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“Wait, so let me get this straight,” Flame says, bewildered. “Your letter said you needed my help. I thought that meant you were under attack or something, but instead you want me to—”
“—defend my flower gardens, yes,” Lomedy finishes, then scratches the back of his neck, sheepish. “Tonight. If… y’know, if you’d be willing to.”
Even through the blindfold, surely Lomedy can see how ridiculous he thinks that is.
“Is it really that important?” he asks. “Really? Bro, it’s just a few flowers, right?”
Lomedy tsks, shaking his head at him. Flame raises his eyebrows.
“Flame, Flame, Flame,” he tuts. There’s a stupid grin balanced on his lips that Flame knows means that he’s not taking this 100% seriously, his tone exaggeratedly grave. “You should know by now that I’m the most formidable farmer in this part of the server— I can’t be taking this sort of disrespect without retaliation.”
“...I don’t see how any of this could be considered disrespectful,” Flame says, choosing to ignore the absurdity that is the concept of a ‘most formidable farmer’.
“And that is why you’re a low-tier farmer, bro. My sunflowers are the pride of my farm. Every single month, I’ve woken up on the morning of the 22nd to find, like, half of them hacked up— do you know how long it takes to grow a decent sunflower? Like, it’s been a year by now, and they don’t even cut them with technique, they just fuck up the stems down the middle. Come on, bro, do your best friend a favour and teach them a lesson. Please?”
It’s true, as strange as it sounds. He even has the date crossed out on the living room calendar.
“Remind me why it can’t be you doing this instead of me?” Flame says reluctantly. Lomedy’s pulling the best friend card on purpose, he knows he is.
“We farmers gotta rise with the dawn and sleep with the sunset, bro,” Lomedy replies ostentatiously. “I can’t disrupt all the animals by changing my schedule and all that. I need to head to the markets tomorrow to pick up more chicken feed, too, so I gotta be at full energy to barter. You, however…”
“Fine, I guess,” Flame relents with a sigh. There’s the obvious other reason they’re both choosing to ignore: that, given the types of people inhabiting this server, Lomedy could very easily lose his life in the fight he’s trying to pick with this anonymous thief.
“Nice! Thank you, bro,” Lomedy cheers, golden eyes lighting up. Flame smiles at the sight of it, and Lomedy smiles at the sight of him smiling.
And so, three or so hours after sunset, when Lomedy retires for the night, and the animals are all quieting down in their barns, and the sky darkens from a charcoal grey to inky black, Flame begrudgingly sits outside to wait for the thief’s arrival.
He positions himself behind the horse stables, close enough to the garden that he’ll still be able to hear any intruders, but out of view from most angles. There isn’t much to do but wait— he brought a book, but the unlit lamp posts make it so the words are impossible to make out.
Ashen’s with him, luckily. Despite being bred and raised as a war dog, trained for stake-outs and the like, he isn’t nearly as invested as Flame is in this. He chooses instead to curl up and sleep on the ground next to his owner.
“Bro, we gotta focus,” Flame whispers, scratching lightly behind his ears, “Lomedy’s counting on us, come on.”
Ashen snuffles a bit before settling back down; he doesn’t seem to care.
Hours pass without any action until even the cicadas, chirping their awful mid-summer songs, have quieted down. Maybe Lomedy’s pulling a prank on him or something. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Flame sighs against grey-silver fur. This is so boring— he’s spent way too much of his life so far sitting around random places as a guard, from Zam’s empire to the Invis Mafia, to even now. Lomedy’s farm is a lot nicer than the others—unlike cold brick or stone, the grass is soft and warm, Ashen’s fur even more so—but that doesn’t change how absolutely dull all of it is.
“It’s just a few flowers, right?” he asks Ashen, who snores lightly in response. It’s close enough to an affirmative for him.
“Yeah, Lomedy won’t mind if I just— rest my eyes a little. Just for a few minutes…”
.
.
