#vastus

DAY 12: NEW (LATE - OUTDATED)

Lebori teeth are thin and sharp. And many. Many, many thin sharp teeth, indeed - none as many and thin and sharp as his, none for sure.

Of all things to fixate upon, Tarix thinks, why is it teeth.

He's seen bits and pieces of him up close before. He's admired some of those pieces. Young bodies are hard not to admire when you're young yourself, and harder still when you're so close to them. Doesn't matter the closeness is that of battle.

Or, well, matter it does if the battle is one to the death, of course. But it hasn't been one of that kind between them for a while now.

Why not the eyes, Tarix wonders. He has nice eyes. Seas of yellow like the yolks of an egg, and a round red medal of coagulating blood. And pupils like a thin string with three beads carefully passing through it. Nice eyes indeed. Frightful, but pretty. But no: he fixates upon teeth.

Teeth with a purpose, he's found out. What a silly thing - all teeth have a purpose already, and that is to eat and gnaw and tear and cut. Easy as that. But no, Lebori teeth have a purpose, a nobler purpose, see; Lebori teeth pluck old broken plumes without hurting. They comb through the green forest of their bodies and remove all that is no longer useful, no longer good, so that it stops itching and can't worsen infections. They pass through feathers gently and catch the ones ripe for reaping, and once they're removed they fall out of those thin sharp rows - just like that, so careful and precise. Just like that.

No other mouth can do it as efficiently, if it is even allowed to try. Tarix wasn't, of course - too intimate, even for by now friends. Far too intimate for one who hasn't been preened in a long time. But he was allowed to use a substitute, a comb, for his back, because another pair of eyes can better avoid scratching an exposed metal spine when freeing it from rotten down. And besides, they were friends.

His feathers too are very beautiful. Very beautiful indeed. Soft and rigid all the same - a bit like him, yes, an apt comparison. They used to be bright green, like sunkissed leaves shining at the meakest gleam their way; but since he's been receiving a little help from a Gaquri who stares at his mouth quite a lot these days (for entertaining friendly relationships with fish-like fellows is most bountiful for those who seek certain treatments to make their bodies homes), they've turned the heavy color of a sinister swamp. He's never been happier about them, really. And the lime tips at his head stand quite stark and lovely against these murky feminine colors.

But it's not the eyes and it's not the feathers. It's the teeth.

The many, sharp, thin teeth.

By the currents, he's a gentleman. Of course, there was a whole process to get here. A whole fuss of fessing up and letting it be known how this truce - this rivalry - this amicable bond had twisted beneath his scales into another shape, and waiting patiently after the laugh and gentle mocking for it to be recognized as truth, and then... Then breathing when the words he was ready to not deserve did meet him. And of course there were many more steps after that - too many? It didn't feel like that to him. It was all so pleasant. So wanted.

But how strange to find he'd fixated on them for so long, and never noticed until it all came full circle.

Tarix inhales, the shape of many thin sharp teeth still impressed onto his flesh so vividly, feeling plumes ruffle under and around his hands, yellow-red eyes doubling before his vision.

Vastus smiles. His feathers fan like a blooming flower.

His tongue disappears briefly behind flat lips after having mapped the jagged shape of shark maws within scaled skin with equal maddening devotion, and lays at the bottom of his mouth when he opens it again. His exhale wraps around the blue jaw like a bite about to strike.

"That's new," he breathes.

He kisses the Gaquri again, burying him between sharp thin teeth.

-

DAY 13: LUXURY (EGO - TRIBUTE)

Some sort of worthless animal.

Some kind of beast to slaughter on an altar, she must have been.

Kongu loved her. He'd said so, whatever that meant. Not that he knew, either - but he'd felt that, at least. He'd felt that for some time now.

She'd read in his thoughts after they'd first seen her like this, amused by his bashful panic, that maybe it wasn't even a matter of males and females: maybe it was just a matter of Krakua.

He'd felt that. She didn't.

Frankly, she probably couldn't.

But she had accepted; because he was nice and his hands could hold her entire body in them to compress it into a pearl, and he'd shyly likened her to a bird that made only the ugliest raucous noises as a compliment and it had delighted her beyond words. And she liked him. Very much, she did.

