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As Kinich strolled through the market stands of the Children of Echoes, synthesized music and joyous cheers of those watching the current dance-off made for a rather delightful backdrop. However, as much as he enjoyed the upbeat ambiance of the Children of Echoes, it felt rather out of place in context of the anxiety currently plaguing his heart.
His contact would appear any minute to inform him of their findings. Kinich’s gut felt twisted and tense knowing that any second now he would learn about the whereabouts of his mother.
He hadn’t ever planned to go out of his way to search for her, but when he met an adventurer who had been acquainted with her in the past, the urge to pay the price for that opportunity had been too strong to deny. It wasn’t as if Kinich was unhappy with how his life had turned out without her (in fact, he was pretty satisfied) but despite his general contentment, the first seven years of his life still sometimes haunted his thoughts and dreams.
Also, he wanted to ask her how “The Hill of Silent Crickets” was supposed to end.
“Come on, man!” Ajaw’s irate voice said into one of his ears. “You look like a pathetic little fawn waiting to be eaten by a saurian. Loosen the heck up! It’s a bad look on the Almighty Dragonlord, K’uhul Ajaw, to have our servant look so meek and nervous!”
“I’m not nervous,” Kinich lied, although he silently took Ajaw’s assessment into mind, taking a deep breath before refocusing his attention on the present.
He walked past multiple jewelry stands and a snack booth he might have considered buying from was his appetite anything but empty. Upon passing a traveling merchant selling an array of shawls, Kinich’s stroll slowed to a stop when a few of the cloth coverings caught his eye. Natlan’s winter monsoon this year was much colder than previous years, which many attributed to the increase in abyss activity. Kinich did not usually mind extreme weather conditions, but since he often slept outside while running commissions, he realized that purchasing an extra layer of cloth to keep himself warm could be a worthwhile investment.
The merchant (probably someone from Sumeru, based on his attire) was busy in discussion with another customer, so Kinich waited by browsing through the shawls he had on display. There were many colors in many different types of cloth, all different to the touch as Kinich examined them. One in particular caught his fancy – a thick cloak that appeared to be somewhat waterproof, patterned in green squares that matched his usual attire.
Making up his mind, Kinich grabbed the green shawl off its stand as the merchant wrapped up his conversation with the other customer, intending to purchase it. Its price matched his desire for more comfortable nights, after all. However, his attempts to distract himself from his original purpose were interrupted when his contact got his attention from behind.
“Mr. Kinich,” a voice accompanied a tap on his shoulder. “I have returned with what information I could gather.” Kinich put the cloak back and followed his contact into a corner away from the crowd to hear his report, his face carefully neutral but his heartbeat pounding loudly within his chest. He could come back for the shawl later.
Kinich listened as his contact relayed his long adventure, from scaling mountains to reach secluded bandit tribes to paying off sketchy information brokers. He wanted to say please get to the point , but held off in fear of being rude to the only person who could answer his deepest questions.
Ajaw, however, never feared rudeness. “Uuugghh you droning maggot, flea with a voice more annoying than a dying cicada, do not waste our time with your useless stories! You are in the presence of the Almighty Dragonlord, K’uhul Ajaw, and our servant who has requested what should be a simple report!”
“Please ignore him,” Kinich said as his contact’s face went blank with confusion. With a few simple inputs on his wristband Kinich was swift to lock Ajaw away, earning a groan from the creature that was cut off as he disappeared. “Continue as you wish.”
The contact chuckled awkwardly. “Sorry, I tend to get lost in theatrics. I found a small group of vagabonds who claimed to have taken your mother in fifteen years ago…”
Kinich felt numb as he heard about his mother’s escapades among various wildmen, teaching them how to gather food while being taught how to fight in return. The world around him seemed to blur as his contact explained how the vagabonds who remembered his mother described her as determined, resilient, but always pensive, as if she held dark memories and regrets. Kinich’s fingers tingled, all the muscles in his body tightening in instinctual preparation, and then…
“I’m sorry, Kinich. She died seven years ago in a dispute between bandit tribes.”
His body relaxed, his thoughts and feelings quieted. It wasn’t surprising to hear, he admitted to himself now, he had seen it coming. But that didn’t soften the blow, and from his empty calmness rose sprouts of painful despair.
“Thank you,” he croaked out as his contact looked at him with pity. “Our business is now concluded.”
The other man opened his mouth to give what probably would have been meaningless condolences, but Kinich threw out a grapple towards the top of the gorge and shot away before he could speak. The music of the Children of Echoes drowned out quickly as he propelled himself into the wilderness like a green lightning bolt.
