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“You there! Your name is Gawain, is it not?”
This shout interrupts Gawain where he’d been crouched in a small, secluded clearing in a patch of dense woods. He’s not far from where the Grandcypher has docked for business on this island, having headed out alone while the crew resupplies in the nearby township. Pulling his hands out of the snow, he feels rather stupid and childish now that someone else has seen him. Getting up on his feet, he turns to see a man making rather large strides towards him.
Gawain is cautious as he replies. “Yes, that’s my name.” He squints. The man seems familiar, but he can’t place why off the top of his head. “What... do you want?”
“To greet you!” He replies cheerily. “I am Nezahualpilli, the Eagle King. We are both in the same crew!”
That explains why he felt familiar, Gawain supposes. Nezahualpilli continues:
“I have seen you around the airship quite a few times, but never had the chance to say hello! It is quite a hectic place,” he laughs, and Gawain isn’t sure why this is funny. “When I spotted you leaving the ship by yourself, I decided this would be the best time to make my greetings.”
Gawain nods, slowly. “I see. Hello, then,” and then he half-turns away from Nezahualpilli to make it obvious that he has no investment in continuing the conversation.
Instead, Nezahualpilli gestures to the patch of snow that Gawain had been crouched over earlier. “What were you doing?”
“What? Oh,” Gawain stutters, “I was just… Touching the snow.”
This throws him off. “Touching it? Have you never seen snow before? In my tribe--”
“No,” he cuts him off quickly, “I have. It’s just… been a long time since I could touch it. It’s, um, cold.”
He feels like that was probably the stupidest way he could have described the sensation of snow, but Nezahualpilli doesn’t seem to pay it any mind.
“You were… unable to touch it? May I ask why?”
Gawain shrugs, then rubs a hand on the back of his neck. He tries not to shiver from how cold his fingers are against his skin. “I guess. I was under a curse, for a very long time - I could not take off my armor until recently.”
Nezahualpilli makes a soft noise of understanding, even though Gawain has never met anyone before who was so quick to accept his story.
“I see. That is truly a strange ordeal,” Nezahualpilli concedes, and then takes a look around the woods. Before Gawain can think of an excuse to leave, he continues speaking. “Well, Gawain, may I ask you to stay here for a few minutes while I go do something? It will not take long, if you would.”
There isn’t time for an answer before Nezahualpilli has disappeared into the woods, leaving Gawain alone again and staring blankly in the direction he’d left in.
He’s not sure how long he ends up waiting, but the longer he’s out there the more he finds himself aware of how cold it is. Dalmore gets snow, sure, but the winters are brief and temperate - nothing like this biting, dry weather.
Letting out a sigh, Gawain shoves his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. Gaze distant, he watches a puff of mist escape his lips and dissipate into the cold air.
He hadn’t really been planning on being outside longer than a short sight-seeing trip to stretch his legs, and his hands are starting to get cold without any gloves. At least he’d had the presence of mind to bring a scarf, and he buries his face deeper inside the wool to try and stave off the cold while he waits.
Briefly, Gawain considers abandoning Nezahualpilli and heading back to the airship alone. He spends a moment chewing on his lower lip as he considers it, but ultimately remains leaning against the tree. He can’t imagine what Florence would say to him if she found out, and he shivers at the thought of being on the receiving end of another curse.
“Cold, are we? Hah! This is nothing compared to the winter of the mountain peaks, I assure you!”
A raucous voice startles Gawain from behind, and he jumps. It only takes a moment for his knight’s instincts to kick in and make him whirl around with a mad grab for his axe, but he realizes rather dumbly that he’d left his weapon behind when he left the ship.
It turns out to be of little consequence, either way: In front of him, grinning wide, is Nezahualpilli triumphantly holding a freshly-dead pheasant up in the air. Gawain relaxes at the sight, but only slightly.
“You… caught that?” His tone is skeptical, and he takes a quick glance at the bird.
“Of course!” As if it’s obvious, Nezahualpilli gestures to the arrow that is still embedded deep in the bird’s feathers. “It is the best season to hunt, and this island is well-known for its poultry. It is customary in my tribe to begin a new friendship with a meal that you have caught, prepared, and cooked yourself!”
Gawain finds himself rather unsure of when they had reached “friendship”, but is saved the trouble of thinking of a reply thanks to the sound of a low growl coming from behind him. Nezahualpilli’s gaze snaps to stare at something off his shoulder, and when Gawain turns around he finds himself greeted by a wolf-like beast that has appeared from the bushes to stare down the two of them. Most likely, he assumes, it was attracted by the smell of blood and skyfarers.
Everyone in the small clearing seems frozen, for a moment, and then Gawain makes the mistake of taking a small step back towards Nezahualpilli. The sound of the snow crunching under his boots seems to set off the monster, and it lunges at him. Without a weapon to defend himself, Gawain raises his arms in front of his face and shuts his eyes.
When a moment has passed without any pain, he hesitantly peeks an eye open to see what happened.
Nezahualpilli had rushed in front of him in the split-second before the wolf made contact, and had sacrificed his free arm to take the brunt of the beast’s bite instead. It’s growling against the leather glove that it bit into, and crushes its jaw down even harder on Nezahualpilli’s forearm before it’s shaken off and sent tumbling back into the snow.
In a single deft, fluid motion, Nezahualpilli twirls his spear around in his hand towards the beast in front of them. There’s a sudden buffet of unnaturally warm wind, and then the tip of the weapon has stabbed deep into the wolf’s dark fur. It collapses onto the ground with a loud whine, and the spear leaves a slash of blood against the snow as it is removed and spun back into place on Nezahualpilli’s back.