And most of all because she followed along.

Hadn't she always followed along? There was no other chance, no other purpose. Follow along to plans she wasn't required to understand. Blind devotion and faith make clean boys go far, strung along by the chimes of the Order.

No other way to be something for ones like her.

No other way to be anything.

So she accepted, settling into the shaky mold the Toa of Air had clumsily shaped in her image as best as he could with his limited knowledge, and followed along while he led her cautiously by the hand as if he was showing her how to walk on unsteady branches - since he, at least, had an idea of the unknown path they were treading.

And he did love her, and like her most importantly, like he did Ka, like he did flying. And all she could offer back was a vacuous smile, a skeleton to hold, the touch of a cheek against his.

Some sort of worthless animal, truly, she was - a bird that croons not but mimics raucously at best.

Yet when offered the luxury of an embrace that could fold her into a silver ingot she couldn't help but curl into palms crushing her gently against healthier bones, comforted in a way she thought she would never get to feel again; and so Krakua followed along, without the need to understand, and Kongu held her flush to the music of his thrumming frame, singing marvelously against her Suletu of garbled things she'd never feel.

-

DAY 14: HEARSAY (STORY - MYTH), requested by @cantankerouscanuck

Rumor had it on Xia that their most esteemed turncoat had refined tastes and high aims.

Not just in business, of course, of course, that went without saying - though she sold nothing tangible, she'd always had an impeccable ability for finding funds, offering instead that which hulls of ships and airtight boxes couldn't contain. And not just in low pleasures like those of food, though she could make chewing so elegant at times, despite its grossness - so sophisticated, so obscene, almost.

But no, of course - of course, they were talking about allegiances.

Oh, yes, she had quite the way with them, yes, quite the ability to make herself desirable to powerful beings when she wanted, to offer her mastery over the minds of weak-willed fools and her strategist brain…

But to think she'd get herself in the graces of a Makuta - my, my. What cunning. What ambition. And she had done it successfully, too.

Not the male, heavens, no! Most esteemed out of their lowly lot in Xia he might've been, guardian of the island from his gilded throne they had begrudgingly allowed him, but still a male!

No, she'd set sights on the graceless sister, of course.

Rumor had it she'd left her wild and treacherous lands to visit her brother, as sometimes Makuta do, and the slithering fiend had set her sights on her rough and sharp ways, on her claws crafters of angry beasts, and decided they would have made for such a splendid partner for leisure and business.

All sorts of tales had spun of their first meeting… An official occasion? A carefully manufactured happenstance? A clandestine encounter (how scandalous! how her!) engineered to make a mark?

And how had it gone? No doubt the Makuta of the Tren Krom Peninsula, with her waspish disposition made worse by the nature of who she was, wouldn't have taken lightly to an incursion into her privacy - yet it was also true that no Vortixx worth her salt would have let herself be swayed out of a favorable deal by a client she knew how to swindle, and as loathsome as it was to admit, she was far from inexperienced.

Certain was (as certain as hearsay could be) that an accord was reached, and company was enjoyed by both.

Imagined details of secret trysts had been passed like worthless heirlooms across the island, claims of having seen, of having heard, of having proof of an engagement of some sort, be it a longstanding bond or several fleeting encounters.

Did it matter? No, of course not! What mattered was it had most certainly happened.

That was all the fuel gossip needed.

Rumor had it her brothers knew.

Who knows how they found out? But just like the Xian elite they too had spread the news between themselves, baffled and amused at once. The fool on the island, they said, had it revealed by one of them! He hadn't known until then - or perhaps he had turned his eyes from such a thing, too awkward to be acknowledged, too ashamed that his own kin would willingly entangle herself with such a conniving being, to such a deep point!

And still they said nothing of it, at least in her presence… A wise choice, indeed, for they knew Gorast better than any others, and her wrath along with her.

Then, the end.

The sudden dying down of murmurs and giggles, signifying - what? That they'd split, or that interest had died down? Perhaps that they had taken the matter of prying eyes personally, and discretely gotten rid of busybodies looking to peep into their closed quarters?

