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Over the years, Toa has been many things.
He was a son, first and foremost, his mother's son that she would bounce on her hip and cradle in her arms until he was old enough to cling to her braids and swing from her shoulders. Back home, he was Windchaser, he who rode the waves and chased the wind like one of the Wind Spirits themselves, owning the salt-spray and the whipping breeze. Here, on the mainland, he was known as Felix's best friend, and in some ways, that was one of the highest titles he had ever been awarded. There was something sacred about it, somehow even more so than Aroha's son or the Windchaser, something that settled across his shoulders like a mantle, something he wielded like a weapon, blunt and simple. Toa was Felix's best friend, and Felix was Toa's- what else could be simpler than that?
But Toa never pretended to be a nice person. He wasn't nice, no matter how many times Lufti, Iris and Hyrja said so. He had always known it- there was something deadly simmering in his gut, laying in wait just under his skin for a moment to break free and lay waste. It was the same viciousness that had him challenging Makutu and departing the Makani Islands to seek the Wind Spirits without permission from the elders. His mother used to tell him that there was a difference between being kind and being nice, and Toa never really understood it, not until he left home and had to fight and kill and maim for Felix and the others, not until he realized that he wasn't nice at all.
(Felix had grown up too fast, a young man in a child's body, and when his mother died and his brother was cared for as much as he could be given the circumstances, he had nothing left, nothing holding him back from following in his father's footsteps. It was easier, shamefully easier, to stand at attention and salute and follow orders and keep his mouth shut than it was for him to handle Milo with the care their mother used to, with delicate hands and gentle touches. He wasn't sure if he was capable of it anymore. He thought that there must have been a speck of kindness in him, once, buried deep down that he employed to tell Milo stories until he fell asleep and to listen to his mother spin tales of his father, but that had been snuffed out once he first donned his Talonguard uniform. He had learnt to be nice, and he was learning that there was a difference. To be nice was to be scathing and sharp and offer cutting forced smiles and honeyed words he didn't mean, betrayal, manipulation, and trickery to get what he wanted. If only his mother could see him now. Milo used to look up to the way he was so kind to everyone they met, but now, with a dagger still dripping blood in one hand and a tome of spells in the other, Felix only knew how to be nice.)
His mother had confided in him once, when Toa had run to her as fast as his little legs could carry him across the white sand of the shore, crying so hard he could hardly see where he was going, embarrassed and angry right down to the core of him, his knees scraped and bloody with sand in his hair and in his gums, after the other children he had been collecting seashells with had pushed him face-first into the surf and run away laughing at him. He had launched himself into his mother's arms and cried into her chest as she circled him with her mighty arms, but they were so nice!
When Toa had finished crying into his mother's tattooed chest, his eyes burning and throat aching and chest feeling cored out and filled with the wickedly curved fish hooks used for catching Kahawai and Lutjanidae, feeling like something important had been torn from him by a meaty fist, he felt his mother's large hands in his hair, rubbing soothing circles on his back. Aroha had hummed a soft tune from her childhood as Toa's hiccuping cries had petered off into desperate gasping sounds, and even when he felt embarrassed and ashamed right down to his bones, she wouldn't let him pull away.
"I think nice people are the fakest of all," His mother said into the crown of his head as she rocked him, Toa's tears still drying on her breastbone. "It's very easy to be nice, tama, but it's harder to be kind."
"I don't know what that means," Toa had whined.
"Think about it this way," Aroha had said. "Those children you thought were your friends? They were only being nice. It's an easy thing to fake, you don't have to mean it. But you, my wheturangi, are kind. Kind right down to the soles of your feet. You don't even have to try- you just are. There are some who will envy you for that."
At the time, Toa hadn't understood. How could being kind be better than being nice? He knew a lot of nice people but couldn't figure out a single kind one. "You think I'm kind?" He asked hopefully, latching on to the only thing his young mind could understand.
