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The goddess of the forest used to be a mystery.
When the thick, tree-filled, wild patches of the world began to sprout up, Shiro thought next to nothing of it. His job was the sky- painting in clouds and hanging celestials and exchanging night and day with bleeding colors- so what happened below was, technically, none of his business. He didn't have a need to concern himself with anything other than his dawns and dusks and where the ground kissed the stars, and how it effected the remainder of the world wasn't in his head. No, he was only required to do his daily job, the rest of his time dedicated to where ever the wings on his back took him, every deity surrounding themselves in their element and business. Of course, white and black haired immortal interacted with the others that resided on the world, gods of fire and water and the land down under, even all together, but somehow, she was never in sight.
Keith, guardian of all things fire, had mentioned that she was constantly busy working herself into the ground with all sorts of new creations that no one could find themselves to question. Apparently she hardly came out of any of her dwellings, no matter where it was in the world, and they'd only seen her a handful of times, let alone talk to the single female.
Shiro's curiosity was peaked on numerous times: something small would whiz past him, sometimes in groups, diving toward the wilderness belonging to the stranger, the tiny things each owning a set of colorful wings not unlike his own. Trees began to stretch near as high as mountains with all sorts of chirping and warbling and growling exiting from the green wilderness, a color he could never manage to recreate in his own attempts. He stopped dead in his flying tracks when the god of the sky began to find star shaped somethings the shades of his creations.
What was she doing down there?
The colored stars got larger, trees taller to were he'd have to swerve to dodge them, some with gigantic leaves, others with none. The winged creatures became different sizes and made strange singing noises. But when creatures with four legs bean to stumble around, looking at him with the same eyes that he owned, to where there were too many to count despite his attempts?
He was obligated to look into it, right?
He hadn't stood in centuries, let alone set foot in the largest forest she'd made, dark, glowing greenery that screeched from its innards. The sky god swallowed, landing awkwardly and tripping into the wilderness with wings folded in and clouded eyes narrowed. Where he stepped, the winged creates disappeared from, beasts stumbling away as they watched him with gleaming eyes, scanning his form with the same confusion he held toward them. Shiro took a look back, just in case-
And the forest had swallowed him whole, shoving him into its heart.
"Hello?" He called as loud as he could, swimming through a thick haze of sharp new sights and sounds and smells. It was messy, it was cramped, the ground crunching underfoot with the sun he strung into the heavens not much earlier leaking gold onto his strange, chattering surroundings. "I-I thought I should introduce myself, after I saw all of your.. things everywhere."
The stranger had to be somewhere close, right? He'd lost the number of minuets he'd journeyed into the goddess' domain, and the trees began to change in color and the creatures began to growl at him, lanky, powerful legs allowing them to encircle him with their pointed teeth shining. Perhaps these things were leading him in the right direction?
Wrong was the answer he discovered only breaths afterward.
It wasn't one of his bravest nor best moments as the god of the skies was tackled to the ground by something that unbeknownst to him was called a lion, and a quite large one at that. He hit the ground with a thud, grunting as a set of paws pinned him down by his shoulders, a tail whipping back and forth as its low growl continued. His eyes went fuzzy for a matter of breaths, and he didn't have half a mind to defend himself for cause of shock, the outlines of a stranger's children drawing uncomfortably close.
"Green, get off of him."
The outlines halted their prowling, teeth hiding under their lips. Both Shiro's and the attacker's bodies went still- the latter for its creator, the former of surprise of a mystery nearly revealed. Though, with the feminine voice's tone, the forest, the entirety of it, silenced without an exception, the weight on his torso vanishing with not even the crunching of leaves to hint that it had stepped onto solid ground. Grey eyes searching before him as details inked in, blind mixes of yellow and blue combinations evening out as someone entered view, bare, pale pink feet crisscrossing with tip-toed steps.
The sky god skidding back, wings unevenly tossed open as he fell awkwardly on his ass, then gawking at the goddess who stood in the honey sunlight.
She was smaller than he'd thought, about as tall as his shoulder, with a scrawny, near white figure white was dotted with dots the shades of tree arms that splattered like his stars. She was adorned in exactly two things: an juniper dress, which cut off mid-thigh at the front and at her knees in the back, sliding under her shoulders to her wrists, and a crown composed of leaves of every shape, size, and texture, with the colorful odd shaped plants swirled in, strings owning both falling in between her eyes and around her head. Hair and eyes gleaming as gold as the sun, she smiled and gestured to the beasts.
"Sorry about that," She grinned crookedly, purely, which physically hurt his chest. "The Lions did that to everyone else, too."
Something nudged both his wings and his torso, a number of the so-called 'Lions' forcing him onto his feet as prompted by her. Though as soon as he stood, a head and then some taller than their creator, the five, he counted, padded over to her and tucked themselves close.
"Sooo," She drawled, raising a brow as a foot pointed itself in his direction. Her eyes burned holes into his head; he must've been see-through to the smallest deity, as she looked as if she knew his every secret of his with her sly grin. "What's the Sky God doing in the forest?"
Suddenly his throat was tight and speech was a stumbling block he couldn't step over, his wings off-centering his balance, Shiro tripping clumsily as he made an attempt to respond, though it was an ill-fated attempt.
"I-I've seen the things you-you've been making, like those things," He folded his arms in an attempt to look well put together, though internally he was grumbling about how stupid he was currently acting. "So I wanted to, uh, come see them for myself, and I've somehow've never me-met you, so, um.."
She tip-toed up to him, hands folded together behind her back with leaves and bangs shadowing her eyes as she neared his face, his akimbo arms dropping. The sounds began to return, one of the winged things flapping down on his own similar appendage, though he had not a clue what to do when another joined it and the goddess spoke again.
"You gotta name, Sky-guy?"
"Yeah..?" Eyebrows raised, mouth quirked down as he glanced at the things he decided to call 'peepers' and the colored stars 'blooms'. It hopped to move, dark eyes squinting at the larger winged being with an unreadable expression, covered in the ginger and lemon shades of a slow dawn or the minuscule blooms that littered near half of their planet. It fluttered over to its goddess, still gazing at him.
"Is 'Yeah' your name? I was asking for it, not if you had one." Smile toothy, she settled her feet down, returning to her shorter and regular height, another peeper joining. The Forest God's shoulders relaxed, one hand pressed against her chest, other limp until another lion wiggled under and gazed up at the stranger in the olive growth. With only a blink, another bloom sprouted beside her head, another leaf beside her ear, though he could only swallow and watch her smile under his sun.
"Shiro. Yours?" The answer was firm, though he wanted to leap away, fly as high as he could, and process whatever the hell was going through his head. Though, he wouldn't gain that opportunity until much later for fear for never seeing the green deity for another millennia, so he tried to soak up every detail of her he could spot, which included her name he'd soon receive. Little did Shiro know how often he'd say the foreign word, scribbling it in the sky and misspelling it over and over until it looked right, repeating it until it was a term to be used in nearly every complete thought.
"Pidge."