Who knew, who knew…

But Makuta of all shapes quit journeying to the industrial island eventually, and the lady of the Peninsula was no different.

And of all the scuffs and scratches traded between them, the evenings and mornings in-between the burning core of their meetings, the words that could have been shared or held back or mockingly spoken and thought, Roodaka was careful to leave no trace or account of, hiding away through a slight of claw the whole sordid affair with the easy mastery of shadow-play that distinguished her.

Though rumor had it, still, when she left Xia and joined the Brotherhood, that even she was not beyond some useless sentimentality.

And theatricality.

After all, what way more dramatic to rekindle an old flame for a yet to be snuffed out coal, still seeking in secret the spark that should warm it back into a blazing inferno, than to slither her way into the ranks of her self-centered brother, crooning her way to his hip just to blindside him and at the right moment lurch once more upon her once equal?

Or at least - that's what they said.

-

DAY 15: ALARM - AMBUSH - TRAP, requested by @lee-the-yeen

Maddening, sharp, like steel against muscle, like iron on the tongue - nauseating, permeating, sickening, a stench nailing itself into brain matter without need of a hammer, ripping out budding thoughts and replacing them with the ease of antidermis, something like an endless ringing, ringing, ringing, danger that turns to fear that turns to despair that turns to rage that turns to lunge that turns to not under my watch that turns to pain stinging into a softer body from rusted fingertips.

This must be how a Hordika feels as its mind is submerged completely by the venom.

He hits with a strength he's unsure he could have ever mustered before, teeth clacking, yanking his hand free upon the beast's head and hearing it yelp and hiss as even its tough bones creak painfully when protodermis slams onto them. Its rider sputters, eyes him, vitriol pouring from their eyes, rectangular pupils swallowing his vision into an window of endless void - they grasp with one hand the wound pouring crimson terror onto battered armor and matted fleece, with the other the contraption holding an explosive fruit, raise it against him as their legs hold onto their steed with every fiber of strength in them, refusing to fall because that is the highest dishonor… But little can bones do when crushed by metal in an hydraulic grip, whether that be wrist or throat, and the explosion never goes off as the launcher falls and the lizard topples onto too weak arms.

The odor is disgusting and alien and yet he does not feel it, does not file it anywhere in his mind: the only thing he smells is something else, something else, something similar and not at all at the same time, something that makes him a target as the pack now circles him, guilty of having laid one of their own into the sands for eternity. They snap and hiss, charge him - he's furious, yes, he's in a condition to drag them all beneath the dunes howling for mercy, but he's still himself after all, and they are many.

Blades sink into his armor with long scratches as he's circled; in his delirium he forgets the anguish and convinces himself he can tank this.

A tackle.

Claws snap around his spine.

Higher ground beneath his leaf-like feet, breezing through the air for a second that turns him dizzy. They follow after him, thirsty for revenge as he is, but the ground beneath them now betrays them: the desert they know so intimately bites down onto their steeds' legs, drags them at its center, and before he can even stop himself from growling and foaming they're gone - yelps gulped down by the quiet sand and earth.

He heaves.

Clarity returns to him all at once as he's dropped less unceremoniously than he would have assumed, head now spinning as adrenaline drains from his pistons and leaves him dazed, stupefied, catching his breath.

His associate lets himself down next to him, gasping for air as well.

"Fikou," he manages between heavy exhales at last. "Crazed Fikou."

The behemoth turns to him with lip raised and eyes squinting, genuinely puzzled. His arm drips.

"I told ya to trap 'em," he snarls: "Not maul 'em like a rabid Kavinika! What got over you, huh, bug? Thought you were bigger than you are?"

The smell fills his lungs.

The wound's flow hasn't slowed.

Words fail him, so he grabs the limb and yanks it until finally his voice vomits out of his awful teeth: "Aren't you supposed to be indestructible? What do you call this?"

They grind maws threateningly at one another, but there's no point in it.

