Chapter 68: Chapter 68: It is good to be home where the fluff of the owl is to be found and no slimy frogs

Hineni stands upstairs in the attic, looking around at the familiar space.

 

His eyes wander down towards the floors, which are as marred and old and untrodden as ever. The deep grooves, which had formed in them over many years, are now no longer there where his dazed mind tells them they ought to be. The windows, which, in that other place, had been tightened and resecured, together with the strongly reinsulated walls, are now loose and thin. The attic is covered in dust and decay from simply being left out of the daily chores and upkeep.

 

— Everything is as it ought to be.

 

Three days have passed since the frog-god had used some strange magic to insert herself back in time, in to Hineni’s childhood.

 

But the thing is, that he just isn’t sure anymore if that was really what happened.

 

Yes, the frog-god was in control of the flow of time there, through some obscure frog-magic and yes, she had brought him back to relive his childhood, so that he could grow together with her. For whatever reason, this was her desire for herself and him.

 

However, too many details line up. Her disfigurements. Hineni’s vague blurs of his own childhood. The death of his parents. The marks, carved into the table in the small room for rent, here in the guild. They’re his own hand-writing, and they’re there in this time-line as well as the other one.

 

Could it be that this didn’t just happen now, in the ‘alternate’ reality. But that the same sequence of events happened in the real, primary time-line of his life? Just earlier, when he was younger?

 

Why did he cast that spell as a child, the one that ended everything?

 

- He honestly doesn’t know anymore.

 

But, if what Nekyah, the frog-god, had tried to bring to pass is just an extension of what really happened in his childhood, then this all goes back further, deeper than just the feud between the owl-god and her.

 

He’s involved in this somehow too and he has been from the very start.

 

Hineni just doesn’t understand why.

 

His eyes wander towards the ceiling.

 

- This is the ‘real’ time-line, right?

 

---

 

“Boy. How long was I gone again?” he asks, looking at Rhine. “Did you get taller?”

 

Rhine beams, he seems to have indeed grown an inch or so. “Not that long,” replies Rhine.

 

“He’s been sneaking food from the kitchen,” says Sockel, leaning back on her chair, her feet are up on the desk. She’s filing her nails.

 

“Hey!” snaps Rhine.

 

“Shoulda' paid me that bribe,” notes the elf in disinterest, holding out her hand to inspect her work.

 

Rhine crosses his arms. “I was working for two people, unlike you, Sockel,” he replies. “So it’s only logical that I need to eat more.” Sockel shoots a cold, sideways glance towards him. But Rhine just sticks out his tongue.

 

“Do that again and I’ll cut it off,” warns Sockel, pointing at him with the nail-file.

 

Rhine sticks his tongue out further, making a point of it.

 

The chair screeches as Sockel gets up, cracking her neck.

 

Hineni puts up his hands, holding them from each other's throats. “Settle down you two,” he says. “I appreciate that both of you held the fort down while I was gone.” Hineni nods. “It must have been a lot of work, while trying to get that spell ready too.”

 

Sockel holds three fingers to her eyes, pointing them at Rhine. “This isn’t over, twerp. Watch your back.” The elf sits back down.

 

“I’d watch yours, but I’d get nauseous,” replies Rhine, both smugly and bravely.

 

A nail-file flies through the air towards Rhine. Hineni, knowing the two well enough to have seen this coming, had already started lowering his hand in preparation. He catches it between his fingers, in a moment of very unusual dexterity.

 

Without saying anything, Hineni looks at Rhine. “Boy. Stop listening to the adventurers talk to each other.” He turns his head. “Sockel, don’t throw sharp things at Rhine.” He sets the nail-file down on the counter, walking away.

 

— Only after he gets around the corner, Hineni stops and hisses, shaking out his hand. With some dumb luck, he had managed to look really cool in front of the two of them, but it came at the cost of some rubbed skin off of his fingers. Sockel has a heck of a throwing arm.

 

---

 

Sockel and Rhine had been preparing a counter-spell in advance for several weeks.

 

Sockel had been digging through the library with Seltsam’s help, as well as by going through her old channels of contacts.

 

Rhine, of course being privy to some inside frog-information, knew roughly what the mechanism of the spell was going to be. That’s what Sockel had been reading about, with all the books over the front desk. That’s what Rhine had needed money for, in secret. He's not really sure why he himself wasn't let in on the plan, but Sockel just tells him something about information leaks and waves him away when he asks.

 

Hineni rubs his forehead. He has good people. They have good eyes and good foresight.

 

He’s glad to be back.

 

“Eilig,” says Hineni, knocking on the little door of the dollhouse.

 

A grumbling can be heard from inside of it, together with some very loud, almost theatrical stomping as someone marches to the tiny front door. “What?!” snaps the fairy. “Oh. It’s just you. I was hoping you were gone for good. Go away.”

 

Hineni looks at her vague, indistinct shape. “Eilig, tell me about the demon. Please.”

 

The fairy stares at him in a moment of perplexion and then just slams the small door to her dollhouse shut again.

 

Hineni stands there, down in the ice-cellar, waiting.

 

“- Get lost, before I freeze you.”

 

“Listen, I really need to know, Eilig,” he says. “What happened, back when I was a kid?”