His mother had smiled her bright, beaming smile, the type that made her eyes crinkle with laughter lines and reminded him of the sun shining through the canopy of nīkau palm, warming him through, flesh and soul. "The kindest man I know."
(When Felix was small, and Milo was so young he was barely more a mewling babe, and Beatrice would brush Felix's hair from his face as they both crammed together on her bed, she would rock them back and forth, and he would listen. "Let me tell you a secret," she said once, "The people that go the furthest in this world are the kind ones."
"A lady called me nice today," Felix had tilted his head up on his mother's chest to peer at her face. Her makeup was smeared and unseemly after a long day, unable to wash it off before ushering her children to sleep, and her perfectly styled hair was mused and in disarray, but Felix thought she was beautiful. "Is that the same thing as being nice?"
Beatrice was silent for a moment, thinking. "You know what?" she hummed. "I don't really know.")
As Toa got older, he started to understand more of what his mother was trying to tell him at a time when he was too young and distraught to really understand. He stopped trying to be nice because he hated lying to people who mattered and felt fake every time an insincere niceity found its way past his lips. Caprice was nice, able to come up with all sorts of pleasant lies to convince people that he was the nicest person they had ever met, and he was good at it, good at deceiving them in such a simple way. Toa had never been good at faking that. Kindness, his mother told him, was engraved in his bones.
Toa found very quickly that he loved all his friends. Loved them enough not to force that sickly-sweet niceness on him that he had seen other people use on strangers, that he himself had been forced to use once or twice when he had arrived on the mainland and had no other choice, despite it making something wrong roil in his gut. They liked him despite him not being the nicest person, like Lufti and Caprice sometimes were. They could fake it like nothing Toa had ever seen, if they wanted to, which was not often but he had seen it.
He was getting better at spotting the people who were fake-nice the longer he spent on the mainland with his friends, but there were still times when he wasn't quite sure. He thought Zurn was a good guy, and was kind to them when they needed it most, but he was wrong about that too. Zurn wielded niceness like some wielded swords, and though Toa could never understand why they bothered- why would you pretend to be nice when you could just kill them quickly and achieve the same result- he was learning to keep an eye out for it. He tried not to be too trusting, though that was one of the things of the Makani Islands he had taken for granted. You could always trust your neighbour and your tribe, although, they had tristed Makutu and he had betrayed them in unimaginable ways, so maybe that was wrong too.
It was not so easy to be kind on the mainland, protecting his friends and fighting for their lives and opposing anything that dared stand in their way. Violence and kindness wrapped themselves around him like his mother's arms, pounding as loudly as the war-drum beat of his heart in his chest, boom-boom-boom. He never thought that those two things could live in tandem within the same body, but as he crushed the skull of a stinking beastman with one breath before rushing over to ensure that Iris and Felix were alright in the next, he thought that maybe he had found a way.
(Falsehoods and lies helped Felix as he climbed the ranks of the Talonguard, weaving past the discerning gaze of his superiors with the memory of the game he used to play with Milo a lifetime ago when the commotion from downstairs was too loud and the moaning and the squeaking of the old beds on either side of them were too much to bare, heard even though the pillows clamped over their heads, and Milo's eyes would light up as he and Felix would pretend to be men older than their years, holding themselves straight-backed with stacked books on their heads and curling their words like the sophisticated people who would never be caught dead in the establishment they called home.
When he had fled from the military, he had kept his head down and the collar of his stollen coat high around his neck. Don't look at me, he wanted to scream at the crowds he stumbled through, keep your eyes off of me. He worried that if they looked too closely they would see the blood on his hands and the lives he had taken residing behind his eyes because they always say that eyes are the windows to the soul and Felix was afraid of what his soul would look like after all this time, after the blood caked in his nails and fire at his fingertips. There was smoke in his lungs and embers in his heart and the hot flickering of cinders in his throat that burned sweetly. He bit his tongue, and he reminded himself, in a voice that sounded oddly like his mother, be nice, and so he let candied words tumble from his lips like delayed detonations, a strategic ma'am there, a polite sir here, and nobody looked twice at this courteous young man with the stolen clothes and death behind his eyes who was just so nice.
