Chapter Text
"Yet, truth be told," Kinich spoke again, his voice still mumbled like he couldn't pry the words out. "Mother," he was now referring to Nymphaea, of whom had turned to look at him, her sorrowful gaze desperate for his acknowledgement. "I've always wanted to ask… how did…" how did 'The Hill of Silent Crickets' conclude?
The manuscript had ended abruptly, and Kinich had left it abandoned in a cabinet alongside the letter she had written some weeks ago. Yet, stubborn and stupid as it had been, he had always wanted to know how the tale would come to a close. What had happened to the protagonist since the desolate world of Mare Jivari was uncovered? What had come of the single, cracked cricket's egg, in a space consumed by firey windstorms worse than the lava of Natlan's undersoil?
"Yes, my boy—"
"Don't," Kinich forced out, his voice thick. He didn't know, nor did he believe for even the moment's hesitation, that he would be able to handle being treated like Nymphaea was still his next-of-kin. As though the past decade ever since, had merely been an undercut. "Please, just…" he turned around, suddenly finding himself unable to pose the question. "Forgive my transgressions, but please excuse me," the words were a challenge to spit out, stuck in his constricting throat.
He had ran out after the words had slipped off his tongue, ignoring the gentle voices calling after his name. Biting down on his lower lip, he tried hard to hold back the burning sensation in his eyes. Malipo's never looked back.
All he wanted, was true freedom from the past that had left him chained in the prison of Time. Just in the way his father's demise had been his freedom from a house that had never been a home. Kinich hated that he was cursing Celestia itself for all his life's horrors, and perhaps it was a selfish thing to wonder.
Perhaps the thing that made him undeserving of being rescued from that wretched house; of being unworthy of friendship Mualani had offered against every better judgment—was the fact he carried his father's blood in his veins. And, as he had thought when he'd struck that deal with Ajaw at fourteen:
That blood was a curse. There was nothing blessed about having a selfish gambler's DNA coursing through one's veins.
Kinich did not know where he was running to, or for how long he had been at it since fleeing the Speaker's Chamber. He'd heard Ajaw's mocking voice some distance back, but he'd thrown the Saurian into timeout about as fast as he had appeared.
"Kinich!" someone was calling after him, and he couldn't breathe or find the mind to respond. All he could think about now, was the fact he was a gambler's son. A son who wasn't even so deserving of being treated like he was ever really a child. Thinking of the white-haired woman and midnight-blue haired man, and of Halona and her husband—Kinich had suddenly come to the haunting, meandering notion that he had not known what he had been missing out on… until now.
He was now on a hilltop, perhaps some distance away from the Stadium but not quite far enough to be close to his own tribe or to the Children of Echoes' territory. Collapsing onto his knees, his gloved palms pressed to the sharp blades of grass, the sound of earth crunching under him soothing in ways that did not make much sense.
Malipo's never looked back. Yupanqui had turned back once, and he was consumed by a hundred-days Turnfire, reduced to nothing by the end. That had been the payment he didn't know he had owed Ronova when it had happened.
Yet, Kinich was still alive. Not screaming in agony as the tales may have surmised; even though bearers of the Malipo name never did live past a commendable age.
There was a sort of tragedy associated with bearing a name that literally meant payment, and there was no payment greater or more sacrificial than that of one's demise. Despite it all, Ronova seemed to have colluded with her 'sisters' and her 'Creator'.
For what more could Celestia have wanted, to be willing to break every rule in its rulebooks, and make the Dendro Archon grant his lifeless vessel, including his soul, a second chance at life?
Kinich didn't realise when it was he had brought himself to lie on his back again, staring at the sky just as he had done yesterday. A shooting star shot through the skylines, and Kinich found himself closing his eyes. Not to make a wish—he hadn't pressed his palms together in prayers to gods he didn't believe in. But rather just to let the moment pass. A Hunter like himself, cold-blooded, profit-driven, deserved not to make a childish wish.
"Kinich," a soft voice spoke over his racing thoughts, and Kinich had sat back up. That voice belonged to only one his age, her kindness infectious, and he didn't reconcile to be asking for his well-being. Mualani was standing in front of him, her brows creased together, eyes shining like there was loads she wanted to say, but didn't believe it to be the right time.
"…lani," he acknowledged, his voice too soft at the beginning that it didn't register the first two syllables in her given name. Mualani had frozen at the address that did carry in the wind, her eyes widening, filling with water she quickly swiped away. A shaky smile found its way onto her face, and Kinich quickly regretted having said anything at all.
