The door sweeps open with a sharp sigh, the humid air of the manor crumpling in the face of a stiff Northern gale. Rutile, beside him, cries out as the flowers bundled in his hands have their petals brutally ripped off by the wind. They look tasty, tossed into the air like that. Mithra grabs one as they flee, pressing it between his parted lips.
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“Mr. Mithra, those aren’t for eating!” Rutile is quick to complain.
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“Are any flowers for eating...?” Mitile clearly doesn’t understand Mithra’s refined palate. “Mr. Mithra, we’re here, so you can put us down now.”
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“Wait, don’t—!” Mithra releases the brothers from the grip of his arms, a stiff ‘thump’ sinking into the Northern plain as they fall flat into the snow.
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Rutile attempts an indignant cry, only to find himself coughing up a flurry of half-melted snow. “D-don’t just drop us!” His face falls, sighting the frosted remains of his precious bouquet. “It’s so cold…”
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“Of course it’s cold. This is the North.” A single petal has cleverly escaped the winds, but as Mithra reaches down to take it for himself, Rutile smacks his hand away. His lips have curled into a hideous frown.
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“But it’s spring! In the South, it’s much warmer this time of year. It gets really cold in the South, too, so I thought…”
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“Foolish. We aren’t in the South.”
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“…Our mother did always seem very hot in the summer…” Rutile muses. His gaze takes on a misty quality, lashes hovering low over his green eyes. “In the evenings, our father used to bring her wet towels, and he would fan her with a large leaf if she seemed particularly unwell.”
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Mitile, his hair dusted with flakes of upturned snow, stares wide-eyed at Rutile as he speaks.
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…Mithra’s never heard this particular story, either.
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He'd never come to the South during the summer, of course. He’s not stupid. Why would he voluntarily submit to such torture? He’d only ever seen the South in the winter, until the brothers had insisted on endangering themselves—but Tiletta had stayed, winter or summer, much to Mithra’s utter bafflement.
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…And he’d missed that part of her life entirely, it seems, as a result of their diverging decisions.
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Rutile’s voice rouses him from his memories. "Why are you both stari—oh! Did you want to hear more?”
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“Please!”
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“Not particularly.”
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Mitile’s voice rings out at the same time, and Mithra scowls. Mitile sticks his tongue out at him.
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“Don’t be r-rude, Mitile,” Rutile chides. “I’d love to tell some more stories, b-but it’s awfully cold…” The brothers are both shivering, Mithra realizes, and suddenly it’s him who’s being stared at.
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Mithra releases a heavy sigh. “Ugh, fine.” Raising a hand, he exhales his spell, applying the same warming magic around his own body to Rutile and Mitile.
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In unison, the brothers let out long, contented sighs. Mitile, pulling himself at last to his feet, lightly clenches and unclenches his fingers, delighting in the renewed warmth in his joints.
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“Thank you Mr. Mithra!” Rutile enthuses, scooping up the remains of his bouquet. He dusts some remaining snow from the bare flower-heads—until one up and falls off the stem entirely, sending a cringe shuddering through his body.
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Simultaneously, Mithra and Mitile call out their spells.
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“Arthim.”
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“Ortonik sealsispilce.”
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Mithra’s spell is shorter, and with his final syllable the flowers pop back to life, regrowing petals and leaves in little more than an instant. Mitile’s spell only just sounds its last beat as the last torn pieces of the flowers repair and refoliate themselves.
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Rutile blinks in surprise. “Oh—! Why, thank you both! Where did you learn that, Mitile? We’ve only ever worked on live plants in class before.”
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Why is Rutile praising him? He hadn’t even done anything.
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Despite this obvious fact, Mitile brightens at Rutile’s words. “Mr. Faust has been teaching me lots of things outside of lessons!”
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“I could teach you much cooler things than Figaro and that curseworker,” Mithra insists, “and I was the one who regrew the flowers, not you.”
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His gaze jumping away from Rutile, Mitile meets Mithra’s eyes with the look of a prey animal caught too soon to run. He falls silent, tears quietly gathering in his eyes.
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“…You’re right.” he finally says, weak, defeated. “I’m sorry for taking credit for something I didn’t do.”
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Face flushed, tears already frozen to his cheeks, Mitile turns his back and begins the short walk to the lakeshore. Rutile, stunned, raises his gaze to meet Mithra’s eyes.
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(Mithra recognizes his expression from somewhere, but he can’t place it, not quite.)
