cloudcrack
happy horsie kissie from mama happy horsie kissie from mama happy horsie kissie from mama HAPPY HORSIE KISSIE FROM MAMA
Azzar, on account of being so...incorrigibly dry, was not nearly the type of unexpectedly-arriving child to inspire boundless delight in all those ringed around the birthpoint. To be sure, everyone loves to tremble at the freshest advent of life's new dawn, but there are plush miracles and then there are wire-haired scrounge. People like happy babies, or quiet toddlers, or courageous children, or even tempestuous teens, but they don't tend to fawn over an offspring that tells you to spring off.
Well. It wasn't rude, no, because Minoth wasn't quite rude; it was only more and more prickly than its right-side father, in such a way that it was actually, indeed, charming.
Flora, too, was charming. Flora loved to be charmed.
Flora, who would have known nothing about the whole affair, should it have proceeded to course (which is to say, no one expected anything to actually happen as a result of Mythra's ever-lackadaisical endeavors), sat home and bided upon the warriors, thinking their travails full of taskbreaking and Aegis-hunting, despite her husband's usual shows of impotence (impotency?) and do-gooding.
She wasn't dumb. She was just practical. She never expected to become parent to a horse.
Addam's way of warning her was typically awkward and anticlimactic: "Er, Flora?" he called up to the manor wall, "We've brought somebody. Something? It's Azzar. This is Azzar, I mean."
"Hello, Azzar," said Flora, and she was even quite merry about it.
Azzar, who did have the septum piercing Minoth himself had long pondered, snorted its close-eyed agreement. Well, maybe acknowledgement was more the word. Nothing so effusive; Azzar was never effusive.
"Oh, this one's quite moody - our petulant thundercloud, it seems?"
Flora didn't usually tend patronizing; she was good with her words, especially where children or other characteristically sensitive populations were concerned. And, in view of the way their other most recent moody inmate had responded to being "anyone's anything" for better or for worse, it might not have been so wise for her to immediately possess upon Azzar.
Might have, if she were not Flora.
Without opening its eyes, Azzar turned its focus upon her. A crackle came in the thin blue blanket of the sky.
It stood to reason that the child of an electric weapon user who owned the earth element itself would stand to rumble the clouds, didn't it? And set running a sunshower, for good measure, to dampen out the broad and cheery day.
Flora squinted down at the two men and their charge, then looked from Azzar to Addam to Minoth and back to Azzar again. Of course, this was a Blade. No exceedingly elaborate disguise could explain the three-pointed crystal displayed in the center of the doublet and the hooves indistinguishable from thigh-high boots, even if Minoth's fashion choices were similarly eclectic.
Even if.
"They...it looks like you, doesn't it?"
"I've been told the very picture," replied Minoth, moving a hand to shield his brow.
"And that's down to...?"
"Down to a Core Crystal science."
Hearing the confirmation of her dawning suspicion, Flora's gaze shifted, borne to surety by newfound understanding. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Azzar. How are you?"
"Fine, ma'am," it said, the term shortened in a quaint hybrid between the nasal and the glottal.
"Oh, that's not necessary. You must know that, knowing Addam."
Azzar shook its head - this less to indicate disagreement than to make a break between sentiments. "I haven't had much occasion to address either of them by name. They usually ask me first."
"Well, then I'll ask you first. I'm taking a spell of rest up here on the parapet. Would you be so kind as to join me? And..." she waved a noncommittal hand, "them, too."
At that, Azzar finally produced the barest modicum of a smile. "As you wish. Ma'am."
Addam elbowed Minoth as they made to follow behind. "Already, we've been raising it wrong."
"Not a question of wrong, Prince, so much as...who else but Flora could ever be said to be right?"
By the time the three travelers had rounded to the top of the stone stairs, Flora had made to stand in greeting, and grasped Azzar's hand eagerly without quite waiting for it to provide.
"So you belong to Addam and Minoth, then? Genetically, that is."
"That seems to be the case," Azzar allowed.
Flora smiled. "Pardon me noticing, but these scars on your arms" - she touched them lightly - "are just so familiar to me. I'd never been sure if Minoth's was actually a scar or just a birthmark. Yours look to be a little of both." She had judged this based on a roughness of texture and discoloration, right at the edges that didn't bleed.
"You know a lot about them," remarked Azzar, neither awkwardly nor cool.
For a moment, Flora blinked, and then recognition sparked for the second time.
"Oh, I thought they'd told you! I don't best prefer introductions," she added, to the side. "I'm Addam's wife - which means I'm also quite partial to Minoth, both personally and by association. Meaning, I'm related to you as well, somehow, if you'd like. Oh, and I apologize for touching your arm, just there."
Azzar stared at her, perhaps studying (this was indicated by the twitch of an ear and the cock of head just the slightest few degrees).
Frowning, Flora stepped back and sat on the bench again. She lurched a bit as she went, but as her two fine gentlemen were likewise indisposed by the sudden lack of conversation, they didn't think to move to help her.
A look at the clouds revealed just the palest midafternoon cumulus grays, with no threat of a dumping open for heavy or spitting rain. The squall was not to be dismissed, however. Azzar's might was not to be discounted.
Flora studied her guests, eyes keen. How unpredictable, and yet how exactly, interminably predictable. Minoth didn't make to add any further explanation, because there was nothing else to explain.
In fact, though, there was just one thing.
"It has something to do with Mythra, too, I gather - where is she?"
Before either Minoth or Addam could answer, or waffle, or stutter, or cringe, Azzar supplied flatly, "Mythra didn't want to come."
Was it defensive? Was it envious? Was it proud to be the one armed with this not-so-crucial information? Was it truly, deeply, unimpressed?
(Addam looked guilty. Minoth just breathed out and shook his head.)
"And did you perhaps buy into her reasoning for that feeling?" Flora teased, peering again at the prominent piercing that covered the entirety of Azzar's top lip. Its face was more open than Minoth's, much more like Addam's, despite the creases.
"I had nowhere else to be," was the simple reply.
Well, well, well. How could you argue with that?
Flora smiled, eyes crinkling such that their expressions nearly matched. "If you've still got nowhere else to be, then might you do me the honor of walking me back inside? It seems to be stormy out here." Addam and Minoth couldn't even pretend to be scorned.
"I could tell you how far the eye is away," said Azzar, offering its arm as requested. Not just the odd old counting tricks, one would assume.
"No need," replied Flora. "I've got a lovely view of it. And I'm not too worried," she paused to pull its shoulder down and kiss its cheek, then wrap her arms about its fine stout middle, "anyway."