"Would you mind if I…" she trailed off, pulling her now-messy braids in front of her to undo them. "…sat close by?" she finished, unsure of herself as her hair now fell like rivulets. Kinich didn't know how to respond, but he'd nodded nonetheless, and she had settled herself next to him.
Whether unconsciously or not, at some point into the night, as the stars came up to hang overhead, glistening in the moonlight and the aurora skylines, Mualani had shifted, her head now resting in Kinich's lap. And for whatever reason Kinich could not—or rather, would not provide, he didn't tell her to get back up.
Instead, his hand had moved, unconsciously carding through her locks of white hair. It was soft, much like the heart Kinich still couldn't rationalise how Celestia could ever grant anyone in Teyvat when it was such a cruel place.
Mualani was staring at him, her eyes fixed on his face as though he was the one to hang the stars and moon. "You know," she said, her voice barely above the whisper. "Kinich, you're a wonderful person, if a little aloof. People just haven't gotten to really know you."
Kinich didn't respond, not even by making a sound. He'd turned his attention skyward, watching every constellation that formed itself. There was a seal, and then a chimera constellation, so close together that Kinich's heart stopped, anticipating stuff he didn't want to imagine.
Seals were generally prey, and chimaeras were predators. While not generally associated to be prey and predator of one another, Kinich still couldn't stop himself from fearing that it was all a mistake.
"Aren't they beautiful?" Mualani's voice came over the buzzing in Kinich's ears, her hand coming up to face the sky as her palm drew out the area in which the seal and chimaera met. "Look at it, Kinich," her index finger now traced the invisible lines whereby the stars joined between the aurora.
Beautiful, Kinich had internally huffed, unwilling to burst his friend's happy little bubble. It was beautiful until she learns of how they were a predator and prey. A match made in the underworld or wherever in the Night Kingdom the monsters resided.
The seal took the chimaera by its tail, and led it along to see the twilight's magic elsewhere. Kinich had sighed, Mualani's innocence too tempting to keep for himself. He might never come to understand why she would take a chance on him, but at least, for now, everything was calm.
And Istaroth's nonsense had since quietened a bunch.
~
'The Hill of Silent Crickets' had perhaps, Kinich had thought as he walked Mualani back home, unaware of the pairs of eyes following them, ended right where it had meant to abruptly cut off.
The cliffhanger might have been the point; for the uncertainty of Kinich's future, in the same way of the uncertainty of the cricket egg's survival, had been the only thing that had followed Kinich throughout his life.
Before Nymphaea had upped and ran a decade ago, she had sat down and penned those final words in the still incomplete manuscript. The next time Kinich had found it, had been on her desk shortly after she had already departed.
Asking his father questions regarding her whereabouts, Kinich had learnt very quickly, was the wrong thing to say, but it was also what sped up his freedom from those wretched prison chains. And in many ways, Kinich still wasn't rather too sure if it had ever been the right set of events unfolding; just that it had been one in millions of possible scenarios that had played out, and the rest of Fate, had forever held a grudge.
~
"I told you, Nymphaea," Mavuika said, her voice flat as she leaned against her bike, arms folded as they watched the two teenagers depart in the direction of the People of the Springs' territory; Mualani's hair having been braided some time ago by Kinich into one larger braid instead of a pair. "He's doing just fine, after everything was accounted for."
"I just wanted to…"
"I know," Mavuika said, tired. She was done yelling at this woman who had been too frightened a decade ago, even if Mavuika never would understand abandoning a child in self-preservation. For Mavuika had always harboured too much grief for needing to have left Hini behind for this wild, unpromised success. "But he's already made his point rather clear, and the place in which you had in his life, had passed just as my place in my family's life had."
The comparison had hardly been fair, and it had hurt for Mavuika to have made such a comparison.
"Perhaps the best thing you could do now, if you want him to thrive," Mavuika sighed as she continued speaking, turning to look at the woman who looked too much like her self-proclaimed child. "Is to let him go. Fully."
Because one of the worst thing anyone could do to their child, was to disappear without reason and suddenly reappear asking to try again without giving an explanation that could ever so much as explain, completely, as to why they made the decision they had.
Especially when there was already an opening to return when the threat was cleared.
~
And of the mention of Turnfire, the Elders of the Scions are planning for the annual event of the year at present times.