#nyphas ic

> You walk down the sidewalk, pulling out your phone. You have just long enough to note the 0 new notifications- You’ve been checking your email every twenty minutes, it seems like- When you bump right into someone else who had paused.

“Oh. s-sORRy.”

It wasn’t just his hat, she realized as she walked closer. She saw his coat, then his horns and the rest of him, and realized he was just lying face-down in mud that was several inches deep.

She came to a halt in front of him and crouched. Watching him for several moments to assure he was still moving and uninjured. She knew he was, but she had to be sure.

“Can you breathe in there?” She asked, finally.

A grubby hand popped up out of the mud in a thumbs-up.

Hera reached out to take Nyphas by the collar, pulling him out of the thick mud with a schlup of suction from his soaked clothes.

“Hi, Hera.” Through the mud caking Nyphas’ face she could only just make out his smile. “It’s very nice outside tonight.”

“I can tell,” Hera said, allowing Nyphas to move to kneel and releasing his collar. “I brought meat.”

“What kind?” Nyphas began the process of wiping some of the mud off his front and his face, mostly only succeeding in smearing it everywhere.

“I won’t tell you ‘til you’ve showered.” Hera said, straightening and moving to head into Nyphas’ hive on her own.

“Boo,” Nyphas replied, following her but pausing at the door to kick more mud off his shoes and self.

The large entrance room of Nyphas’ hive was broken, the floor cracked and uneven, sagging slowly towards the pond with each passing sweep. The pond itself sat nearly level with the window and, when it rained, overflowed into the hive. This resulted in some of the pond finding itself trapped in Nyphas’ hive, muddy water full of tadpoles, small fish, and even some plants that had managed to root themselves somewhere. Nyphas had successfully cultivated lilypads, and as Hera passed a frog leapt off of one such pad and dove underwater.

She trotted through, pausing to remove her shoes at the doorway into the next room and continuing on barefoot. Past that first room, the rest of the hive was relatively clean.

“I’m gonna go shower,” Nyphas announced as Hera went down the hall to the kitchen.

“‘Kay. I’ll be here.” She replied, glancing over her shoulder to see Nyphas heading the other way down the hall to the bathroom. He’d taken off his shoes as well, and had the ends of his pants and coat bunched up in his hands to avoid getting too much mud everywhere.

Hera trotted into the kitchen and made a beeline for the fridge. The kitchen was, by and large, spotless- Nyphas did a deep-cleaning at least every week, and the only mess at the moment was a bit of loose dirt from some fresh vegetables deposited on the counter by the sink.

Hera spent a minute putting away the meat she’d brought, putting some in the fridge and the rest in the freezer. She’d already packaged and marked everything for him.

From there she turned to start washing the vegetables in the sink, until she heard a distant sound through the running water.

She turned off the tap and paused to listen, confirming: Nyphas was wailing her name from the bathroom across the hive.

Rolling her eyes but a smirk still finding its way onto her face, Hera headed back down the hall, allowing her step to fall heavy so he knew she was coming. She could hear the water running.

He was still mid-wail as she opened the door. She waited for him to finish before speaking. “I’m here, what do you want?”

Hera heard him taking a deep breath, and then- “Heeeerrraaaaaaaaa-”

“....” She raised her brows. He was safely behind the shower curtain and she couldn’t see more than a foggy outline.

“-Can you grab me a clean towel?”

“No.” Hera shut the door, and backtracked to the hallway closet, fetching a stack of towels and returning to the bathroom with them. She let herself in once more and plopped them down on a shelf. Nyphas’ dirty clothes had been dumped into the large industrial sink, and Hera turned on the water to begin rinsing them off.

“Thank you.” Nyphas said meekly from behind the shower curtain.

“Mh-hm.”

A few minutes of silence as they both washed, and Hera piped up. “You’ve looked into hot water heaters, right?”

“I’d have to redo the plumbing and move the heater. It’s all sunk.”

Hera clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “You got sick last sweep from freezing your ass off in here. You should at least have hot water.”

“Yeahhh...”

“You know you should move. The ceiling might collapse.”

“The ceiling’s fine. It’s just the front room, and I already cut all the electricity from there.”

“It’s just the front room, and the hot water, and the electricity in the rest of the hive, and the mosquitos in the summer, and the ice in the winter-”

Nyphas blew a dissatisfied raspberry. Hera lifted up his relatively clean jacket and hung it over the shower curtain rod, which groaned under the weight of the sodden leather.

“Just hang it on your horns to dry,” Nyphas said.

“And get myself soaked? No thank you.”

Nyphas blew another raspberry in response, and shut off the water. As Hera grabbed a towel and passed it to him over the shower curtain, Nyphas recalled the meat she brought. “Oh yeah, what kind of meat did you bring?”

“Boar.”

“Ooh, I haven’t had boar before.”

“It won’t be as bad as the bear I brought last time, promise.”

“Yeah.” She could hear Nyphas sticking his tongue out and grimacing in disgust at the memory of her last kill she’d shared with him. “You can have the vegetables in the kitchen.”

“Thanks.” Hera smiled at him through the shower curtain.

“...Oh, yeah.” Nyphas said suddenly, as though realizing something.

“EhEh. i think i might rEaLLy havE tO mOvE this timE. guEss this is what i gEt fOR putting it OFF.”

> You sit at a rickety wooden market stall, kicking your feet, all but lost amongst the various produce sitting around you. Flowers, vegetables, fruit, and foraged goods sit in baskets and bundles on and around the stall. You’re but one stall in a busy market however, and there are all sorts here; A troll sells fresh baked bread, another sells handmade jewelry, and there are others selling their own fruits and vegetables or flowers.

> You’re not really here to sell, honestly. You just like the energy, and you don’t like to waste the produce you can’t eat or preserve yourself. You usually start to give things out to other vendors to sell or eat themselves as the hour turns late.

“i can’t find my jackEt...i OnLy put it dOWn FOR a sEcOnd.”

"aaah, this LOOks sO cutE! thank yOu!"

>> You immediately dig in without a hint of hesitation.