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Fire Spirit brushes against Wind Archer, arms touching. The immediate sizzle makes Fire Spirit flinch back. “Oh— are you okay?” He is picturing what happens when he touches a pile of dry leaves, a crispy combustion of autumn and heat.
Wind Archer gives him a puzzled look. He brings his arm up to show the pale green of his forearm and a slightly withered patch, like a bruised green apple. It mends itself over and then nothing is out of place. “Yes? Why wouldn't I be?”
A blank drapes over Fire Spirit’s mind. He opens his mouth and the words do not offer themselves up, until a thought creeps into view. It is small and warping with a sudden realization. “You aren’t made of leaves.”
A nod, eyebrow still raised. “Correct.”
He blinks— not made of leaves. He definitely looks the part, but apparently not the case. How long has he had the assumption that this deity, powerful and knowledgeable, had the weakness of something as petty as fire? His touch?
Wind Archer pauses. Pieces click into place, as smooth as a river filling a dry bed. He is too clever and straightforward not to connect those dots. “I am not made of leaves,” he reiterates.
“Nope.”
“I am not a forest elemental like the Tree… my name is even—”
“Yeah, okay, I assumed some things,” Fire Spirit groans. “‘Wind Archer’ could mean a lot of things!”
“I am, without metaphor, the wind. Here is my bow.” He indeed shows his bow, the same summer green as his hair and blotted with darker flowers. It rests without complaint in his hand.
Fire Spirit gives up on that branch of argument. The Millennial Tree is clearly very specific with naming his guardians.
“I don't know what to tell you. You just have so much going for the leaf vibe.”
Wind Archer sighs. Softly, he says, “I assure you that I am not flammable.”
What a strange sentence, clanging against all that Fire Spirit had known. The notion seems preposterous.
“Your hair…”
“Not real leaves. Here.” Wind Archer brings a hand forward in request, and Fire Spirit offers his own. Nimble fingers clutch his wrist and lead his hand up to the top of Wind Archer's head.
Fire Spirit runs a hand through his hair, then curiously brings up the other, and it does feel leafy, but it is like opening a familiar book and feeling the soft paper on his thumbs. Books that are spelled to be fireproof are often the oldest in a library due to their importance. Fire Spirit feels the same about this moment, a thousand years of misconception crumbling at one action.
“Oh,” he says, the thought becoming audible, entranced in how soft it is.
“I had assumed that you didn't like physical touch.” His tone is imploring. He brings his scarf over his face. A splotch of pink reaches above it, a rosy peach shade rather than the earlier plum.
“It's different, since I'm made of fire and all that jazz. But it's great. Best thing known to cookiekind,” Fire Spirit prattles on, his mind rapidly turning with the concept of someone that doesn't burn at his touch. His hands slide down to cup the sides of Wind Archer’s face. “Not that I'm a cookie. You're also not a cookie. But you’re not leaves, either. What are you?”
Wind Archer gives a little uptick in lips. A miniscule detail, but to Fire Spirit, it is the warmth of a summer breeze. “Whatever you’d like me to be.”
That surprises him. Wind Archer gives him a witty look, one that could mean a lot of things, face held so gently that he seems in place there, glowing in the soft shade of the woods. The precious moon in his hands.
Fire Spirit steps back, overtaken by a feeling that tingles in his palms and fingertips, pulsing beneath his chest. For the second time, the words that he would normally cram into silence come up short.
“Just be Wind Archer, then,” Fire Spirit says. “Not sure what the old Tree would do without his smoke alarm.”
He chuckles. An inside joke. “He would greet you himself for all your misdemeanors.”
“Yeesh. Rather have you as the judge.” Yet Wind Archer has already sentenced him to a life of teetering by this forest, vying for the attention of its guardian. How did they end up like this? A begrudging friendship, respect and warm sentiment peeking through the underbrush… Fire Spirit has been dazed for a millenia, since he first saw pale green and heard the chiming whistle of a laugh.
Just his luck that it returns to burn him now— how ironic. Oh, Sea Fairy come douse him.