Gawain finds himself rather shocked by how quickly the whole ordeal is finished, standing stiff for a moment. After confirming the monster is dead, Nezahualpilli sticks two fingers in his mouth and lets out a short high-pitched whistle.
It takes barely a minute for his call to be answered by a large eagle which swoops down and lands on the shoulder of Nezahualpilli’s injured arm.
“Were there more beasts?” He asks, directing his question to the bird. It responds with a short string of chatters, which seems to please Nezahualpilli. “Good boy,” he replies, then turns to Gawain. “This is Kreetori, my beak-brother.”
Gawain doesn’t bother asking what this means.
“He has told me that the other wolves nearby were frightened off, so we shall be safe for now.”
After a short pause, Gawain takes a nervous step towards Nezahualpilli while he’s distracted with scratching Kreetori’s neck as a reward for his work.
“Why did you protect me?”
Nezahualpilli turns and stares at him, and Gawain can’t help but feel like he’s starting to sweat under the burning curiosity in his eyes when he finally breaks and lets out a bellowing laugh.
“Why would I protect you, you ask? Is that not simply the right thing to do?” Nezahualpilli is still laughing, and claps a heavy hand on Gawain’s shoulder. Kreetori makes a small sound of protest at being suddenly bounced around. “What a curious question!”
Slowly, Gawain raises a hand to firmly remove Nezahualpilli’s own. The man takes the dismissive act in stride, grinning as he raises the caught bird in his uninjured hand. The jerk of his movement results in a small splattering of blood on the already-reddening snow beneath them.
“At least our meal is safe!” That stupid grin is still plastered on his face, despite the anxiety in Kreetori’s movements on his shoulder as he tries to investigate the injury on his beak-brother. “That is the most important thing, no?”
Gawain doesn’t reply to this. Instead, he spends a moment debating with himself, then: “Give me your arm.”
Nezahualpilli makes a small sound of surprise at the sudden demand, but does as he’s asked. The gash is more gruesome than he’d previously let on, the wild beast’s teeth having pierced through the thick leather of his glove and torn through the skin quite viciously. No stranger to battle wounds, Gawain doesn’t waste very long looking at it - there’s little he can do out here without any first-aid equipment, and they’re close enough to the airship that it’s of little concern if they treat it immediately.
Still, he feels a sense of responsibility for it. There’s a nagging feeling in the back of his head that tells him it’s the right thing to at least dress the wound, as much as this whole idea of ‘compassion’ is still rather foreign to him.
“Sorry,” he mutters, and isn’t quite sure where his own apology came from. To distract himself, he makes quick work of tugging his scarf undone and efficiently wrapping it around the wound. “There.”
Nezahualpilli takes a moment to marvel at the work, looking at his arm rather like it’s something foreign, and then drops it down to his side. “Why, thank you! I owe you greatly.”
“ You’re the one who got injured,” Gawain mutters sourly. He finds this comment ignored, so he changes the subject. “Whatever. We should go back to the ship. It’s not like you can prepare the damn bird out here with an injured arm, and it’s too much food for two people, anyways.”
Nezahualpilli gives him an odd look. Kreetori, on his shoulder, cranes out his neck to give him an equally unnerving stare.
“Two people and… your bird,” Gawain corrects himself, and then he starts walking back in the direction he’d first come from. “I don’t need another beast ambushing us, regardless.”
Nezahualpilli matches his pace to walk at his side. “Surely, you wouldn’t underestimate the Eagle King himself! At one of my banquets alone I have eaten five, nay, tenfold the amount of meat of one pheasant.” He barks out another loud laugh, and Kreetori lets out an accompanying cry that Gawain would assume was laughter if he didn’t know better.
He takes a stab at the topic. “Banquets?”
Nezahualpilli nods, his eyes glimmering with pride and excitement. “Aye, we celebrate the night of every full moon with a feast. We partake in roasted meat, the best Erune wine in the region, and dance until the morning sun crests the horizon. It is truly a most delightful time!”
Giving only a short, thoughtful hum as his reply, Gawain contents himself with continuing to trudge through the snow as he continues back along his original pair of footsteps.
As before, Nezahualpilli continues talking regardless of Gawain’s stake in the conversation. “Perhaps, Gawain, would you enjoy joining me and my tribe on our next feast? There is plenty of food to share and room to fill.”
This sudden request makes Gawain hesitate on his next footstep. “Me? Join you?” He feels like his response is rather slow and dumb. “Isn’t that… Wouldn’t it be strange, to bring in someone outside of the tribe?”
“Nay,” Nezahualpilli shakes his head, and Gawain deftly avoids the spatter of blood from the bird carcass that he’s jostling. “In fact, we encourage the surrounding locals to partake in the festivities. It is a way to spread our culture, and I assume that my fellow tribesmen would be quite interested in meeting their king’s foreign guest!”
This garners a nod from Gawain. “Well. I suppose… if I’m not busy, I wouldn’t mind. Maybe Florence can join us,” he muses.
Kreetori and Nezahualpilli each cock their heads. “Florence?”
“My sister,” Gawain replies with a sigh.
Nezahualpilli seems to either miss or ignore the exasperation in his reply. “The more the merrier, then! I am sure it would be a truly cheery time to have the two of you join us.”
“Mm,” Gawain hums noncommittally, then gestures to the pheasant with a nod of his head. “Don’t get too ahead of yourself. We still have our own feast to get through first, don’t we?”
Nezahualpilli arches an eyebrow, then lets out another throaty laugh. Kreetori, from his shoulder perch, joins in too with a series of loud chatters. Gawain, for his own part, allows himself a small smile.
“That we do! I dare say, I would not be the Eagle King if I could not bring the same joy to every banquet I host!”