Kinich’s thoughts did not flow coherently – it was as if they were in caught in a dam. Yet, his gut was heavy, his chest burned, and his eyes stung. He needed to get away from everything for a while.
As he scaled the southern side of Coatepec Mountain, the gloomy sky reflected his heart all too well. The rumbling of thunder echoed across Natlan, small droplets of water splattering against Kinich’s cheeks as he moved. Once he was on top of the mountain he slowed down, heart pounding from exerting so much energy, and stopped atop a tall cliff overlooking the southern sea.
Kinich fell into a seated position at the edge of the cliff, hugging his legs and burying his face in his arms. The cold rain against his uncovered skin raised goosebumps across his whole body, but even being uncomfortable, wet, and shivering, Kinich could not find it within himself to care. He deserved this misery as a price for being seven years too late to meet his mother.
It felt like an unexplored, unexplained passage had just experienced a cave-in, anything within being lost forever. All the things he’d wanted to ask her, everything he wanted to tell her, any potential of being loved by the only blood relative he had left…
I’ll never know the ending of “The Hill of Silent Crickets” , he thought – a painful, morose realization. The next thought appeared against his will, although he knew the roots of it existed since he was young. I’ll never know why she abandoned me or if she ever planned to return .
Kinich didn’t know how long he sat on that cliffside in the pouring rain, probably looking as miserable as he felt. Ajaw’s presence surged through his wristband a few times, asking to be released, but Kinich ignored him. He wanted solitude.
That bitter solitude was interrupted, however, when suddenly the rain stopped hitting his body and a strange heat appeared from his left.
Kinich lifted his head from its cradle on his knees. The rain still poured down upon the land around him, it was only his position that was now protected. He had not sensed any kind of danger around, but when he looked to the source of the warmth to his left he wondered if his senses were utterly defunct.
Towering next to him was a pyro abyss lector. It held a large umbrella a few feet above his head, one that seemed to be a transformed version of the catalyst most lectors wielded in battle, and it gazed down on him with an expression somehow sly in nature yet gentle in intention. Its ruby eyes glowed like the last embers of a warm campfire.
Kinich recognized this lector – it was the one he’d made a deal with a few weeks prior during the debacle with the Mountain King and Turnfire Night.
Lightning flashed and thunder boomed in the distance as Kinich and the lector stared at each other. Why was it here? Was it again planning to seize him in order to study Ajaw? That would be a logical guess but, somehow, while studying that fiery and curious gaze, Kinich thought that wasn’t the case. This lector had never seemed as malevolent as its kin and right now the way it looked at him was almost… empathetic.
Just as Kinich began opening his mouth to voice his questions, the lector let go of the umbrella, leaving it still hovering above Kinich, and crouched down next to him. The saurian hunter braced his limbs, cold and weak as they were, to be ready to spring away or attack if necessary, but the lector only brought out a green shawl before gently placing it across Kinich’s shoulders.
Kinich continued to stare dumbly while it adjusted the cloak, humming to itself like the low rumble of a furnace. Part of him wanted to reject the lector’s strange actions, but he was now warmer and drier and, more than anything, wanted to know why.
Before he could inquire, however, it came to him that he didn’t know how to address this creature. Would it be impolite to again use the name Kinich had heard the Traveler use over the one the lector had introduced itself as? He broke the silence just as the lector took its hands away from the shawl now around his shoulders. “Should I call you Sanka or Enjou?”
The lector hummed again, almost sounding like a purr. “Well, I was planning on using Sanka,” it said in that jovial voice of its. “But, Mr. Kinich, I must admit I like the way Enjou sounds in your voice. Let’s go with that one.”
“Then, Mr. Enjou, may I ask what you are doing here?”
Enjou sat cross-legged on the cliff next to him. He made a hand gesture towards his umbrella catalyst above Kinich, causing it to expand wide enough to block them both from the downpour. “Interrupting your brooding, of course. Don’t you know you humans catch colds if you’re out in bad weather for too long?”
Kinich didn’t know how to respond. That was an empty, unsatisfactory answer to his question, but he hesitated to push it further. The sound of the rain around them was much more pleasant now that it wasn’t soaking him, and the pyro heat radiating off of Enjou’s body alongside the warm cloak he had just been given was… almost soothing. Perhaps it didn’t matter why the lector was here, and perhaps Kinich did not mind if he stayed.
As he gave his gaze back to the distant sea and rested his chin on his knees, ready to be content with this bizarre situation, he suddenly noticed something. The shawl Enjou had given him was a familiar thick green patterned with squares – the exact one he had been looking at not too long ago.