.
Rustling leaves to his left, accompanied by soft padding footsteps, the faint sounds starkly loud against the velvet silence of the witching hour. Flame startles awake, scrambling to his feet on the grass, still half-asleep and bleary-eyed, and Ashen jolts up with him.
Finally. Finally. What kind of person waits until this hour to steal some flowers, anyway?
Flame holds his hand down, signalling for Ashen to stay behind him as he walks slowly towards the direction of the sound.
He rounds the corner without any sound, sword at the ready. Sure enough, there’s actually a person standing in the clearing of Lomedy’s sunflower field— it’s too dark to make out anything besides a vague silhouette, but if Flame squints he can see the tips of their horns, their long hair, tied back in a ponytail.
Wait, what?
He rubs his eyes under the blindfold, looks again, but sure enough, the person has the distinct horns, tiara, hair, and if he squints hard enough, he can even see a barbed tail flicking through the air.
Before he can act, however, Ashen runs out from their hiding spot.
The figure backs away at the sudden sound, but halts when they see it’s not a person. Ashen slows down, tail drooping at the apparent rejection, and the intruder visibly relaxes.
“Aww, bro, don’t look at me like that,” they say, and sure enough, that’s Wemmbu’s voice.
Ashen nudges at his leg with his snout, all cute and sad, and Wemmbu puts down the flowers he’s stolen to pet him. “Aren’t you Flame’s dog? Your owner’s not here, right?”
He looks up, checking his surroundings, and Flame quickly darts back behind the stable, holding his breath. To Wemmbu’s eye, there’s only him and Ashen in the empty farm.
“Guess not,” Wemmbu shrugs. “You can stay, then.”
He cuts down a few more flowers, Ashen following him eagerly all the while. Maybe it’s the lighting, or the fact that Flame hasn’t seen him for weeks, or just the truly absurd hour of the day, but the normally obnoxious demeanor Wemmbu adopts seems subdued today.
“You think Rejoice will like these, bro?” He asks Ashen when he seems to be done. “I forgot what Flame called you…Ash, was it? Ashy? You think he’ll like them, Ashy?”
Ashen wags his tail, panting happily. Flame’s never heard of anyone named Rejoice before— it’s odd hearing Wemmbu’s voice say another person’s name so fondly.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Wemmbu says, nodding firmly. “I think I got enough. Time to go, now— bye, bro.”
Ashen barks.
“Maybe I’ll see you next month, Ashy,” Wemmbu says lightly, leaning down to pet him again.
“Bro, Wemmbu, is that you?” Flame calls out, coming out from behind the stable before he can leave.
“Uh. What— Flamefrags.” Wemmbu says.
Now that Flame’s closer, he can see the large handful of sunflowers that he’s got clutched in his left hand, and what looks to be a diamond hoe in his right. It’s really quite an unusual sight.
The demon takes a step backwards, like he’s about to flee the scene of the crime. “Hi. I didn’t— wait, why are you here?”
“I could ask you the same thing, bro,” Flame laughs. “It’s you who’s been stealing them this whole time?”
“No,” Wemmbu quickly denies, and the flowers instantly despawn, a quick flash of particles, as he shoves them into his inventory. The hoe, for whatever reason, stays.
“I genuinely just saw you—” Flame cuts himself off. It’s no use reasoning with this guy, he’s well aware of this fact.
“Saw what?” Wemmbu says. He smirks, a second too late for it to look natural.
“Come on bro, this is my best friend’s farm. Do you remember him, Lomedy? He really likes those flowers— can you just plant them back or something?”
“That’s not how they work, and no.”
Flame sighs, “Why not?”
“I need to use them for something,” Wemmbu says, all avoidant and secretive. The silhouette of his hand is twitchy against the leatherbound grip of his mace, fingers flexing and relaxing repetitively as if uncertain.
“Bro, whoever this Rejoice person is, can’t they just plant their own flowers? Why do you have to steal Lomedy’s?” Flame asks.