It felt like shaking the rust off of his metal frame after he had been sitting outside, exposed to the rain the sun and the elements for years, and he approached it the same way he approached most things- nervously, wearily, and entirely.)
Iris was not kind. Lufti and Caprice and Hyrja were not kind. Sometimes, Felix was kind, when he would smile at Toa and pat him on the back and call him buddy and big guy, but none of them were kind like Toa was kind. Sometimes, he tried not to be. He tried to be more like Iris, with her disdain and poise, or like Lufti, with her selfish disregard, or like Caprice, with the lies that came to him as easy as breathing, or like Hyrja, who was too absent-minded and singularly focused on finding her father to spend time on being kind. It was just one of those things he couldn't shake, even though it made him weak, soft-skinned and tender-hearted.
Growing up the way that he had, with his mother's love and support at his back and his tribe's ferocity and focus at his sides, Toa became a man who did not flinch from blood and violence, but who still threw back the fish he pulled from the ocean that were too young or very old, still petted the noses of horses and the heads of dogs when he passed them. Maybe that was why he got along with Felix so well. Like recognises like, and Toa was drawn to the fire in his veins and the death in his bones before he even knew that they were there, when he was fishing the drowning young man out of the ocean and giving him a lift to the mainland.
Toa spilled blood the way that Caprice spelled songs or Iris uttered prayers. Second nature, instinctual, unthinking action. His totem rived through enemies like a spear cut through the surface of the ocean to pierce a juicy salmon. He did not have to worry about being nice or kind on the battlefield, just the thrill of the fight, the warmth of freshly spilled blood across his skin, and the roar of adrenaline in his vines. He needed to keep his friends safe, and he didn't have to be kind to do that. He just needed to be deadly, vicious, the most frightening thing in any room, bigger than the biggest beastie.
(Felix had always found Toa uncomplicated, so maybe that was why they were still friends, after all this time. He was simple. Not simple like stupid- never stupid- but simple like... easy. He wore his heart on his sleeve and he didn't have a deceptive bone in his body even when Felix really wished that he did. He meant what he said, and kept his promises, and his smile was bright enough to rival the sun. Felix never had to worry if Toa was telling him the truth. He was kind in ways that Felix had never experienced before- unabashed, unquestioning, without judgement or discrimination. Just when he was beginning to think that there were no kind people left on this forsaken continent, Toa fished him out of the roiling ocean like a bedraggled cat and stayed by his side ever since.
He did not flinch when Felix called scalding flames to his palms, licking across his skin and leaving ash in its wake, did not turn away from the light so bright it burned his eyes. He just grinned, hefted hit totem higher, and spilled more blood in a single swing than Felix could with a single spell, the crunching of bone and the rending of flesh a rival to the crackling of flames and the screams of agony as their opponent's skin was burned to a crisp and their bones were crushed to dust. Despite this, Toa was still kind, asking Felix if he was hurt and producing fish jerky from his pack for Felix to munch on while Toa disposed of the bodies so Felix didn't have to get his hands dirty. I'm bigger and stronger than you, Toa had said kindly, it only makes sense.
He did not care that Felix had more blood on his hands than Toa would ever know. He did not care that killing those men was easy, some of the easiest magic that Felix had at his disposal. He just cared that Felix was unharmed, and had food in his belly and that they had a warm, dry place to sleep for the night. Toa was kind, and Felix didn't know what to do with it. Nobody had ever been kind to him before. Nice, yes, but never kind.)
Toa was faced with nice people around every corner, but they never meant it, not really. He thought Zurn was nice. He thought Golden Lotus was nice. He thought Escher was nice. He thought Zellek was nice. All the nice people tended to hurt him the worst. He wondered what his mother would say; pick up your feet and hold your chin up high, because being nice is the easy way out, but you are kind, and that is much more valiant.
