“No,” Evelthon said flatly. Rhene’s stare dried. 

“Your blood is sparkling like rainbows.” 

“I’m not a god.” 

“A demi-god?” 

“...No,” Evelthon chose after a long second of contemplation. 

“You’re not mortal.” 

“I’m not...” Lips thin and tight, he glanced away to look, as far as Rhene knew, at nothing in particular. “I’m not anything.” 

“That’s not true,” Rhene pressed. 

“This is not a conversation I’m having.” 

Tone turning tart, Evelthon gently pried off her fingers clutching his chiton. Rhene relented to sitting nearby him. The sudden revelation jolting her heart to a faster pace didn’t do anything good for the dizziness still greedily clinging tight. Controlled, slow breaths stopped the forest’s edge from spinning right before the second jolt came. Rhene spied a peek of Evelthon fiddling with his hair of pale golden cream. Her fingers that’d just brushed that hair throbbed with familiarity. It’d been the same soft sensation as when she’d ridden the— 

“You’re the goat!” Rhene hopped to her knees. Almost immediately, black rings pulsed, consumed her sight, and tipped her dangerously backwards. Rhene lost sense of everything until she came to—quickly, thankfully—in a sterner grip of Evelthon’s with his arm wrapped around her shoulders. 

“You were on the verge of dying from your power-hungry pater and probably from that mixture they had you drink. Please try not to move vigorously,” he chided. 

“Sorry,” Rhene mumbled. She had to glance up hopefully from under lowered lashes though. “I am right, however, aren’t I? Your hair looks so similar to that of the kri-kri's. Even the stories of Orius finding you both and helping you out match. I’m not sure how I didn’t make the connection.” 

“It’s not typically a connection one would consider.” 

“So I am right, right?” 

“Yes,” Evelthon sighed loudly. 

“Wow. So, if you’re not a god or a demi-god, maybe you’re a...a sorceress’s creation? Or an actual goat given a mortal’s shape by...” Rhene, under Evelthon’s disapproving aura, submitted. “My apologies once more. You said you did not wish to speak of it.” 

“Later,” Evelthon decided through gritted teeth, melancholic more than annoyed. “It is a tale for later.” 

“Yes. I understand. May I ask though...well, I am merely confused overall. You are able to become a large goat of abnormal form who can also fly and conjure wind. I suppose I’ve heard of stranger combinations. Yet, once you first dropped me off with Orius, we reunited fairly quickly with you in this form with horses, and supplies, a-and...” 

“I can fly, yes, in that form, and I can handle wind in both.” Evelthon lazily flicked his fingers to tickle a warm poof up Rhene’s nostrils that had her giggling and his countenance softening. “I have a few other tricks, such as being able to move things quickly from one spot to another, although that is easier with things that are not alive. It was simple enough for me to get ahead of you and Orius and then move the horses and supplies from where I’d safely stored them. Such was also how I got ahead of you and brought us back swiftly after you attempted to flee.” 

“I knew the distance was too short! Liar!” Rhene scoffed in a tease. “Can’t you bring us directly to my home then?” 

Evelthon bit his lip. “Due to my...situation, my powers are greatly diminished. It takes more effort to use them, I can do less than I can before, and I require more time to recover. Unfortunately, helping Orius track you down, take you, and what I’ve done over the past week has kept me significantly tapped. I got us as far as I could, but, for the moment...” 

“You and Haidee are the reason I’m alive. I can’t say my feet have completely adjusted to traveling, but I will gladly walk every step back to safety.” 

“You will be safe. Haidee too. Orius was the only true connection I had before meeting you, and now that that is gone the lone thing to ground me is making sure you don’t suffer from him or Aetion. Even once you’re home, if they have a connection or deal with Nelephyrus...” 

“Oh.” Haidee returned. The corners of her lips twitched finding the two of them linked as they were. Instinct screamed for Rhene to fling herself free, yet she simply didn’t want to. She would probably toe the line of passing out again too if she did. Haidee set the bulging water skin in Rhene’s hands for her to guzzle. “I hope you two were discussing what we’re to do next. We only have the few supplies Evelthon gathered before I found him in the agora.” 

“Before I landed, I spotted a town not more than an hour’s walk from here. Heading there—” 

“So she knows you’re the goat?” Haidee interrupted. 

“Rhene figured it out on her own, after wasting one of the few bandages we have,” Evelthon teased. Rhene shrunk, guiltily hiding away the bandage dirtied on the ground with her foot. Haidee slipped a fresh strip from Evelthon’s pack, but Rhene insisted on retying it around Evelthon’s leg herself. 

“Continuing,” Evelthon pressed on, “the town will allow us better resources. However, we should make ourselves scarce from sight. Aetion and Orius can move faster than we can. It won’t take long for them to track us down if every settlement from here to Astagoria knows us.” 

“Let me be the one to go into town then. You two are more distinctive, and Rhene can’t walk at this point anyway,” Haidee said. 

“I don’t feel comfortable sending you by yourself,” Rhene worried. 

“No one pays attention to someone like me, and I’ll be especially fine if...” 

“If?” 

“After all of this, I’d like to take you up on your offer. My concerns about what I’m owed or my first step forward are irrelevant now.” 

“Eh...oh! Oh, of course!” Rhene clapped her hands together. “Haidee, please have your freedom.” 

“I’ll take it gladly. Not that anyone in this town will recognize me as a slave, yet I can walk safe with the knowledge that I...I am not,” Haidee spoke that truth for the first time with a breathy shake and growing smile. 

“That is settled. Rhene, I don’t expect this will go well, but would you like to try and stand?” Evelthon leapt to his feet. With his hand outstretched, Rhene made it halfway up before darkness took her again. 