Kinich whipped his head back at the lector. “Have you been spying on me?”
“Well goodness now!” Enjou laughed. “When you say it like that it sounds quite creepy. Why don’t we say I was keeping an eye on you, or simply watching from afar. Those sound a bit less ominous.”
“...Why have you been watching me?”
Enjou gave him a long, unreadable look. His red eyes beneath his horned head glittered with interest and curiosity. “I did not lie to you when we first met, nor did I lie when we parted. I am not part of the grand, nefarious schemes of the higher council. I am just a simple clerk who has been enamored with the lore of your people and, more importantly, has been captivated by you. Even after you so tragically betrayed me to the Traveler I could not stop thinking about you and the Turnfire. After seeing you as you are now… it is strange, indeed, but I felt sad, and as though I should help.”
Kinich’s head buzzed with conflicting thoughts and emotions. Even if Enjou had other motives he had not yet voiced, he sounded genuine. It wasn’t as if the lector had ever technically lied to him, so Kinich found few reasons to doubt him. But that meant that Enjou was here to comfort him and, given the pleasant feelings now flowing through his body, was succeeding.
“I don’t know if I can accept this comfort,” Kinich muttered. “I have nothing to give as a suitable price and would rather not be indebted to you.”
Enjou chuckled. “You and your prices… well, if that is such a concern for you, then know I am receiving more than enough compensation by just being in your presence.”
“That isn’t a real price.”
“Sure it is. You just deemed my presence something valuable enough to pay for, after all.”
Kinich averted his eyes. Enjou’s actions so far could be classified as acts of service, therefore something concrete enough to put a price upon, and Kinich still remembered exactly how much that Sumerian merchant was selling the shawl for. And yet, after Kinich privately calculated what he would consider a fair price for those things, he felt like it still wasn’t sufficient, as if there was something else less tangible Enjou was doing that could not be valued logically.
“What do you get out of sitting here in my presence?” Kinich asked him, wondering if he might find some clarity in the answer.
“Information, for starters, which is quite valuable to scholarly figures such as myself. I am learning more about you, your mannerisms, likes and dislikes, and since we are all a product of our surroundings I may learn more about your culture through that knowledge.” Enjou did not have a mouth, but the way his eyes were angled made it seem like he was smiling. “Also, you are beautiful, and I quite like you. Is it strange to enjoy the presence of beautiful things and want to spend time with what you like?”
Kinich blinked at him, warmth spreading through his body that did not come from the fires of the lector. If any of that hinted at why he might enjoy Enjou’s company in return, he did not feel ready to confront it.
“I will not pry into the reasons behind your sadness,” Enjou continued. “Not without your permission, at least. My prior experience with humans suggests that would be crossing boundaries. I just hope to make your sadness more comfortable to bear, if I can. Am I? Or would you like to be left alone now?”
“You can stay,” Kinich said, voice hardly stronger than a whisper as he relaxed his chin against his knees again. He let out a long sigh and closed his eyes, fatigue sneaking up on him. I think I really want you to stay .
After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Kinich heard rustling from Enjou before feeling heat radiate off two objects close to his head. He cracked open one eye to see that the lector had scooted himself closer and had both his glowing hands hovering close to Kinich’s hair, drying off the lingering dampness from the rain. Enjou kept humming with low melodies Kinich didn’t recognize and occasionally he sizzled when a stray raindrop hit his body. The ambiance was soothing, the heat from the lector relaxing, and while Kinich still felt grief hang over him like the thunderclouds above, it was more bearable now.
Drifting out of consciousness, Kinich felt himself teeter to the left before collapsing against a warm surface. Something held him gently and closely as he fell into a peaceful sleep.
-
Kinich woke up in his bed back at the Scions of the Canopy.
When he asked his neighbors how he got there, they told him that a strange outlander calling himself “Sanka” carried him back in the early hours of morning. A few experienced warriors within the Scions tried questioning Sanka, distrusting him and sensing within him a potentially dangerous power, but two children named Huni and Toba stopped them, naming Sanka as a friend and as the one who saved Trinidad’s saurian Nanna. Before the warriors could come to a conclusion about Sanka, he mysteriously disappeared.
His neighbors tried questioning him about Sanka and what happened, but Kinich simply paid them in mora for their information before requesting they pay him a hefty price in return for the information they sought. They were quick to be suddenly disinterested.
Kinich ate a quick breakfast before packing up and heading out into the wild. He wanted to find Enjou, as well as create a makeshift grave for his mother. He had questions to ask and feelings to sort out, and this time he wasn’t going to be seven years late to getting his answers.