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“That wasn’t very nice, Mr. Mithra,” Rutile scolds, his voice as dry and hollow as the skull of a long-dead animal. Turning on his heel, he hurries off after Mitile. The bouquet in his arms, startled by his pace, shakes loose a few petals that fall behind in his wake.
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From where he stands, Mithra watches their steps trace footprints in the snow, growing further and further away from him—leaving him alone.
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…Well, they’re welcome to pout. He has business here.
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It’s been some time since he last visited this lake… Three months? Four? Very little has changed in his absence, exempting the volume of snow—it was much higher the last time he’d come, the area having borne the onslaught of a particularly fierce storm. Scraping the toe of his shoe across the frozen lakeshore, Mithra unearths a number of shattered shells and fragments of bone. Roughly the same amount as usual, he estimates, so things are well.
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Tiletta had once told him that the Lake of Death was large enough to host its own tides. He hadn’t had the foggiest idea what she’d meant at the time, assuming a “tide” was something to be eaten. She’d laughed, so he’d attacked her.
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And she’d won.
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His blood boils even now recalling it: the haunting whistle of her laughter, the unbearable glee in her gold-green eyes, his entire body screaming out in agony, lashed limb from limb by blade-sharp shards of ice. And the devil’s-call of her terrorizing spell, above it all, cutting through the pain and through to his ears.
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Ortosetore!
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He can almost hear it now.
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…Mitile’s spell earlier, it had sounded a little like hers. Rutile resembled her more, uncannily so—though Mithra would never admit it to anyone, lest he preposterously be assumed to be afraid of the young Southern wizard, he did not much like looking at Rutile—but Mitile…
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Mitile sounds like his mother. The bark of his convictions, the bloom in his voice when he’s delighted about something, the sullen drop in his tone when disappointed or unsatisfied could have only been inherited from her.
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Tiletta was something of a crybaby, too, when she was drunk. Too often, far too often, Mithra had been forced to bear the weight of her unwieldy arms as she threw them around his neck and wept pathetically into his back. Why won’t he just fall in love with me already? I’ll kill him the next time he rebukes me, I swear!
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Mithra had pointed out that her habit of eating live animals was rather repulsive, so it was really no wonder that Oz didn’t like her, and they’d both been promptly ejected from the bar when Tiletta, absolutely seething, raised her skull against him.
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He’d won that fight, but only barely. Facing Tiletta was always a challenge, loath as Mithra was to admit it.
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A dark feeling rises up from his stomach, recalling all that. He lifts his gaze from the crushed snow beneath him, setting his eyes on the brothers some distance away. Perhaps, and only perhaps, there was a slim chance that he’d erred earlier. It may have, perhaps, caused him some irritation, hearing her in Mitile’s voice.
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…No, absurd. Why had he even considered it? And what is he doing, reminiscing like this? There are creatures he ought to be searching for.
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Not ten paces from where he was standing prior, Mithra locates the object of his interest: a single tide pool, its surface glittering in the sun.
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The tide pools surrounding the Lake of Death are fleeting, temporary things, relying on underwater beasts emerging from the depths and carving nests into the rigid silver-black sand. (He’d watched a few of them perform this arduous task as a child, curious to know if the creatures’ eggs were edible—they were not, and he’d nearly perished from the paralytic toxins.) The nests, first buried and unearthed by the hatching young, were then refilled with the tides and populated with the most magnificent of magical creatures: fatally poisonous clams with radiant shells, miniscule black octopi with exceptionally powerful ink, moon-white starfish that grow crystal polyps, bone-eating shrimp… For Mithra, they are the pinnacle of beings (himself notwithstanding, of course).
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And this pool he’s found, it’s teeming with life. He finds himself giddy with laughter as he picks away the unexceptional clams and barnacles, ushering the treasure beneath into the light. This trip was not a waste after all.
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…Ah, but he is hungry, and he did just come across a number of clams. Despite Mithra’s protests, Nero has insisted repeatedly that clams are nigh-unobtainable in Central, so he hasn’t had any to eat for quite some time.
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“Arthim~” The shell, of course, pops open with the call of his spell. The meat inside is a tawny pink, and soon tipped through his lips. …It’s far too cold, and difficult to chew. Perhaps he should roast the rest—or should he save them for his return to the manor, so he can assure Nero prepares them properly?
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Ah, but he’s hungry now. Both of those options require some time, and he’d rather not. Mithra reaches for another clam—
And the next shell he cracks has a surprise for him: a pearl.