They interrupt their aimless journey for repairs. Reidak breathes slow and even, keeping watch against unwelcome visitors while Avak works on him; as for the jailer, his mind returns to him and his heartlight stops heating up enough to melt a hole in his chest only when no ichor spills from the mended arm.

Still, inanely, he sticks to the injured side when they resume walking.

-

DAY 16: NAVIGATE (WANDER - WALK)

"Did you actually use them while you lived here?"

"Yes, of course."

"I thought you only took sandbaths."

"Well, that's for actual cleaning. Hot springs are more for things like... Helping bones and muscles when they hurt."

"Oh, I see. Your fingers really need that sort of thing, with how easily they get cut off."

"Ah-ha."

A good-natured laugh. The springs of Tesara keep glowing green in the creeping evening as the empty village stands quiet behind them.

"Let's take a bath," Takanuva says, and jumps off the rocky ledge.

Gresh feels himself turn to stone: "Huh?"

"We can, right?" the Toa replies, inching towards one of the many pools. "Though, I mean, even if we couldn't... There isn't really anybody around to yell at us about it."

Breath catches in the Agori's throat.

The body is a gross, weird and embarrassing thing, which by itself isn't a problem; the problem is that other people can look at it and touch it and perceive it, and the mere thought of that makes Gresh want to jump out of it altogether so as to never fear that something so awful might happen.

He's wished to be made entirely of feathers before, removing the whole conundrum right at the root, but that hasn't been something he's found to be achievable despite his most earnest attempts. As such, he's retreated on easier solutions, like making himself unpleasantly prickly and approaching anything that strikes him as too intimate with twenty degrees of suspicion - Plude, he used to be so suspicious of Vastus that he would wash and change around him only if they had at least one wall between each other.

But Takanuva has a point (after a whole day riding and walking to Tesara there's not a bit of him that isn't sore) and worse even, he might not understand what any of this means to him, and would need to have it explained. And the only thing that's worse than a body, and the having or perceiving or touching or looking at of a body, is explaining why it's all so blasted awful.

So Gresh just says: "Sure," with a thin voice, and drops down the ledge after him.

The pool they settle on - that the Toa settles on, while his friend follows and dreads - is large enough to host about a dozen people. Takanuva grabs at his chest armor and gives it a pull, popping it out of place easily; Gresh bristles as loud as a tree crown shaken by harsh gales, and turns around too late.

"Ah-!" he hears behind himself: "Sorry! Sorry, I didn't mean to freak you out like that!"

"It's fine," he grinds out.

"I forgot about it, sorry... But you can't see the lungs, I promise."

"The what?"

"I know you have them deeper inside, so this is probably really gross - but there's still armor over them! At most you can see maybe... Slivers through the gaps."

"Ah." yes, right. Right. They're machines. They don't have bodies like the ones he's used to. They're less awful in that sense. He swallows, burning with aimless shame. "No, no, that's fine, it's- it's an Agori thing. Turning around when someone's changing or, or taking off clothes and stuff, I mean. It's about... Privacy."

A beat of silence: "Oh," Takanuva says: "Thank you, then."

"No problem," Gresh says while the words strangle him. "Can you... When you're done can you turn around too? So I can..."

"Sure, sure - it's a good thing you told me," the Toa mumbles without reflecting even a hint of his anxiety back at him: "This could've been awkward."

It already is, but it's the thought that counts, he guesses.

He registers the sound of something sinking into water more than he does Takanuva's actual voice. The second he feels his feathers rise as the fabric lifts from them he regrets the whole thing, wonders if it's too late to walk back on his words (truly model Glatorian behavior, his brain chastises him, of course it's too late by now), resolves to get through the process as quickly as possible: in what feels like half a second he's naked, and after a terrible moment that stretches into infinity he finally blindly sticks his foot into the wetness of the pool and crawls backwards into it, submerged up to his chin.

He glances to his friend. The Toa leans against the rocky walls, shoulders out of the murky liquid which thankfully hides the rest of him, golden mask glowing, red eyes shut in contentment.

The water is warm.

Gresh's body doesn't really get to enjoy it, clenched as it is.

Takanuva's does, or at least it look like it from the exposed muscles. It's hard to explain - they seem softer? Glossier? He needs to stop looking.