Wemmbu freezes, the whites of his eyes reflecting the dim moonlight as they widen slightly. Again with this weird-ass, out of character demeanor. Before Flame can call him out on it, Ashen whines, pressing his head against Wemmbu’s leg, and it seems to jolt him back to the current moment.
He recovers quickly. If there was more light, Flame can almost guarantee he’d see the white-knuckled grip the demon no doubt has as he pulls out his mace.
“No. He can’t,” Wemmbu says, voice flat. “Not anymore. What’re you gonna do about it?”
Always so quick to violence, this guy— but even then, his tone is still off. The words come out a little too fast, sounding forced, almost. And this weird defensiveness about this mysterious person, about some random flowers he stole— it doesn’t add up.
Before he can unsheathe his own sword, however, Ashen trots forward and licks Wemmbu’s hand.
“Ew, dude, get your dog—!” Wemmbu skitters out of the way, wiping his hand vigorously on his pants.
“Ashen, c’mere,” Flame calls out, amused.
Ashen takes a good look at him, head cocked, before going back to bothering Wemmbu. Flame feels genuine pride swell up in him.
“Did— back off!” Wemmbu yelps again when Ashen comes closer and licks his hand again. He lifts his weapon, but they both know he wouldn’t actually mace a dog, much less Flame’s. “Did you train him to do this— Flame!”
“Some strongest player you are,” Flame snickers, when the slow pursuit starts devolving into a genuine chase. “Getting beat by me wasn’t enough, even my dog’s bested you now?”
“Fuck you, too!” he exclaims.
In a blink, he pulls on his elytra, which Ashen latches onto with his teeth, but then gunpowder ash is fluttering down like snow over the sunflowers, and part of the wing—along with Ashen himself—is ripped off as Wemmbu flies away in a cloud of smoke.
Ashen drops the chunk of elytra onto the grass and barks up at him, tail pounding against the ground, while Flame just watches.
“That was weird, right?” he asks nobody in particular. “It wasn’t just me who thought he was acting off?”
Ashen barks again in agreement.
A panicked yell cuts through the air.
Flame looks back up just in time to see Wemmbu tumbling down back to earth, a hole in the bottom of one of his elytra wings. Thank Ashen.
Still halfway in the sky, he haphazardly forces the elytra into a glide, and Flame watches the rip visibly travel up the wing as he tumbles gracelessly back to the earth.
“You good?” he asks, running over to where Wemmbu has made a crater in Lomedy’s fields. He’s lying face-down in a twitching heap of wheat and limbs, but with full netherite armour, Flame isn’t too worried about any major injuries.
Or, he wouldn’t be, except when Wemmbu sits up, there’s a not-insignificant trail of blood running down the side of his face. He doesn’t seem to notice it, and is instead immediately filled with indignant rage.
“Bro, your head—” Flame winces.
“Look at this!” Wemmbu interrupts, brandishing the elytra in the air; the ragged edges of the hole are slick with dog saliva. The rip seeps through the delicate material at the rough shaking, and a large section of silver membrane flops back into the dirt.
Ashen bounds over, tail wagging when he sees that Wemmbu's returned.
Flame snorts, stifling it when he glares at him. “My bad, bro. Ashen got a little too excited. I think he likes you.”
“Now how am I meant to get to—“ Wemmbu stops. “Give me your elytra.”
“I don’t have one? You know this, bro.”
“Okay, then give me—”
“Neither does Lomedy, before you ask.”
“How?” Wemmbu stares, incredulous. Ashen’s back to licking his face, but he doesn’t react beyond half-heartedly trying to push the wolf away.
“Maybe it’s because we don’t need to run from fights like you do,” Flame says, crossing his arms smugly. ‘Cause it looks cool, and he’s not above farming aura on his definitely concussed and strangely agitated sort-of friend. “But, seriously, you’re bleeding. Like, from the skull.”