Toa loved Felix, though he wasn't very kind, and wasn't very nice. He had been hurt too much for either of such things. He was nice in loud ways when he asked for inn rooms with a strained smile and ordered drinks with silver pieces dancing between his knuckles. He was kind in quiet ways when he would find Toa after a battle and bump shoulders with him, or make sure that Toa always knew exactly what was going on even if he was a little bit slower to understand than everyone else. Toa loved Felix. He had never had brothers, but he thought that this was what it would feel like. There was a map that led from Toa's heart to Felix's, drawn across the hills and valleys of their ribs and across the oceans of their flesh to connect them both like fishing twine, strong enough to withstand the most dangerous of seas, the pull of the biggest fish. How had he lived his life up to this point without Felix in it? It didn't make any sense.
This was what it must mean to be soulmates.
(Felix already had a brother, one that he loved but was taken from him and he would burn the whole world down to get him back, but as he slept next to Toa, with the big guy between him and the door because he knew that Felix felt safer like that, he thought that maybe by losing one brother he had gained another.)
Often, Toa wondered if his friends would ever understand the truth that he had learnt long ago, the truth his mother had taught him when Toa was crying and young and confused about the world. He wondered if they knew the difference between kindness and niceness, if there even was a difference, that one was more true than the other. Did they have mothers to hold them close as they cried to tell them the truth of the world? How else did they learn that the nicest people were liars and the kind people were hard to find?
With his arms still stained with slowly drying blood, his totem a familiar weight across his shoulders, Toa sat on the end of the pier and dipped his feet into the water. The ocean was cool against his calves, lapping up against his thighs, the back of his knees, his long legs swallowed by the gentle current. The water here was different, unfamiliar- murky and dark and filled with ever-shifting silt that the sunlight couldn't penetrate. The water that surrounded his island home was so clean you could drink it, was so clear that you could see the fish swimming beneath the surface, so crisp that the sunlight bounced off of it and painted the seaspray rainbow.
Behind him, the others were cleaning up. Iris was complaining about all the blood on her robes and Lufti, laughing at her plight, offered to dunk her into the sea to clean her off. Felix was muttering about the magical potential of the lay lines, concepts far beyond Toa's understanding, and Caprice was already starting to compose a song to their bloody and exhausting victory, and Hyrja wanted to know when they could go back to the inn and take a nap. They didn't need Toa. He had already helped them stack the bodies into a macabre pile and now he was dipping his feet in the ocean, reclining back on his hands, watching the vultures and crows and carrion birds circle above, waiting for them to leave so they could snack on the remains.
The problem had started, Toa thought, by trying to be nice instead of kind. With their squinty-eyed smiles and the way their mouths were pressed into thin lines, Toa knew that the words that they spoke were untrue and sickly sweet despite how nice they tried to be. Complimenting Caprice's jacket and Iris's headdress and Hyrja's mace, calling Felix clever and Toa strong and Lufti witty- all nice things that were just lies in the end. Toa had only started swinging when they had called him nice- he hated that word, and hearing it left a sense of wrongness within him, and he was reaching for his totem before the words had fully left his mouth.
(Felix hadn't liked the way that the men would laugh and chitter at every false compliment they offered, and had bristled at the way the guy had looked up at Toa with a smarmy smile and had said you're just a nice guy, hey, fella? If Toa hadn't started swinging first, Felix would have set them on fire.)
Footsteps behind him on the wooden pier, landing hollowedly on the ancient, rotting planks. Toa knew who it would be, and didn't speak as Felix kicked off his shoes, rolled up the hems of his pants and sat beside Toa with his feet dangling off the edge. Felix was shorter than Toa, so where his legs reached the water up to his knees, the water lapped gently at Felix's ankles, trying to draw him in.