The pool is too deep for sitting to be an option; the Lebori tries to sidestep further away as quietly as he can, but every minute movement makes little waves, and the Toa notices.

He turns with a smile: "It's nice, isn't it?"

Gresh flattens his back against the wall: "It's water," he says dismissively while his guts pulse like a giant worm writhing as it dies.

"The temperature is pretty comfortable, though."

"I guess."

Serps and vipers, this is awful.

He feels sluggish and tense. His face hurts by how deep he's creasing his forehead. He just wants to claw out of himself.

You're being weird, his brain screams at him: Quit being weird, quit looking at him, quit being a body. You're being weird and gross and he's going to notice. Fucking Plude, why aren't you normal? You're so normal usually, why aren't you normal? Why are you being weird?

He's been weird for a while now. About Takanuva.

He really hopes it's not love. He hates the thought of it, at least like that, for a friend most of all. Because he loves Takanuva, he really does, with his whole soul: but not like that.

That's a thing for other people to have, and it's not like he understands why they'd want it but whatever, that's their business, and sometimes it can even be nice to see - and besides it was such a relief to find that biomechanical beings don't even get love like that, and that finally he could be around normal people.

And now he's being weird, in ways too similar to love for his comfort, and trying to be normal again is like playing an instrument you were so familiar with yet can't get the hang of anymore.

Takanuva smiles a little less: "Is it because of your feathers?"

What is because of his feathers? The lack of enjoyment? His lackluster answers? His face? Guilt makes Gresh stretch his neck: "A little," he admits, or pretends to admit (he's not sure how honest he's being). "But if it's warm they dry sooner, so it's not that bad."

An uncertain hum. The water keeps rumbling.

Then, out of nowhere: "Watch this," and Takanuva rolls forward, dips below the surface, and re-emerges after an underwater cartwheel.

It's so sudden and jarring that the Glatorian forgets his discomfort.

"Can you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Cartwheel in the water."

"I don't even know how to swim!"

"You don't need to swim! Look - pretend you're doing one in the air and exhale until you resurface. Try it, it's not that hard."

What else is he supposed to do? Gresh pulls himself up in a standing position and tries to follow the Toa's instructions: he forgets to push the air out, getting stuck halfway through, and unfolds back out the water with a sputter.

"Not that hard, my ass," he grumbles, feathers ruffling indignated. It makes Takanuva laugh. "I bet diving is easier than this."

"Diving's the easiest thing in the world," his friend snickers, "You just need to hold your breath."

"I don't trust your judgement on how difficult something is anymore."

"Well, diving isn't!"

"You do it, then!"

Takanuva teaches him to dive. They stand on their hands at the bottom of the pool and he shows the Glatorian how to fight against the liquid's upward pull to sit down, and how to keep his eyes open in the water until it doesn't sting anymore. Then he teaches him to paddle, and a bit of how to swim better, and they do cartwheels in the water until he finally gets the process right, and then it's about who can do the most in quickest succession.

His brain has stopped screaming at him. The water is warm around his body. He lets himself float.

It's nice, he realizes.

It's nice.

He takes a deep breath, lets his body sink to the bottom and sits. In the green water he can only make out the vague shape of Takanuva, bright and dark at the same time, an obscured silhouette with fuzzy edges moving sluggishly without a care in the world.

This is good - the space between them, a distance to navigate in a maze-like shape without reaching the center, not suffocatingly close, not awkwardly far, perfectly spaced: this is good.

As he resurfaces, he wonders if the Toa would understand that.

"I like being in the water with you," Gresh tells him, which is a weird thing to say.

Takanuva smiles with a brief laugh, glowing faintly like a far away star.

-

DAY 17: INDULGE (FUN - JEST), requested by @coldgoldlazarus

Metal bent and scratched and cracked, tissue torn with disgusting squelches, ripping apart like plant fibers, fraying at the edges, tearing tenderly against a too strong bite.

It should have been like that, anyways.