“Whatever, bro,” Wemmbu dismisses, wiping his face with his sleeve. The fancy fabric of his shirt does poorly for soaking up any liquid, and it just smears the blood all over his face. Again, he doesn’t seem to notice nor care. “What about phantom membranes?”
“Still none.”
Wemmbu throws his hands up in frustration. “So, I’m stranded here? Give me a horse, at least.”
“Bro, it’s like four right now. Rejoice can’t wait until the morning?”
“Stop— shut up,” he hisses. Climbing to his feet, the mace is in his hands again, and this time he doesn’t seem half as hesitant to use it. “You don’t know anything about him.”
“Some guy he must be,” Flame muses. “He sounds real impatient, to be making you run around doing his errands at this hour. I bet you guys get along grea—”
His words break off as Wemmbu windcharges and brings the mace down on him; Flame barely lifts his shield up in time. Even with what looks to be a significant head wound, Wemmbu can’t be underestimated, and the force of the blow has Flame staggering backwards.
“Yeah, we did,” he scowls.
“Did? What changed?” Flame taunts, forcing Wemmbu back as he returns the strike with his own sword.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that he’s dead.”
Flame pauses, shield going up on instinct to catch the next mace strike.
That— explains a lot, actually.
“I don’t know why I just told you that,” Wemmbu says, lowering the weapon as he blinks sluggishly at him. Flame’s 90% sure his two pupils are different sizes. “It’s too early for this, I don’t— just forget I said that.”
And then he leaves. Again.
But this time, without an elytra, his walking is closer to stumbling, and it’s a lot easier to trail behind. This time, it’s Flame who stops him.
“Bro, you need to get that head checked,” Flame says to Wemmbu’s retreating back.
“I’ll eat a gapple, don’t sweat,” he dismisses easily, waving his hand.
“We both know those are shit against head injuries,” Flame protests. “Healing pots would be better, do you have those?”
Wemmbu scoffs, “Who are you, my babysitter? Go to bed, Flame. And take your dog with you. My hand stinks.”
Ashen, unaware of the slander he’s facing, follows them from behind.
“So you don’t, then,” Flame points out.
“No, I don’t. Why do you care?”
“Dude, come on, your freaking pupils were two different sizes, and you can't even walk straight.”
Wemmbu visibly shifts his gait in an attempt to steady it, but the limp is still there. It must be a second injury aside from the head one, hidden under his clothes.
“You’re just gonna let yourself get brain damage and become even stupider than you already are?” He continues.
“Go to bed, dude.”
“I’m not just gonna let a friend run off and die in a ditch somewhere so easily.”
The retreating back stops, and Flame wonders for a second if the injury’s finally caught up with him. Maybe Wemmbu will pass out here and now; then they really will need to start worrying about brain damage.
“A friend.” Wemmbu mutters. It’s so quiet that Flame has to strain his ears to hear it.
“…Yes?”
Which was definitely a prior established thing. Right?
Wemmbu sighs, sounding defeated. As if he’s the one doing him a favour, and not the other way around.
“I’ll take the pot, then, I guess,” he decides.
“Hey, it was you who wanted this, not me,” Wemmbu says, as Flame rummages through the thousandth barrel, inside Lomedy’s base. He tosses the rag, now bloodstained, back on the kitchen counter carelessly. “Are you sure there’s even a potion? My head’s, uh, not bleeding anymore either, so maybe I can just leave, like, right now…”
“Stop, stop, just wait,” Flame calls out. “It’s been a while since… Lomedy must’ve reorganised this place, let me find them.”
He closes the barrel lid and reaches for the next one.
“Like, I feel perfectly fine, see?” Wemmbu continues, willfully ignoring Flame’s very valiant attempts at deciphering Lomedy’s genuinely terrible organisation system. “I walked on my own two legs all the way here with you and all.”
“Give me a second!”
