Kodamas

In the world below the Gods, the essences of Quiet and Night reign free. The summer air dies in the mountains, the Vemnic moon is peaceful between dim clouds, and a lone hunter sleeps in the roots of a tree.

 But there is no Night like we know it in the world of the Gods; there is not Quiet as we’d expect. No: they are personified there. You can meet Night as he cools after Dusk. You can speak with Quiet. Though, don’t expect them to say much.

 There, the Godly children of Emotion reside in the halls of Divinity. Frustration stampedes down the blessed, celestial corridors, hair awry and robes in tangles. It approaches the cracked doors of Curiosity and throws them open.

 “Nobody ever listens to me, brother! No-one understands!”

 Curiosity has a catlike perch in the loft of his room. From it, he watches an illusion of the world below, splayed with magic aura across the floor underneath him. The illusion resembles the mountainside in shadow. Hunter and all. His eyes are affixed on the arcane diorama of trees, and his voice is distracted: “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

 Frustration grips its forehead. “I’m pissed off at Possibility, that’s how I feel. They monopolized the entire meeting! All the other Gods were so wrapped up in their idea of otherworldly power that they couldn’t give less of a shit about how dangerous it is.” Its ranting shudders the walls. “Are you even listening to me?”

 “I’m listening. They decided against you.”

 “Me, Anxiety, Nature, even Vemn gave us their blessing to maintain the border between realms, but none of it mattered. That’s what happens on a council run by Passion! She must be fucking Possibility, I bet you she is.”

 Curiosity grins. “Oh, don’t be like Despair. You never know, Good might have xyr hand in this.”

 “Good?” Frustration’s voice builds. “You’re on xyr side?”

 “The ramifications of their choice are already taking effect. Look.”

 Curiosity’s ghostly image of the mountain stirs. A fire erupts in the sky, pushing Night aside, screaming through Quiet to spotlight trees now shaking. An asteroid trails smoke behind a dot of blazing yellow and plummets into the cliffsides with a crash of obliterated forest. Trunks, centuries rooted, find new resting places; bedrock relocates. The nestled hunter stirs.

 Frustration can’t bear to watch. “We have no idea how this will go.”

 The little image of the hunter on Curiosity’s floor gathers itself and stares at the growing, distant firelight of the fallen meteor. Curiosity arches closer from his perch. “Sibling, you forget that our essence was derived from that space between realms.” The hunter starts to stalk toward the flames.

 “I can’t believe you’re on their side! You wanted the borders removed from the beginning, didn’t you? Is that why you didn’t go to the council?” Frustration rolls its eyes and sees the illusion of the hunter walking. “Curiosity. You’re influencing that person.”

 “As I am wont to do.”

 “You can’t just drag someone into this!”

 “Don’t you want to see what things from other worlds can do? I know I do.” Curiosity’s grin widens, cheshire. “Our power hasn’t impacted the world below like this since the Disparity.”

 “For a reason! It lead us to war!”

 He remains entranced by the specter of a hunter on another plane. “Things were more complex back then. This is simple.”

 The hunter toes through thin smoke over grounded leaves and upturned dirt, fire in the bushes flickering through the shadow of her hood. The light charms her eyes with wonder. Beyond, ringed by a crater of fuming earth, a silver gleam calls out from the darkness. Curiosity listens.

 “That could jeopardize everything. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

 Arcane silver glows in his eyes. “I do.”

 The hunter reaches out, and she touches a metal shape, fallen from the sky.