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Mithra has no real need for pearls. They’re bland jewels, only really useful in blessing and healing magic. Nothing Mithra would ever bother himself with. But, still…
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…Tiletta had quite liked them.
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How beautiful… You find them here all the time, don’t you? Won’t you make me a necklace, Mithra?
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He’d said no, of course. Why would he bother himself with something like that?
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Pretty please, Mi~mi? I’ll hunt you down some good game from the West if you do!
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Western game? He’d scoffed. Nothing there interested him, not at the time. But she’d managed to track down a rare deer, one of the last of its kind. So he made her that necklace.
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Oh, Mithra, it’s gorgeous! Don’t I look incredible in this? Oh, I definitely do. Come here, lemme give you a hug~
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“Mr. Mithra, what’s this?”
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Mitile, tear tracks now absent from his face, stands over the tide pool, hands against his knees. And Rutile, still looking quite sour, peers into its depths from behind him.
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This is bad.
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“Get away from there, you idiots!” Mithra snarls, forcing the brothers back from the edge with his magic. “I can’t have you being poisoned, can I? Think for a moment before you start ogling dangerous creatures!”
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Mitile, now several feet back and stumbling over his own feet, turns pale in an instant. “Are they really that dangerous…?”
“This is the North, of course they are!”
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“Mr. Mithra, I think you need to calm down.” Rutile approaches him with determined footsteps, staring him down with furious green eyes. “And you need to apologize to Mitile.”
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Mithra averts his eyes.
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“Look at me.” One of Rutile’s hands shoots out, yanking Mithra’s chin toward his own face. His familiar glare hovers mere inches from Mithra’s own. “Apologize to Mitile. You really upset him earlier!”
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“Brother, aren’t you being a little—”
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“Apologize! We came here because we wanted to spend time with you, and learn more about the place where you grew up. And all you did was make Mitile cry, and then ignore us! I even brought flowers for your dead!” Soon out of breath, Rutile chokes, gasps, pauses. Without releasing his grip on Mithra’s chin, he forces his breath into an even rhythm. He does not close his eyes, and Mithra watches as the anger drains out of them, released into the air with each foggy breath.
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“Mr. Mithra, we want to know the person who our mother loved, who she trusted so much. But we can’t learn that all on our own.” He pauses, considering his words. “Don’t you want to know us, too? We’re your family.”
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Rutile releases his chin, and Mithra can’t help but massage it—it’s quite sore now. The clam he’d pried open is still limply lying in his hand.
“Mitile,” he finally says, extending a hand to the boy. Hesitantly, quietly, Mitile approaches, and when he is finally close enough Mithra opens his hand.
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“A pearl…” Mitile’s eyes alight with wonder, and gingerly he plucks the small jewel from Mithra’s palm. “I’ve never seen one before! I’ve only read about them in books!”
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“They’re quite useful in blessing and healing magic. Perhaps you’ll see some use for it.” The clam, now free from its burden, is swiftly devoured, and its shell tossed aside.
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Rutile takes a seat behind him, setting the bouquet of flowers against his lap. “Can I have one too, Mr. Mithra? Please?”
He snorts. “I only just found the one. Though I suppose there might be another.” He reaches for a third clam. He’s still quite hungry.
“Ortonik setomaoge!” Rutile calls out, cracking open a number of clams in unison and pulling them over to his side.
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Aghast, Mithra scowls at him, his brows tensing, his jaw stiffening. “That’s my meal. I gathered it.”
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“I didn’t say you couldn’t eat it! I’m just helping you look.”
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…These Southern wizards will be the death of him someday, surely. “…Fine. But don’t try to sneak any while I’m not looking. I’ll know.”
“Mr. Mithra, could… could you tell me about the animals in the tide pool? I’d really like to learn about them.” Against his direct instructions from earlier, Mitile has again cast his gaze in the direction of the creatures.
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“Don’t even think of moving a single step closer. …but I suppose I could teach you, just for today. Listen closely. You’re receiving a lecture from the Mithra of the North, after all.”
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“Oh! Thank you so much, Mr. Mithra!”
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“You—you really do not need to embrace me. If you wish to thank me, some fresh meat will d—Both of you, get off me!”
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Thank you thank you thank you Mi~mi! I love it sooooo much!
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“Ugh, let me go—! Are you trying to suffocate me? I wouldn’t take any attempt on my life lightly, you know.”