The breeze was nice, not too cool and not too swift, and though the smell of dead fish and seaweed was stronger than he was used to, it was still a scent he cherished from his childhood. Felix was a familiar warmth by his side, and it was nice, the two of them sitting together in the quiet, not needing to talk, not needing to do, just being. It was nice
(He never felt like he had to be anyone when he was with Toa. When he was with the others, he felt like he was always putting on a front, pretending to be more brave, more assured and more skilled than he was. But with Toa, he didn't have to act. He could just sit here beside his best friend in silence and dip their feet in the water, not speaking, not doing, just being. It was nice.)
"Hey, big guy," Felix kicked his feet against the wooden pier. "What's on your mind?"
"I don't know," Toa said. Felix had never made Toa feel stupid, not even once, but he knew that sometimes his thoughts were more than foolish. "It's dumb."
"Nah, I don't think so," Felix replied. He peered up at Toa, squinting into the sun. "Come on, tell me. You've got that look on your face like something is bothering you. Maybe I can help."
Did he? Toa didn't know that his face twisted up in a certain way when something was on his mind, but if anybody would know that, it was Felix. "Do you think there is a difference between kind people and nice people?"
(Yes, Felix wanted to say, it's the difference between you and the rest of the world, because you are the kindest person I've ever met, and everybody else would pray and beg and steal for a modicum of that same kindness.)
Felix was silent as he thought, and Toa tried to focus on the chirping of the carrion birds overhead and the sloshing of the waves instead of his own anxious heartbeat pounding in his ears. "Maybe," he said at length, hesitant, unsure in ways that Felix typically wasn't. "I mean, I think that those words are pretty similar. What do you think?"
How did he explain that when he was a small boy too young to understand other children's cruelty but old enough to be gifted the secrets of the world, his mother sat him down and told him the truth, that there were two types of people, the kind ones and the nice ones, and to be wary of the later and seek out the former? It sounded like superstition, like the old wives' tales of eggshells on ships and the good luck of cats and unlucky flat feet, words spoken in another language that someone like Felix would never really understand. He would nod along and smile, encouraging Toa in the way he did, but he wouldn't understand, not with the same words his mother had told him.
"I think that nice people are only nice to get what they want," Toa peered down at where the ocean rippled at his legs. Was Felix watching him, or was the burning on the side of his face that he could feel just the flush on his cheeks, embarrassed and not knowing why? "Like today. Nice people say what you want to hear because they want something from you. They don't mean it. They lie."
Humming, Felix rocked back on his hands so he was reclining on his palms, head tilted back to peer up at the birds. "And kind people?"
Toa thought of his mother, of her braids and her tattoos and her smile like the sun. "They don't try, they just... are. They're kind right down to the soles of their feet. It's easy to be nice, but it's harder to be kind."
(Felix thought of Toa, of his braids and his tattoos and his smile like the sun. He thought of kindness right down to the soles of his feet, and how Toa had very big feet, big enough to leave massive imprints in the sand that could fit both of Felix's own feet and thought that if that was true, if kindness was contained in a person from their head to their toes, then Toa had a lot of it.)
"That makes sense," Felix mused. He reclined all the way back and folded his hands over his chest, and when Toa turned to look at him, he was lying on his back on the damp pier with his hands folded and his knees bent, legs kicking lazily in the water. He looked peaceful, tranquil. If Toa shut his eyes, he could picture him on the white sand shores of the Makani Islands, lying just like this. He had blood across the bridge of his nose where the backswing of Toa's totem had sprayed blood behind him. "Where did you hear that?"
"My mother," After a moment of hesitation, Toa joined him, leaning back so he could fold his arms and stare up at the clouds and the circling birds. There was plenty of space for the two of them, like this, together. "She used to tell me all kinds of stories."
"You know, I think my mother told me something similar once," Felix said. "But I don't think she ever knew the difference."