 

“I already told you, I’m not allowed to talk about that and I’m not going to. Go. Away.”

 

Hineni sighs. He had expected as much, honestly. But he had still wanted to ask. “When I saw her again,” he says, referring to his mother. “It was all she would talk about, during the end.”

 

“Then you should know enough. I’m not going to break a promise for some snot-nosed, feather-head like you!”

 

“Can you at least tell me what exactly happened that day?” he asks. “Please. I don’t remember.”

 

The ice-cellar is quiet.

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“…Why don’t you just read the journal?” asks Eilig.

 

Hineni stares at the small door for a moment, recalling the out of place journal he had stumbled on in the library. It smelled of his mother’s perfume and it had been placed there, right in his path, right where he would find it. Apparently, Eilig was the one who had done this, as he had assumed. “I... I don't know. Because it felt wrong. It’s a journal. It's her journal. It’s not mine to read.”

 

“- Oh, sure! Now he has morals!” snaps the fairy, angrily. “You better leave, right now. Or I’ll make you.”

 

Hineni lifts his hands, wanting to calm her down. He wasn't trying to get her riled up. “Eilig-”

 

“- NOW!” yells the fairy. The doll-house fills with ice, covering the windows and the doors from the inside, threatening to crack and shatter them all.

 

Hineni looks at the thing and then nods, stepping away. Maybe he went at this the wrong way? “Sorry. I’ll go.”

 

He turns back to look at the doll-house, floating by itself in the frozen cellar. His hand hangs on the ladder as he climbs back up and for a moment, Hineni contemplates telling her that his mother had been friends with her all the way until the end, even in that timeline, in which some ten to fifteen odd years had passed near the end of it.

 

But then he decides not to. After all, this would just be rubbing in her face what he took from her here.

 

The man climbs back up and out of the ice-cellar, having at least one more answer than before, if not the one he wanted.

 

---

 

A sharp beak pulls on his hair, tugging on its long, unwashed strands as he lays there on the floor.

 

“I’m fine here,” says Hineni.

 

“The Hineni-man will sleep on the bed,” commands the owl-god.

 

“I really don’t want to,” says Hineni. He leans his head back, grabbing hold of the small owl and lifts her up onto the side of the bed next to him. “I’m already in the room, isn’t that good enough?” he asks.

 

He had been opting to sleep by himself upstairs for the last few days.

 

The owl-god hisses and clicks excitedly. “Like a bad dream, it was all not real,” she explains.

 

“It was real,” replies Hineni. “Let’s just go to sleep, okay? I have a mountain of work to help Rhine with, or we aren’t going to make our next deadline.”

 

She hisses at him, crawling back over to her side of the bed, leaving him down there on the floor.

 

Hineni sighs, closing his eyes and resting his hands on his chest. He hasn’t really wanted to get back into the room together, let alone the bed with her. After he had kissed the big-frog, alternate timeline and fake memories or not, it had simply felt wrong for him to do. He knows that he shouldn't, but he still does feel guilty about it.

 

Whether that is a correct thing to feel or not, given the circumstances, isn’t entirely relevant for his process of thought.

 

— Something hisses beneath the bed and he looks, as a long-taloned creature crawls underneath it, coming out down on the floor next to him.

 

A feathery arm reaches over his body and clutches him with a sharp talon, pressing it against the side of his chest. If he tries to move it away this time, it will cut him deeply.

 

Obscura lays there in her humanish form next to him on the floor and she pulls up the blanket, covering them both.

 

“I did not keep my Hi~ ne~ ni~ safe,” says the owl-god. “The fault is mine.”

 

“That’s ridiculous,” says Hineni, turning his head.

 

“Yes,” replies the owl-god, resting her head on his shoulder. “They will sleep now and he will not move,” she warns.

 

Hineni stares at her face for a while in the darkness of their shuttered room and then nods, accepting his terrible fate.

 

“Good night.”

 

---

 

Hineni stands in the forge, looking at the list of today’s work.

 

“Spears,” says Rhine.

 

Hineni nods. “Spears are easy,” he says. “We’ll just make them with some magic,” he says.

 

“…Magic?” asks Rhine, looking his way, somewhat confused.

 

Hineni stares for a moment and then blinks. “Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “That was a weird thought. We’ll use the molds for the tips and we’ll roll the shafts ourselves.”

 

“Sounds good!” affirms Rhine, apparently relieved.

 

Hineni looks around the dusty, full forge, which is aglow with ember-light and awash in cold ash and metal splinters. It’s a far-cry from the carpenter’s workshop he felt he had been inside of only just yesterday.

 

Rhine had pulled a marathon to keep things running here by himself, while he was gone.

 

“Rhine,” says Hineni. “What are the monsters in the deep-forest like?”

 

“Uh… lots of nature and dark attribute stuff, in the deeper parts,” explains Rhine, tying his hair back in a tight tail. “Some water spirits here and there.”

 

Hineni nods and points at the ingots. “Copper. Silver,” he says. “We’re making a blend.”

 

“Huh? Silver?” asks Rhine, grabbing the materials. “This stuff is super expensive though. Should we really be using this for the military orders?”

 

---