip forward and hook just the thumb into her front pockets. He's got an edge of softness to him that he doesn't like to reveal much, like a strip of dark velvet lining the sheathe where he keeps everything sharp. It's noticeable here though, not because anything is dulled or dimmed, softness never has to mean something else is reduced. It's just, the way he takes the time to notice and tend to the shrine in a manner that seems beyond the typical. Reverent, but also, familiar in a way she can't place. Or, maybe she just prays wrong.

Realizing perhaps space isn't enough and not wanting to intrude on something as private as talking to a god, invitation or not, Colt glances away. She'll forfeit the drink of him for the sake of ensuring he isn't disturbed, her curiosity not worth that. She can hear still though, and as his voice slips free, Colt whips her head back over, jaw slackened with shock. Ma she thinks, and fuck if he wasn't right, it does make sense now. A family matter, he'd said all casual, like talking to his mother, Safrin. Ah fuck, she'd dislocated the shoulder of a demi-god. She didn't have shit on her to offer either, just a weak smile and an empty laugh at his theatrics.

If I go missing, don't bother looking, I'm probably just riding the wind
'Cause cowboys and sunsets, you can always count on them, but never to stay
I guess I'm a cowboy, 'cause there's a sunset on the way

Safrin

Safrin arrives slowly—not in a blaze of light, but in something subtler, more intimate. Like the moment just before a candle flares to life. The air stills, every sound falling away but the hush of wind in the grass and the faint rustle of stars far above. A breath is drawn, not hers but the shrine’s, the world’s, and then she is there.

She steps from the dusklight like it’s a veil parting just for her, her silhouette unfurling in silk and starlight. Her feet are bare on the stone, her hair a fall of darkness threaded with galaxies, and her gaze lands first—inevitably, irrevocably—on Vesper. "My darling boy," she says, soft and warm and vast. The stars in her eyes flare like comets when they settle on him, pride etched into every line of her perfect face. "You completed your task." It’s not a question. She closes the distance with grace that defies mortal sense, and if he allows it, she reaches to cup his cheek with one celestial hand.

Her gaze turns then, slow and luminous, to where Colt stands in casual uncertainty. Safrin’s smile doesn’t vanish—it shifts. Less private now, less honeyed with maternal pride and more bright with interest. "And who," she says, voice silken and inquisitive, "is this?"

---

Vesper's Shadow Touch has been upgraded!

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper doesn’t flinch when she appears—not in surprise, not in awe. He just breathes in. Like the weight in his chest finds space again, like everything around him stills so she can move through it. "Ma," he murmurs again, the title slipping out softer this time as her starlight brushes against him. When she cups his cheek, he leans into it—not boyishly, not broken—but with the quiet assurance of someone who knows this touch, this light, like a compass knows north. His lashes lower just briefly. If she can feel anything through him—emotion, sensation—it’ll be something wordless and warm. Not reverence, not exactly. Something closer to relief. A tether slackening for just a moment.

His shadows stretch without hesitation as her magic coils into him, lengthening like tendrils of ink in water, 30 feet now, sleek and steady as they taste the edges of their new range. He doesn’t restrain them; he lets them roll out like a sigh, shadows flexing and adjusting to the change the way muscles stretch after a long sleep.

When Safrin’s gaze slips past him, Vesper follows it with a glance over his shoulder, his lips already quirking. The edge of his smirk is back, but dulled to something gentler. Something that might be a close cousin to affection. "That’s Colt," he says, tilting his head her way with a lazy nod. "Gonna host a rodeo soon. Also," he adds, a flicker of dry humour slipping back into his tone, "just punched my shoulder clean outta its socket." The grin turns sharp for a second, but not unkind.

He rolls that same shoulder now, testing its range with a slow, purposeful motion, as if to prove he’s not mad about it. The ache’s mostly gone now anyway, drowned out by the presence of his mother.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

Like a storm rolling in, the air itself charges, tightening with the pressure of something building up just to break free. Safrin doesn't crash down with a display of thunder and lightning though, she's quieter than that, soft as morning mist sweeping over grass to add a glimmer to each blade. She materializes from the starlight and the void that edges around them, stunning and seemingly gentle. There's a sharper edge to her though, Colt knows, as if the brightness in her can't outshine the depth of the darkness she commands either. Like mother, like son.

It's hard to trust that gut feeling though, or remember her Archon's history with the goddess, when she and Vesper reunite so tenderly. There's a depth of terrible might so dark it's hard to look at, and it appears to echo around the both of them, though that deep well is also brimming with unshakable love.

Love is often the label placed on things otherwise too terrible to name.

As attention shifts towards her, a doe on the road, Colt swallows. "Howdy," she says demurely, dipping her head in a deep nod towards the goddess. She would have been happy with that and nothing more, content to just linger on the fringes of their relationship, an unremarkable moon caught in the orbit of her son's gravity, pulled in by those damn blue eyes that always come back to haunt her in some form or another. But then—then he announces that she'd punched him, and Colt turns a shade of red as her mouth falls open a bit again. Just what every mother with cosmic might to smite loves to hear, she's certain. "Well, he asked for it, although he was doing me a favor, and it's mostly fixed now..." she tries to explain nervously, glancing over as he rolls his shoulder almost as if in proof.

I had some help
It ain't like I can make this kinda mess all by myself
Don't act like you ain't help me pull that bottle off the shelf

Safrin

Safrin laughs—not cruelly, not sharply, but with a soft ripple of delight that seems to chime through the air itself. The grass around the shrine glistens faintly as starlight gathers at her heels, responding to the sound. "Well," she drawls, one brow arched with theatrical indulgence, "if he asked for it..." She glances at Vesper then, the warmth in her expression deepening with shared humour and a mother's endless fondness. "My boy does tend to seek out trouble like it owes him something."

With a casual flick of her wrist, stardust blooms from her fingertips like spilled constellations. It swirls upward, encircling not jsut Vesper but Colt as well, in slow-moving brilliance—light that settles in aching joints and tender muscles, that hums through skin like a balm. It doesn’t just heal; it soothes, lingers like a second heartbeat. A mother’s touch, felt in every flicker of cosmic warmth.

Safrin moves closer to Vesper as the stardust continues to drift. She presses her lips briefly to his temple, a glimmering kiss left behind like the echo of a falling star. Her voice is a hush meant only for him: "Watch over your sisters. And give them my love."

As she begins to draw back, her gaze flicks one last time toward Colt—curious, thoughtful, but not unkind. She sees more than she lets on, as always. And then she vanishes like a sigh, swept into the wind and sky, leaving nothing behind but warmth and the faint shimmer of fading light.

~FIN

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!