Memories, like sand in the wind, drifting from his fingers to be caught in a gale, Toa remembered his mother's face and her chipped teeth and her crooked nose. He remembered the way she wielded her weapon like an extension of self. How her hands, large and calloused, could hold him so tenderly, like he was the most precious thing in the world, with the same hands that reeled in fishing nets and fought in the arena and spilled blood both friend and foe alike. He remembered collecting sand dollars and seashells on the beach, remembered the day she taught him how to sail and had cheered from the shore the first time he voyaged around the coast of the island without her help, remembered the way she would hug him so tightly that he thought the world stopped existing for a moment. His mother had known the difference, had sneered in the face of injustice and doubt, had bared her teeth and channelled her rage like the warriors of old to fight for what she believed in. Would she be proud of Toa now, he wondered, as he strived to do the same thing?
(Memories, like ash in the storm, snatched from his grasp to be stolen by the tempest, Felix remembered his mother's face and her tired smile and her crow's feet. He remembered the way she would handle him like spun glass, something so fragile and breakable, protected from the horrors of the world by her experienced hands, the same hands that would teach Felix simple magic tricks with disappearing copper coins and put on shows at bedtime with shadow puppets by candlelight. He remembered listening to her sing lullabies and recount stories of his father, remembered the day she had let him hold Milo in his arms while watching from the bed with a smile on her face and he felt like his heart was so full that it was going to explode from his chest, remembered the way she would hug him so gently that he thought that the world stopped existing for a moment. His mother had not known the difference but had frowned in the face of insolence and dishonesty, had rolled her eyes and pulled back her hair like the other working women doing the hard, awful jobs that nobody else had the guts to do to support the people she loved. Would she be proud of Felix now, he wondered, as he strived to do the same thing?)
"It's like... the difference between shallow waters and the deep end," Toa stretched his arms above his head. The clouds above them were white and fluffy and he tried to pick out familiar shapes. "Nice people are only nice for appearances but kindness goes deeper. Kind people don't get anything out of being kind, the same way that nice people get something out of being nice."
The skies here were the same skies above his Makani Islands, the clouds drifting in the same formations, and even the ocean smelt the same. Though Toa couldn't see him, he could hear the smile in Felix's voice. "So a lot like you then."
"Like me?"
"Yeah, buddy, like you."
"Oh," Toa blinked up at the clouds. "Thanks."
"I mean, I've known a lot of people in my life, and I mean a lot of people," Felix continued. "But none of them have been kind like you, you know? It's like, it's written in your marrow, or something. You don't even have to think about it, you just are, and sometimes I wonder if you know you're doing it. You're even kind to people who don't deserve it. You've got more willpower than I do."
"My mother always said that kindness was engraved on my bones," Toa recalled scrapped knees, a bruised ego and a broken heart. "Maybe if I tried not to be so nice I wouldn't be tricked so easily all the time."
The soft scraping sound of Felix's hair against the dock as he shook his head had Toa glancing down at him. He was staring up at the clouds too, but his expression was sadder than it should be. Toa wondered why. "If you were any less kind, I think that we would all fall apart, like a house of cards," Felix admitted. "I wish that I was as kind as you. I've been told that kindness is something I've been lacking. But at least I've got you to make up for my shortcomings, huh, big guy?"
Toa could not help but think of the way Felix would speak for Toa when he got tongue-tied communicating with strangers and would explain things to him in quiet tones as they walked that none of the others would hear. He introduced Toa to his first ice cream Sunday and taught him how fun it was to share a room with his best friend. He threw his arms around Toa's bulk to embrace him in a hug almost as tight as Aroah's and he was never afraid of him for his size or his strength or the violence that ran through his veins alongside the kindness in his bones. He would stay up late at night talking to Toa after a long, trying day instead of getting the sleep he desperately needed, and he would try and cheer Toa up when he was feeling particularly melancholy. He defended Toa time and time again, often at times when Toa didn't even know what he was being protected from, from Makutu's scathing insults and Zurn's palpable disdain and Escher's humorous doubt, always the first to proclaim Toa's smarts to anyone who would listen.
Because, when it came down to it, Toa might have kindness in his bones but Felix was the one who taught him what it meant to have a best friend.