It was so awful at first. All those bits and pieces wandering about inside her mouth, ichor shaking and sputtering out of a crevice not meant for such things - she lacked the strength in her jaw to chew easily through it all, and the process was akin to cutting a rare steak with the slimmer side of a club: a mess. But she persevered, too hungry and frankly desperate for any bit of energy to let the horrible feeling stop her.

She must have made for a sorry spectacle, worse than a newly made Skakdi dribbling matter from their oversized maws, maybe even more ridiculous than a Rahi trying to learn to swallow - that guttural laugh certainly made it sound like it.

Her prosthetic arm tried to sink its grip deeper into her half of the carcass, but could little against the strength of a much larger body. Another cackle underscored her attempt at glaring a hole into the creature's head, defiant eyes mocking her from above: the sinuous body sprouted then a row of clawed legs like it was the simplest thing in the world and began tearing through the protodermis bones and muscles, shredding them into thinner strips.

She eyed them hungrily, cradling her injured unfeeling hand in her lap with such impotent fury that, had she had fangs, she might've just torn it off its wrist herself.

And then the beast nudged them at her.

"There," she grinned: "Since, for a hunter, you're real bad at eating."

She narrowed her eyes to slits, stilling her hunger as best as she could: "Some beings are made for purposes higher than mauling."

"Like throwing knives and killing Toa?" then lo, a massive shadow hung above her, shaped like a thousand creatures and none at all: "Serving a master that severs your limbs?"

A blade lodged into the rock behind her, missing by mere inches.

She growled through her frustration.

The shapeshifter, too slippery for such a simplistic plan of attack to pose any threat to her anyway, howled a cruel laugh: "That's more like it! Look at you snarl and pounce and reach your claws out for meat!"

"Don't you dare mock me!" the Dark Hunter growled.

"Give me a reason not to, little one!"

The ever-changing body shrank and twisted into a parody of her companion's, tensed like a stretched rubber band as her maws opened, ready to lurch forth and steal her delicious, gracious gifts back - seeing as they would be going to waste if she left them to such a shy predator only pretending to want to live.

She treated the injured Hunter to a wicked Hordika smile, wide and stained already, enticing in the wildest, most defying manner.

"Show me your fangs!"

Lariska felt herself move without taking part of the action, as if she were at once lightly tethered to her body and yet removed, lodged within a not dense enough wall.

Her prosthetic arm jutted towards the flesh faster than lightning to grasp it, toothless mouth clamping down on it in a frenzy as the ichor still squelching from each strand drew dripping rivers along her jaw, her cheek, her throat; she attempted again to chew through the muscle fruitlessly before resorting to swallow it whole, like certain snakes are wont to do, and snapped onto the next bite as sharper jaws came far too close to the energy she desperately needed.

Before she could so much as register the copper taste as it coated the inside of her mouth the tongues of meat were already gone, grinding away into paste between the gears and pistons of her anatomy, leaving her hunger barely satisfied. Her eyes darted onto the bigger part of the Rahi, still mostly untouched; then onto her rival, morphed out of her shape and lunging for her meal.

She lunged with her.

The sound rippled through her, the wet clattering of organic matter mixed with yowls and growls and barks and hisses - tingling and buzzing along her neck as it twisted, as she dug into the wetness and pulled with all her strength, as she shoved and scratched and grasped with her one functioning hand to deserve her ticket to life at the expense of whatever poor beast was placidly suffering this frenzied dissection upon the cold uncaring ground.

Her higher senses crawled back into her like sludge. She blinked, dazed, and absentmindedly rubbed at her stained chin with an equally stained hand, merely smearing the fluids across both instead of cleaning either; distantly, looking upon naked bones, she felt impossibly full.

Something wet and disgusting rubbed the ichor off her.

Krahka treated her squinted glare to a wide, still dripping grin. She curled around the Hunter, too busy 'digesting' to fight her about it.

"Was that so bad?" she crooned.

To indulge in something as low, as vicious, as beastly as this...

No... No, it hadn't been so bad.

"Even worse," Lariska spat back either way.

Her mechanisms shook against the shapeshifter's rumbling form as she cackled, licked her companion's entire face another time for good measure just to hear the Hunter sputter about the indignity of it all.