“I mean, I could just…”
Out of the corner of his eye, Flame sees Wemmbu spring up from his stool.
And then he sees Wemmbu stumble on thin air, barely catching himself on a piece of furniture. Ashen wags his tail, agitated, circles around his legs.
And then he sees Wemmbu straighten, push himself unsteadily off the wall he was leaning on for stability, and wave his hands at him, like, Ta-da!
“Yeah, nice job almost braining yourself on my best friend’s kitchen counter. Real smooth.”
“You’re such an asshole,” Wemmbu grumbles, and sits back down.
The base falls back into silence, save for the muted shuffling of wooden furniture, louder barrel lids, and creaking chest hinges. Look— Flame isn’t the type of person who hates quiet, strictly speaking, but it feels strange, almost awkward, to leave Wemmbu waiting behind him. Especially when he clearly has something that’s been bothering him. And, apparently, a grave he has to get to.
“So,” Flame begins. Because he has to breach the dead-friend subject somehow.
“What?”
“Um.” But, maybe— maybe later. “So, I don’t think we have any potions.”
He watches Wemmbu actively rile himself up, like a wind-up kid’s toy, ready to blow. There’s genuinely steam pouring out of his ears. Ashen barks once, alarmed at the sudden mood shift, and Flame gestures at him to quiet down.
“But!” He interrupts, before Wemmbu can start properly tweaking again. “I can make one. We have a brewing stand, and all the ingredients.”
He brandishes the glistering melon slice and imagines it’s a cross, repelling Wemmbu’s demonic energy. The power of impaired mental state via concussion compels him, please do not orbital this very nice farmhouse as his best friend is sound asleep three rooms over.
“You—” Wemmbu starts. And it sounds like it’s gonna be another tirade, but he staggers again, and returns back to his seat looking vaguely green. Flame hadn’t noticed it before, but there’s a faint sheen of cold sweat covering his forehead, as if he’s barely holding back on throwing up.
So it was worse than he’d thought, then.
Flame sighs. “Chill, it won’t take more than ten minutes.”
“I don’t need this,” he grits out.
“Bro, if you don’t want to wait the recommended rest time of three days minimum, you’ll let me take ten minutes to make you this potion.”
“Why?” Wemmbu drawls in complaint, dragging out the vowel. It kind of sounds like his words are slurred. “I mean, we’ve both suffered worse in battles and come off fine, with or without healing pots. Just— I’ll be fine!”
“You don’t look fine at all,” Flame replies. He walks across to the potion room as he talks, careful to tread lightly. Lomedy’s a deep sleeper, but it can’t hurt to be cautious. “And this isn’t a battle. We’re safe here, so you might as well take the chance to avoid permanent brain damage while you can.”
“Really?” Wemmbu asks, discourteous as always, not even bothering to keep his stupid heeled boots quiet as he follows from behind. The uneven sound of them click-click-clicking against the wooden floor is jarring. He definitely didn’t wipe them on the welcome mat either— Flame’s gonna have to mop after this.
“What?” Because, genuinely, what could Wemmbu be fussing over now?
“You’re acting so weird. Healing pots and safety precautions, what’s happened to you?”
Once again, despite his rough tone, everything in his body language is communicating acute discomfort. Avoiding eye contact, dragging his feet, one hand rubbing at his other arm as if grounding himself.
“Nothing?” Flame says.
There’s a moment’s pause. He glances back momentarily, and— the look in Wemmbu’s eyes is unfocused, glazed over, as if he’s a thousand blocks away.
Ashen whines and nudges at him again.
“Yeah, right,” he finally replies, derisively. Deep frown set between his eyebrows, “A few months ago, I watched you tank a Mace strike to the helmet with a single gapple as you actively fought off ten Law soldiers at once.”
“…My bad for developing better life habits, I guess,” Flame shrugs.
Wemmbu clicks his tongue. “You’re so—”
The sound of footsteps to their left makes him fall silent. In the dark hallway, a familiar silhouette approaches, and for whatever reason, beside him, he senses Wemmbu tensing up.