"I think you're kind," Toa spoke up when he felt like the silence had continued longer than he liked. The birds had finally begun to dive down to tear pieces from the bloating corpses and he could hear Iris squealing in disgust. Felix would have to burn them before they left or the bodies would stink worse than the sea. "You've always been kind to me, anyway."
(Toa was a creature of earth and stone and sand, of wind and sea and spirit. Stalwart, steadfast, unshakable. He was kissed by the wind and blessed by the seas, the very stones beneath his feet thank him for treading over them, and this being, this creature consecrated by the Wind Spirits and with more kindness than the whole of Stryga, was Felix's best friend. For all the kindness Toa claimed that Felix possessed, it was Toa who had put it there, who took the rotten, jagged edges of his blackened soul and sanded down the roughness of him until he was smooth and harmless, who polished his surface until he was glistening like sea glass, who taught him how to laugh and smile and live again, who found him at his darkest moment and pulled him from the ocean and gave him a purpose and a reason to live and a best friend all in one fell swoop.
He stuck his toes back into the world of the kind and the good like it was a sea that he had missed terribly, but in his time away he had forgotten how to swim. He screamed but only static came out, and no matter how hard he kicked and fought, he continued to sink. Toa swam like he was born in the water, with gills for lungs and fins for feet, and his arms were large enough to carry Felix to safety when he floundered and drowned.)
Felix's laugh was a bitter, unhappy sound. "I don't know if that's true, but thanks, buddy."
"It is so true!" Toa protested with more ire than he anticipated. Nobody got to talk badly about his best friend, even if that person was Felix. "I don't care what other people think. You've been kind to me right from the start so that means you have kindness in you just like I do, and you're a kind person!"
"Thanks, big guy," Felix laughed. He shifted so that his side was pressing against Toa, his small, fragile form with his brittle bird bones and his stained glass skin pressing against the contour of Toa's rock and stone complexion, and the feel and shape and warmth of him made something settle deep in Toa's chest. Felix pointed upwards, past the circling carrion birds and to the clusters of clouds beyond, "Hey, what do you think that cloud looks like?"
Toa followed Felix's finger to an elongated cloud that was thick and round at one end and thin and flat at the other. "I dunno. It kinda looks like a dolphin."
"A dolphin huh?" Felix replied. "I think it looks like a seal."
"And that one-" Toa pointed at a cloud formation that was round and blurred around the edges. "Looks like a roa! It's a round bird that can't fly."
"I don't think I've ever seen a roa," Felix mused. "That one just looks like a rock to me. What about that one over there, with the swirl in the middle?"
Humming, Toa tilted his head back and watched as the clouds bobbed and weaved on the gentle wind, dissipating and reforming into different shapes as he watched. "Powelliphanta."
The name in Toa's native tongue and lilting accent surprised a bark of laughter from Felix, high-pitched and skittering. "Powelliphanta?" He butchered the pronunciation, his tongue clumsy and unfamiliar with the strange vowels and consonants, but Toa grinned all the same. It was music to his ears. "What's that?"
"It's like," Toa lifted his hands so he could show the size of the round shell with his hands. "A really big snail. My mother used to tell me stories. They can breathe the same air as us and are carnivores. When you come and live with me on the Makani islands, I can show you some."
"Yeah," Felix sighed wistfully. "I'd like that."
(He wanted it so badly that it ached, deep down, where his heart thumped with desire.)
"Yeah," Toa agreed, picturing Felix on one side of him and Milo on the other, held aloft on his shoulders, wind-swept and sun-burned, sand in their hair and laughter in the lines of their weary faces. "Me too."
He wanted it so badly that it ached, deep down, where his heart thumped with desire.
Windchaser, his mother's son, Felix's best friend, his many names and many faces for many kinds of people. Chosen by the Wind Spirits, blood of amber and flesh of stone, earth friend and sea friend and wind friend and a best friend made of fire. Toa had been many things, but no matter what he became, no matter what he faced, no matter how much he had changed from the man who left his home on a quest to set things right, he would always and forever be kind.