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His heart was in his throat as Zealliam flew back towards town. The scenery rushed past far below him; ancient and giant trees were merely specks in the ground from his vantage point in the sky. Whole rivers were rendered into thin lines separating chunks of land. Whole swaths of desert were now little sandboxes.
And who knew the feeling of his hair and clothing whipping around him could feel so exhilarating? Nothing back home ever allowed him to feel this, or even do such a thing!
Did he have a reason to ever go back?
Mayhaps one day.
All too soon, a familiar landscape came into view and he threw his hands out wide to bring himself to a stop. Slowly, he floated down to the ground in front of the simple wood and stone structure he’d called home ever since he arrived in this world. The sight of it always gave him a sense of relief, and as his feet gently touched down upon solid ground, he expected to feel the same.
Yet, there was something wrong.
Ever since he had really delved into the study of magic and all things related to it, he’d unknowingly started to become attuned to the world around him in ways he’d never experienced before. How could he when certain practices were forbidden back home? Yet the further he delved into his studies of the arcane and anything he could get his hands on, the more he realized just how little he actually knew. And there was no way much of what he learned would ever be allowed where he came from.
Right then, every fiber of his being was telling him something was different. Like setting a piece of dried spaghetti up at the bottom of a doorjamb and seeing that it’d been broken before he could get back to that door. Nothing outside his humble home gave anything away as malicious, however. His menagerie of farm animals acted normally, and none of the creatures he’d acquired as pets within his abode were sounding any kind of warnings that things were amiss or that they felt threatened.
And yet, he still felt something was off. Something that shouldn’t be there was there now. Had he been discovered? Had Kale figured out his secret and somehow brought reinforcements to ambush him and bring him to justice? The thought of coming so far only to be caught now made a tiny ember burn in his chest.
No. No, he was overreacting. He had to be. Every move he made was done with the utmost care. His alchemical and potion brewing accoutrement were all hidden safely away, and no one knew about the seaside home he’d begun to construct far, far from the town that had welcomed him in. He couldn’t risk them getting caught up in his mess from back home.
He’d never allow any of them to fight his battles for him.
Very softly, magical energy crackled and licked at the gloved fingertips of his left hand while he reached for the doorknob to finally enter his home. The air felt heavier, almost thick with anticipation–but perhaps that was his own he felt and nothing more. The only things he heard were Bud’s ethereal pops to itself and Tyson’s snores. Even his cat was asleep.
“Hello?” he called, his voice carrying around the first floor room. He spoke again, just as loudly and projecting his voice even more so it carried up and down the two separate staircases. “Is anyone here?”
There was no response except for a creak in the floorboards above. Tyson must’ve shifted in his sleep; it was about where the giant bird usually slept and he’d been putting off fixing that spot in the floor.
“You’re being ridiculous,” he said quietly to himself and shook his left hand. Little bits of magic flung away, sparking harmlessly across the floorboards before fading away into nothing.
He started to head downstairs to the kitchen to check on some of his long-term brewing projects, but he stopped dead at the sight of something small caught on the edge of the stairs that very much shouldn’t have been there. His eyebrows furrowed together as he crouched down to pick up what looked to be a translucent piece of ecdysis. Nothing with access to the interior of his home shed quite like this.
His eyes began hunting for any other ecdysial remnants about on the ground floor, and sure enough, there were even more bits caught on the wall stringer lining the staircase on the way down to the next floor.
His feet carried him in that direction, his boots clipping sharply on each stair as he descended–
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ZEALLIAM!!!”
The moment his eyes could fully see the surface of the next floor, a handful of familiar faces threw off invisibility cloaks and shot off poppers of paper confetti into the air as they all cheered for him. Dumbfounded, he stood and stared agape at them for a long moment, his mind immediately overwhelmed with all sorts of questions and emotions. There were several strands of garland hung around the room in a rich green color–far more than there were upstairs on the ground floor–and several floating lights lit up the space. Every surface available was covered in various savory and sweet hors d'evors–and if he wasn’t mistaken, none of them seemed to be made with any kind of gluten type shell or base.
“Well, are you gonna stand there all day?” the witch asked with a chuckle as the engineer headed right over to him to throw an arm up around his shoulders and escort him the rest of the way down the stairs.
“Yeah c’mon, let’s go!” he added, grinning broadly at him.