She woke upon Evelthon’s back. Not once did his sculpted arms quiver from her weight, and his natural heat soothed the occasional chills rattling her in fits. If Evelthon and Haidee noticed her waking, they said nothing. Evelthon simply pointed out the right paths to follow through the uneven terrain where he twice flicked away snakes and their warning hisses with spinning arrows of wind. Haidee asked him what past the basics she should buy. Their conversation didn’t go further than that. Rhene revealed herself awake when they scouted a good hiding spot to wait so Rhene could embrace Haidee greatly for a wish of good luck. 

“Do you have much money left?” Rhene filled up the quiet air, sitting on a stump while Evelthon paced the area. 

“I have no money. We buy on Orius’s dramma,” Evelthon smirked. 

“What do you mean?” 

“What I explained earlier, how I can move objects from one space to another. I can accomplish this if I have seen the specific space before or if I am physically close to the location. Orius once showed me where he kept all his money in order for us to not have to worry about carrying large amounts around. The technique I used to fill the pouch I gave Haidee is how I filled the pouch Orius used to buy her.” 

“Doesn’t that drain you? You said you were exhausted,” Rhene squeezed her hands together. 

“That is true, but,” Evelthon tenderly pet the top of her head, “I can still do some. This is necessary for us to move with better haste. I will be fine.” 

“And...your wounds?” 

“I had to focus my energy towards flying once we got out of the temple. A javelin from a guard got my shoulder. The cut on my leg came from a gifted knife flying around as a piece of debris in my whirlwind,” Evelthon shook his head. “Both will heal by tomorrow.” 

“That’s good.” 

The two of them fell silent. Rhene didn’t expect it. Why Evelthon chose to depart early without word. The betrayal. That Evelthon had some status as a divine power. Numerous and obvious were the topics to have conversation stretch without end, but the brief pause she and Evelthon took somehow persisted into awkwardly locked lips. Rhene stared at her feet. Evelthon continued pacing. Honestly, Rhene wished to be back in her daze. Being unconscious made everything easy. She didn’t have to ponder why her tongue wouldn’t move, why her chest rang hollow. Shouldn’t she be overwhelmed by emotion? Why was there nothing? 

Evelthon’s absentminded wandering abruptly altered direction. Rhene quietly watched and eagerly permitted curiosity and interest to fiddle her fingers at him rummaging through his option of sticks upon the ground, nodding at his favorite he chose, sitting himself right by her stump, and drawing upon the ground. Rhene laughed upon realizing he drew her. 

“That’s me?” 

“It is. That you could recognize it as so means it is not utterly awful,” Evelthon praised himself. 

“May I have a go?” Rhene took the stick he passed over. The piece of wood was not her brushes, and the ground was not her expensive leather canvases. Still, the empty patch of dirt softened by the previous evening’s dampness sank obediently under the pressure of her grand tool.

“Now you’re showing off,” Evelthon bantered at her far better portrayal of him. 

“I’ve had practice, that’s all.” 

“Well, I’ll never have the patience to practice, so I suppose I shall have to make content knowing I’m in the presence of an expert.” 

“I-I would hardly say...” Rhene mumbled. 

“How about you draw your family?” Evelthon proposed. “That way I can know them better before we arrive.” 

Rhene happily obliged. She drew her father, mother, and siblings with careful consideration, doing a slow turn on the stump to expand her mural. She tapped at each with the stick. 

“Perdix always encouraged me to rebel. He supported my interests and right to learn. Although...I did find his insistence to break free of my confines quite arrogant. He could only speak of expectations being broken so nonchalantly because he was not bound by the same. Maia—Maiandria, yet we rarely call her that—was a duckling that followed me everywhere, exactly as you said once. She wanted to please me more than Mater, and I confided in her many things. Cilissa loves to be doted on but loves doting on others. She’s given Mater the most headaches out of us three daughters.” 

“With what I know of your mater,” Evelthon began musing with teasing, “would I give her a headache?” 

“It depends on how polite you are, I suppose.” 

“I mean with what I have already done. Since she adamantly kept you away from men, that we’ve ridden a horse together, sat this close, embraced...” 

“She might command Pater to do horrible things to your unmentionables,” Rhene giggled. 

“Best we not mention those moments then. As I anticipated. I don’t dare think on it. Give me the stick. I need a distraction, and it’s only fair I share too.” 

Rhene waited through his patient but determined strokes despite her want to scream out and correct each wrong line or inaccurate proportion. By the end, however, Evelthon sketched out five faces recognizable as faces. 

“Pater, Mater, my older brother, and my two older sisters.” 

“You’re the baby?” Rhene ribbed. 

“I’m the baby,” Evelthon thrust a sigh to the sky, “and my siblings never let me forget it.” 

“Do you...still see them?” 

“...They used to never let me forget it,” Evelthon corrected stiffly, head dropping. Before Rhene could apologize, Evelthon wrapped her fingers back around the stick. “I restate that I do not wish to discuss it much, but I used to be like you, Rhene. Naive, unaware, inexperienced—through no fault of my own. Another took advantage of me too, and even today I struggle to grasp how I’ve been affected, changed. Thus, I am glad I can be here for you, and I’m glad to have you here with me. Haidee will return shortly. We’ll take our next step from there, and what must be dealt with from the pains we each carry will be handled together.” 

Rhene took a deep breath. “Yes. Thank you, Evelthon.” 

“I...” He made an odd tilt of his head and spoke lightly with sheepishness. “Like your sister Maia, my family rarely called me by my full name. They called me Vel.” 

“Thank you, Vel,” Rhene beamed. 

That darkened his cheeks, and that darkening made her happy.