“Flame?” Lomedy mumbles, still half asleep. Ashen trods over, nuzzling at his open hand, and Lomedy absent mindedly scratches behind his ears. “What’s…?”
“Bro, what’re you doing here?” Flame whispers in a rush, hurrying over.
“You— you were arguing with someone,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “Is that the thief? You caught them?”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s just Wemmbu, don’t worry about it,” Flame replies. He tries to usher him back through the doorway from where he came from, but his best friend protests.
Behind them, Wemmbu is suspiciously silent. He’ll worry about that later.
“That’s…weird,” Lomedy says, quieter. “Uh, but you’re friends?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“Then, then I’ll cut some out for him next time?” He considers, stifling a yawn. “Using proper technique. Then they’ll also grow back fast enough for the next month.”
“I’ll tell him that,” Flame whispers. Tries to fight off a fond smile, of course Lomedy’s only thinking for the goodwill of the thief, even as he’s half-asleep. “Bro, it’s genuinely almost 4 AM. Go to bed, okay?”
“Mmm,” Lomedy hums, then nods, his chin tipping close to his chest. “Yeah. G’night, Flame.”
“Good night.”
Because Ashen is the best boy ever, he follows Lomedy to his door. It’s a habit of his to guard them as they sleep, but through the door left slightly ajar, he can see Lomedy hoist all forty five kilograms of his wolf up in his arms and onto his bed.
Flame snickers to himself at the sight of Ashen being used as a pillow, before remembering that Wemmbu’s still behind him.
“A-hem,” he clears his throat, turning back to face him. He gestures to the nearby door, to the room where their brewing stand is.
Wemmbu’s expression is unreadable, a standing silhouette amidst dark night. Dim moonlight leaking in, barely illuminating him, and he’s as stiff as he was when Flame was trying to get him inside.
“Ten minutes,” Wemmbu says. He doesn’t move.
His voice is detached, listless, a shadow of a shadow of his usual vibrancy. Not for the first time, Flame wonders why.
“Sure,” he replies, in lieu of the questions threatening to bubble up inside of him.
The dull clinking of glass bottles and the quiet roar of the potion stand’s flame feels safer than their previous tense silence. He doesn’t know what to do with this. Wemmbu looks uncomfortable, and Flame feels uncomfortable, but it also feels wrong to leave the demon’s problem unacknowledged. He’s new to the ‘friend’ part of this whole frenemies thing, sue him.
“So,” he starts, for the second time that night. “Um. Rejoice?” When Wemmbu doesn’t pull out any (more) weapons, he continues. “I’ve never heard of someone named that before.”
A truncated laugh. “You wouldn’t have— he lived underground.”
“Yeah?” Flame asks, moving across the room to the cutting board. He places down a few slices of glistering melon and begins chopping. It’s a small thing, using a blade for healing wounds instead of inflicting them, but one of those rare miracles he keeps getting surprised by regardless.
“Some…bullshit civ, I’ve forgotten the name of it by now,” Wemmbu’s saying. “It was abandoned; he was guarding it.”
He takes the cubed melons and places them in the boiling awkward potion, careful to avoid backsplash. Along with it goes blaze powder, the bottle uncorks with a small pop, about two or three tablespoons of it in, and then a few fingers of nether wart.
Wemmbu takes his silence as its intended signal to continue. “About a year ago, I think. A year and a half, maybe? It was way before I did my whole fake death act, for sure.”
“What was he like?” Flame asks, as he stirs.
The hesitance lingers longer, this time.
“Kind,” Wemmbu says, finally. Tone cautious, as if the words he’s sharing contain something incredibly secretive, top-dollar information. Perhaps it is, to him. Flame can’t imagine he’s been able to say this to many other people.