-

DAY 18: NOW - REST - SOON, requested by @anasianfriend

"Do you regret it?"

Ekimu flinched. He didn't mean to, but he could hardly be faulted for it - disembodied voices coming from cursed visages have that sort of effect on nerves.

"Tampering with the… Vahi, as your mask maker called it?" he asked. A sort of tired smile disrupted the stern expression nobody could see beneath his own mask: "I admit things would be much simpler now if I had kept my tools away from it. But it is a rather interesting time to live through without having to fear too much, isn't it?"

The Integration, as Korgot had dubbed it (ever the pragmatic one she was), could have indeed been a much bloodier occasion. Okoto had too long received only unpleasant visitors such as the Shadow Walkers or the Skull Army: who was to say the hulking mass emerging out of a tangerine fog wasn't yet another conqueror's ploy, aiming to suffocate the weakened island beneath the heavy tarp of a foreign banner?

It came as a pleasant surprise, then, that the majority of these strangers held towards them no ill will; their new biomechanical cousins were mostly intrigued to find non-artificial beings who shared their unique nature between machine and flesh, and the Agori appeared to have long gotten desensitized to semi-inorganic lifeforms. One of them had even approached the whole thing with surreal tranquillity - upon meeting Narmoto he'd automatically gone to shake his hand, introduced himself as Ackar, and after understanding that this was a deeply unusual situation for everybody involved only sighed "alright" in a beyond exhausted tone and struck a jarringly normal conversation with the Protector.

"It is," Mata Nui agreed. His voice was quiet, almost drowsy; the Ignika's glow wavered with his lilting words. "Interesting, indeed."

They'd been having these conversations for weeks. He hadn't told anybody.

The Mask of Life had never reacted to Ekimu's touch, settling into it as if it had been little more than a common mold even as he'd twisted and turned it, awed but unblemished by its power; considering all the caution other beings still handled it with, and reasoning that there would be fewer places more apt and safe for it to be than a mythical mask maker's forge, after some deliberation he had been entrusted with the cursed kanohi as its keeper for the time being. He still had plenty of eyes trained on him, which he had expected from its history. Unexpected had been hearing it speak.

First contact had been spotty, rattled, hard to decipher, marked by silences so long in-between brief bouts of consciousness that Ekimu had thought he was having hallucinations. Then, slowly, as the heavy shroud of tiredness had begun to lift ever more steadily, they'd met.

Mata Nui had been curious about Okoto - hazy and unfocused, always slipping in and out of his twilight sleep, but earnestly curious. They traded stories and histories whenever he managed to keep awake, even if it was only for a few minutes; by now, despite his questions ambushing Ekimu most of the time, he'd settled rather fondly into his talkative, formless company.

Being something close to a god, working at his forge with few interruptions and no equals, was turning out rather lonely.

"But I was referring to something else."

"Hm?"

"Do you regret letting them leave?"

Ekimu's hand stalled.

He waited for a long few seconds. Then he returned to his sketching, voice soft: "There is no point in dwelling on it. It was just Destiny. How it had to be."

"There could have been another way," Mata Nui mused quietly.

"No such thing is allowed to legends, I'm afraid."

"This would not need to be one. A chance at a normal life… Would it be so inadmissible, to allow them this? As my own universe was? Something aside from the fighting, and the duty, and the stars…"

The mask maker sighed: "… Yes. Yes, I suppose I could call them again, just to pluck them from the sky and let them stay with us. The creatures and the little ones would like that… But you must understand, the Toa have only come to us in dark times - if I gathered the Protectors in the Temple of Time and told them to summon our heroes again, what would they think? How would they come to interpret the contact between our people?"

A subdued glow accompanied the Ignika's silence.

Ekimu retraced the same line a few times over.

He let the sounds of the forge wash over him like endless waves: the rumble of fire, automated machines grinding away at their mechanisms, cooling water rippling in its basins as thumps agitated concentric circles on its surface, Agil's breath quick and calm as it rested above him.

Finally, so quiet that he almost did not hear him, Mata Nui's voice: "Forgive me," he said softly: "Sleep makes me uneasy."

