like a wild thing

HOTARU

As she had known it would come to pass, there is a slow change that comes over the man beside her, a stolidness that returns as the frustration ebbs away to be pondered over and dissected at a later time. He is correct after all, she is used to his variable moods, the weight he places ironically invariably on his own shoulders. A weight he refuses to be taken off by any other pair of hands, despite his own having placed it there in the first place. She has learned how best to navigate him, a maze as intricate as the one they stand within that had taken many years of memorization and cultivation. It is worth it now for the way he refocuses on her offer and away from his own mistakes. She smiles warmly and with a gentle hand at his elbow follows him to a freer space, happy to leave behind this scorched and smoldering section.

His fire is far easier to control this time, and as he does Hotaru gathers materials for a spit, sighing when her creation magic does not work yet again as she attempts to create something, anything. It has been unresponsive for some time, and she can't figure out why. "My creation magic has not been responding lately, have you had any problems with yours? I could only ever make small things, nothing quite so mighty as yours, but it's vexing nonetheless." Because there's nobody else she trusts to ask such a question, to reveal her flaws and inadequacies to. Perhaps it's a balancing of the scales after she had seen his own just now.

mother, make me a big grey cloud

so I can rain on you all the things

that I can't say out loud