“U-Uh…” Zealliam managed to get out in response. He was somewhat horrified that people had been hiding so close to the secret entrance of his alchemical research, but he always had a face that masked the panic he felt on the inside. A part of him wasn’t sure how he felt otherwise; this wasn’t the kind of surprise he thought he’d ever find here.
After a moment of quickly scanning the entrance for any sign of disturbance and finding none, he relaxed and found his tongue. “How…how did any of you know? I never told anyone when my birthday was.” That and he wasn’t sure if time passed the same way here versus back home, so he’d privately been keeping track in a way he felt correlated to the days there.
“Unfortunately,” the beast tamer chimed in, “we can’t take the credit for that. We had some outside help.” He put two fingers into his mouth and whistled loudly. While the shy girl and mermaid covered their ears, the two of them standing the closest to the beast tamer, a chorus of hissing suddenly began.
“Wait…” he said under his breath. It wasn’t possible, was it?! He hadn’t heard them since coming to this world.
The chorus grew louder and from the staircase leading down to the kitchen came pouring in several green snakes of varying sizes and lengths. Each one donned a hat that somehow stayed on their scaly heads as they wound their way up his legs and settled around his neck and shoulders.
“Sha sha!” each of them cried, happily booping their snoots against his face, making him giggle and laugh like he hadn’t in a long time. Their forked tongues flicked out to give him little kisses that tickled his skin before each of them snuggled on him as best as a whole den of snakes could on one single man.
“Whoa, uh…are you okay? Do you need help with them?” the engineer asked.
He carefully shook his head and continued to smile broadly. “No, no I’m fine! These are my familiars from back home! I thought I’d never see them again…” Carefully, he reached up and gave the whole pile a big hug.
“How did you find me?!” he asked them, glancing between the warm gazes of each snake that was waiting eagerly to talk to him.
“Sha shaaa sha sha sha shaaaaaa!” one answered excitedly. “ We searched day and night for the way you took to this land! ”
“Shaaa sha sha…” another added, their eyes glistening. “ It took us forever… ”
Another burst into tears and sobbed, “Sha s-s-shaaaaaa sha-sha!” “ We m-m-missed you so much! ”
His eyes widened as more and more of them spoke. Very quickly, he learned that they hadn’t stopped searching for him ever since he disappeared, but they weren’t going to stop until they were reunited with him once more. Then only a couple days ago, one of them found a note telling them that if they wanted to find him, be at a certain place at a certain time. Of course they exercised caution; it did seem too good to be true, after all. But when they arrived at the meeting spot, they smelled his scent coming from a small, glowing passageway and just knew they weren’t being tricked.
“Ah, I suppose this is where I come in,” the witch said nonchalantly. “You remember the spot where I met you, right Zealliam?”
He nodded, being careful not to move too much so he didn’t dislodge the familiar that had settled atop his head.
“Well, it’s not every day the same area is invaded by a whole lot of snakes. It took me a bit to understand what they wanted, but between Willerton, Klara and myself, we’ve been able to communicate with them. They wanted to find you at first, but when they realized what day it was, they changed the plan a little.”
“They were adamant about making sure your birthday was celebrated because you wouldn’t do it on your own. Something like that,” the beast master said with a crooked smile.
A number of scaly heads nodded in agreement with everything being said and he found himself hugging the whole group of them again. “Thank you for finding me,” he said just loud enough for them alone to hear.
“Shaa sha shaaa sha sha,” a few of them replied almost in unison. “ We’ll find you in any universe .”
“Sha sha shaaa,” he replied, gently nudging the nearest of them with his cheek. “ I’d expect nothing less from my wonderful zerpents .”
Truth be told, he would’ve been happy if the party ended right there. Feelings he hadn’t let himself experience in a while were overflowing and flooding his chest with overwhelming warmth, but his stomach had other ideas. It growled loudly out of protest.
The shy girl stepped forward a little and motioned for him to come over to the table covered in food. “So, um, they helped us with this too. There shouldn’t be anything with gluten in it at all! It was kinda challenging to make but it was nice not having to harvest a bunch of wheat.”
“Oh? Then let’s not waste anymore time, yeah?” he said with a chuckle. Good food and even better company mattered more right then than processing emotions he was already packing away to revisit another day. Really, he couldn’t have asked for a better birthday.
And he had just the place to keep his devoted familiars safe and cozy. They were going to love the seaside manor, he just knew it.