#godwillow

Eyes immediately alight with an outpouring of joy, the vagabond ringmaster bounced around to gleefully address the familiar voice, lurching forward to hug the tree spirit purely out of instinct.

“TREE DAD.”

Obviously happy to see him, he peered up at the taller creature like he’d just been given a great gift, biting into his bottom lip to contain his grin.

@godwillow​ said   :     "Hello, Zyra! Did you see the badgers are having a potluck? We'd love to invite you!"

                        𝐓𝐇𝐄     𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄     𝐎𝐅     𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄     𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐓𝐒     𝐔𝐏𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐃,     facing     one     who     she     considers     to     be     her     kin     —     no,     not     the     same     species,     but     something     close,     close     ENOUGH     to     understand     her     plight.     While     so     often     grief     &     bitterness     make     homes     in     the     flora     of     her     gut,     Zyra     feels     only     warmth     for     Ivern     .     .     .     someone     pure     &     joyous     enough     to     break     the     shadowy     punishment     that     mankind     had     created     just     for     her.

Talking trees! In Zaun!

...It really could not get any stranger.

Determination

“Do not come to me once you have determined that you should break your legs on the climb...”

godwillow said:

"Faith and a friend!" 

“E-Eh? I do not think this, how you say, altitude is good for... trees.”

   Delighted, Rakan made his own dramatic entrance. His sun touched cape gracefully followed every well planned arc, a PERFORMANCE that came naturally to the Lhotlan without much thought. 

Oh! That is... Certainly a talking tree. Which is more out of place in Piltover than anything else Jayce has seen in the last week. Or month. (And it? He? Knows his name. Although maybe that’s not too much of a feat, considering.)

“I... well, that’s good to hear?”

Gradually, the grass gives way to sand beneath his feet. There’s a slight dip where the wind and water has eroded away the dirt that leads to the beach proper, and as Kayn steps down, feels the granules crunch and give way beneath his sandals, he wonders why Zed has never sent him this way before. The disciple who was supposed to investigate fell horribly ill and, pressed for time as the de facto leader of the Order while Zed is away, Kayn went himself. After all, who else can he trust to get the job done quicker and better than anyone else? 

                                                                                                 He doesn’t like to be this near water, especially not the vast quantity that separates Ionia’s islands from the mainland, but he has honed his body and mind to endure it. In only a decade, Kayn has gone from trembling when the healers would wash his sunburned face to swimming, head under water, sometimes, if he absolutely must. He has spent too many years standing shivering, paralysed in pools and rivers, to let it consume him now. But still, as he steps closer to the river and the ground gets wetter, the sea seems so much louder somehow, the waves bigger, as if with each step he shrunk a little further. 

                                                                                                 And then Kayn steps in a particularly wet patch of mud, and stops. Of course, he’s walked through mud before, countless times in the rainy seasons, but there’s something about this mud. The consistency of it. The way the sand and silt mix with the water that saturates the land. Kayn slowly pulls his foot out, tries to take a step back, figure out the creeping sensation up his spine, but his legs aren’t working right and his foot sinks back down and suddenly Kayn knows this mud. 

                                                                                                 “No.” Dark eyes reel up to the cliffs above, so deceptively green and brown and grey in the broad daylight, but Kayn knows that shape. Memorised it as he lay in this mud. It’s morbid fascination that calculates the angle, drags his eyes down again to a spot only a hundred paces from him where he must have lay for days and nights until Zed found him. He has to say the hateful name aloud. Every time he does it’s like he’s swallowing it, making it a part of him so that it cannot kill him. “Epool.” But it’s rotten. It’s crawling inside him. Again, Kayn tries to step back. He sees sky for a moment, remembers a blow from a lifetime ago, and then the mud catches his elbows, the seat of his pants, his carefully braided hair, and embraces him like an old friend. “No.” He says again as the mud tries to swallow him whole. “No.” A bird cries over his head and Kayn blinks, instinctively, so it won’t peck out his eyes. The sea is so loud now, and it’s going to cover him like an icy blanket.