Ah… Of course.

Fingertips thoughtlessly moved towards the mask, to rest on one of the arms carving its features and offer some kind of comfort; Ekimu caught himself before he could finish the motion and pulled back his hand, embarrassed by his lapse. It wasn't as if that could have done any good - within the Ignika senses were horrifically dulled.

It was one of the reasons keeping awake was so difficult, devoid of stimuli as his spirit was.

The wandering thought did ignite a spark in the mask maker's mind: "May I change the subject?" he asked. "There's something I've been meaning to share with you, but keep forgetting to."

"Of course," Mata Nui reassured him. He seemed relieved to move on.

Ekimu reached for a few old texts, cracked and held together by spit and prayers, which had been watching over his work bench for a few days now: "When you first told me of your predicament, it reminded me of - where is it... Ah, here - it reminded me of something my teacher once showed me."

"You had a teacher?"

"Oh, certainly I did. You don't think I was born with a hammer in hand and an anvil at my side, do you?" he teased. A tired laugh widened his smile. "As I was saying, she once presented my brother and I with a completely artificial body, made entirely of metal. When adeguately wound up it could move on its own, do simple chores... She'd even installed a bowl of water in its head that, when heated up, gave the impression it was speaking! Or at least grumbling."

"An automaton, then?"

"Exactly that."

"Intriguing... I doubt it could be programmed, but it must have been quite a marvel."

"Oh, it was. We were discouraged from making one of our own at the time - we were still apprentices, and masks are delicate things that require a lot of attention when one's only just begun making them - but our teacher did promise to lend us her studies eventually. Once we were good enough."

In the end she'd passed before they could show her the extent of their mastery, and they'd focused entirely on their work, burying the memory of her machine with her. And then...

He flipped through parchment and pages, letting them brush the thought of Makuta out of his musings: "And since I believe I've indeed gotten quite good at my job," (another faint chuckle) "Might as well try my hand at something new."

"I am certain you will succeed. You have plenty of time at your disposal to learn, after all."

"Hm - I'd rather be quick about it," Ekimu mumbled, somewhat absentiminded as he returned to his own drawings to scratch out something he'd gotten wrong. "I'm sure we'd both prefer for you to be up and about sooner than later."

A bout of silence passed, his words settling between them.

"You... Want to make me... A body?" Mata Nui asked softly.

"Something very simple," the mask maker reassured him: "Basic enough in its composition that commanding it shouldn't tire you. Not that I'd have the expertise for anything else, really..."

"But why? So much effort, for something I seldom get to keep..."

"The time will pass anyways. Don't you think it's worth a try? Besides, even if it only works for a short period, you'll get to live amongst your own people. I'm sure a lot of beings would love to properly get to know you." and absentmindedly, out loud, he simply added: "I know I do."

Scratches upon paper corrected, sketched, filled the air alongside the crackle of fire within the forge.

Ekimu, absorbed in his work, only vaguely registered another weight shift to sit upon his desk and gently unbalance it; his industrious hand was stilled only when something - a strange facsimile of a feeling, that of warm, gentle fingers, heavy and yet impalpable like sunbeams - wrapped around it with playful tenderness.

"I am very eager to know you properly, too."

A breath lodged in his throat.

He turned fast enough to make himself dizzy, sputtering through the air choking him, certain to find a sly grin squinting amused mere inches from his mask... But there was no one and nothing beside him. Just the space that could have housed a presence, and the Ignika, the last of its golden glow fading entirely to leave it dull as all extreme expenses of energy did.

He waited fruitlessly for a few minutes - for what? For words to return to him, for Mata Nui to reawake? Neither happened; in the end, too distracted to do anything, he held his head in his hands.

From its comfortable perch above such foolish happenings, Agil tilted its head at him, curious of his companion's plight or perhaps merely having its fun about it. It fluttered down onto the desk, arched beak prodding at the mask maker's chin to meet his eye: the startled being snapped out of his bewildered trance to find himself under the scrutiny of the creature's impassible gaze.

Swamped in embarrassment, Ekimu raised a finger to his mouth to beg for its silence.