He carries on, “He was… really, way too nice. He never told me why he was alone, but they must’ve abandoned him before we found him down there. And he still kept guarding it, and he trusted me for no reason. He was loyal ‘til it killed him.”
Wemmbu looks at him, as he says this. “I mean, kinda like you, before you left all those civs and started going solo. Really naive.”
“Hey,” Flame protests.
“I’m right though, aren’t I? I swear, bro, every single major power Unstable’s seen so far has had you under their control at some point.”
“I wasn’t with Law,” he argues half heartedly.
“Your one redeeming arc,” Wemmbu agrees. He drums his hands against the table where he sits.
“So, what, he was like me pre-mafia?” Flame asks. The potion’s close to being done. “Was he as good as me, or nah?”
“Not even close. He was just a chungus,” he says, fondly. “He wore these dried sunflowers in his hair, braided down the back, right? So they always fell out when he fought, and then he’d stop to pick them up. And he didn’t use shields or anything like that. I guess it was, um…”
A pause.
“Like, inevitable, when he got killed. I don’t— there’s nothing he could’ve done. There was nothing I could have done.” Wemmbu sighs, fingers halting, clenched into a fist before relaxing just as fast. “So, it’s not… I’m not gonna start crying or whatever over this. I'm past that now. So don’t freak. I know now that there was nothing I could’ve done.”
Flame switches off the heat and waits for the potion to cool.
“How far is his grave from here?” He asks, watching the swirling pink particles settle.
“…Why?”
“If the journey’s not too crazy, I can bring Lomedy over tomorrow and ask him to plant your flowers all around it,” Flame says.
He blinks. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, why not? I don’t think he minds now since he knows it’s you who’s been taking the sunflowers all this time. Would…Rejoice, would he like that, do you think?”
Wemmbu tilts his head, considering, before shaking it. “I hid his grave pretty well. A patch of flowers is only gonna draw attention to it.”
“Either way, the farm’s open to you,” Flame says. He brings over the bottle of completed potion, setting it down on the table. “I think. Maybe just stick to the flowers. Lomedy’s gonna have something set up for you. Apparently, your chopping technique sucks.”
Wemmbu sniffs the bottle, gags, and then gulps it down in one go. He slams it back down on the wooden table, his face twisted in disgust as he wipes his mouth.
“Delicious,” he says flatly.
“Yeah, you’re welcome.”
But despite his sarcasm, the potion does actually seem to be doing the job. Where his mannerisms were somewhat dazed, unfocused, a constant mildly nauseous expression, now he looks more stable. It works fast, thankfully.
When Wemmbu stands up, he doesn’t stagger nearly as badly as before. He looks at Flame, all impatient, like happy now?
“Can I go now, great immortal demon Flamefrags?” He mocks.
Flame rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, whatever, dude. Don’t miss me too much.”
“Asshole.” And this time, he doesn’t even sound like he means it.
Flame starts to clear away the ingredients and potion stand. It really is late, and the hour is catching up to him with every passing minute. He wants to sleep. Really bad.
“Hey, Flame?”
He turns around.
Wemmbu’s body is angled away, one hand on the doorway, chin held up towards the moon above. Caught in the middle of a movement, as if he hadn’t intended to say anything, then froze in surprise when he actually did. Flame knows the feeling.
“What?” He asks anyway.
“Uh.” Wemmbu glances back at him, a brief, unsure flicker. “Thanks. I guess.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Flame replies, turning back to his cleaning.
“For the potion,” he clarifies abruptly. A singular step, then another pause.
“I know…?”
He adds, “And Lomedy’s flowers. Nothing else.”
Flame sighs. “Yeah, dude. Go see your friend already.”
He places the blaze powder back in the cabinet. With nothing left to put away, he starts towards the doorway as well, a beeline towards his bedroom.
“I’ll see you next month?” Wemmbu asks, unsure.
“Sure. See you.”
The next morning, neither Lomedy nor Flame are surprised when they wake up to find one of their horses missing from the stable.