Having made it down the Knee, after a great deal of problem solving (she was used to a lot of things, but not to this), Titania was now settled in a small cave, if you could even call it that—more specifically, and perhaps more accurately, it was a little alcove in the side of a jagged range of rock, extending outwards from the Titan’s own fossilized bones. Here she’d set down her… well, she wouldn’t exactly say precious cargo, and got to work setting things up before she’d gone about tending to the accidental wound she’d inflicted on her… guest? The semantics of this situation were getting weird.
“I don’t know a great deal of healing magic aside from that,” Titania mumbled, cupping his chin in her clawed hands and looking over the gash in his face that she’d just cleaned enough with conjured water to halt the constant bleeding of, “so you’ll have to bear with me here. I’ll do what I can, and it shouldn’t leave a scar.”
“Lucky for you,” the stranger scoffed. “otherwise you’d have a lot of explaining to do to Belos.”
“Would I now?”
“You sure would.”
She rolled her eyes, turning towards her pack to root through it for something specific. “And what makes you think I’d want to talk to him?”
“It’s not a question of whether you’d want to talk to him,” he growled. “It’s not a question at all, actually. Everyone would know you did it, and you’d have to answer to him whether you liked it or not. Maybe he’s not the ruler of the Isles, or whatever, but you know, court of public opinion, and all that.”
“Hm.”
“What do you mean, hm?”
“I meant what I said, you dolt. It’s literally just an acknowledgement. Have you never talked to another witch before in your life or something? You have literally never once acted like this when you’re wearing your dumb outfit.” She cocked her head to the side. “What, does the mask possess you and suddenly give you the ability to function like a sorta-normal person?”
He glowered at her in response, but she didn’t answer; instead, she’d opened some sort of healing salve in the interim, and right before he’d formulated some sort of half-baked response to what she’d just said, she started gingerly applying it to the wound. He immediately froze up and went near ramrod stiff, unnaturally so; at the very least she’d expected some sort of attempt at a biting comeback, or at the minimum something half as mad as his earlier bloody hand thing. In tandem with everything she’d seen in the brief time they’d known each other beyond just semi-familiar public figures, like the earlier flinching thing, she really, really didn’t like this whole deal—what with the freezing and the flinching and the spacing out, or the uneasy feeling it gave her in the pit of her stomach; it belied something considerably more sinister than she was itching to get into.
Honestly, she would love nothing more than to not think about this ever again, and go back to only thinking of this guy as an extension of the even worse guy she hated a lot more—but apparently, that was just going to be impossible now, because… well, she was Titania, and she was kind of obligated to care, now. Sure, he had a shitty attitude, and a serious case of resting bitch face, and probably more than two dozen other things wrong with him, but… even if she really couldn’t do much, she still wanted to do something. Really, this whole situation just made her feel terrible. No good. Yikes.
This guy had literally been trying to kill her, like, an hour and a half earlier! Why did these things have to be so complicated!
She closed her eyes and sighed; but, as if on cue, the sudden crack of thunder in the approaching distance made her whip her head around to look outside, where the sky had grown noticeably grayer and darker since the last time she’d looked. Great. Boiling rain storm. Now she was extra stuck here. With this guy. In a cave.
…The weather still had time to turn itself around, right?
*Of course, the weather did not have time to turn itself around. It did, in fact, decide to rain before she’d finished with the stupid cut she’d given him on his dumb face, which had predictably ended up trapping the both of them in this alcove for the foreseeable future. Together. There was a fire going and everything.
Currently, he was nestled in a bunch of her furs and blankets on the benchlike outcropping of stone where she’d set him up, off in the corner just far enough away from the fire that, world willing, nothing stupid was likely to happen. And away from her. She wasn’t sure she could take anymore things happening today, thank you very much, and though she obviously felt bad for him she wasn’t particularly ready to get all buddy buddy with him quite yet.
Oh yeah, and her doofy palisman was consistently trying to see what exactly was up with him, which meant a constant string of muttering and whining and just general complaining about wild magic for background noise, which was absolutely the cherry on top.
When Oberon had finally decided to stop futzing around for once and come lay by her feet, she finally started to doze off… but of course, she didn’t get to, because this was her life, and a whole new host of problems had decided to come lay its parasites in it. Her hearing came back into focus when she heard her guest mumble something else, that didn’t specifically have to do with anything else, though she didn’t quite catch what it was before she’d woken herself up to an acceptable standard. The… wow, referring to him was getting taxing. The supposed “Golden Guard” gave her a cursory glance as she groggily watched him, before he averted his eyes awkwardly to instead look straight into the firelight. What a strange character.
“So,” he said, after a good few minutes of staring straight into the fire she’d started, over the hiss of the rain that continued to pour outside. “Your parents… they… named you after the Titan?”
“Not really,” she answered, glancing over at him and rubbing her palms together absentmindedly. He was gazing intently at her; the stark white line of bandages she’d done her best to cover the cut with stuck out against the rest of his face. She watched his expression. He seemed genuinely curious, just enough so for it to be readable through his resting expression of mild disdain. “I don’t think they really believed in any of that stuff. Your coven stuff. I mean, they were spiritual people, sure, but that whole system… didn’t really click with them.”
“So they were wild witches, then.”
“Mhm.”
“Wild magic is dangerous,” he blurted out. He seemed strangely genuine, a glint of worry in his eyes as he looked at her. “You know that, right?”
“Everything’s dangerous.”
“Obviously,” he scoffed; there it was again, that sort of instinctive defensiveness that he kept putting up whenever she challenged him beyond a surface level. Heavens, how was she ever going to help him? …She felt obligated to, felt as if she knew she had to, just not how. If there ever were a night to seek out her ancestors’ guidance, this would be it. He didn’t even seem to be that much younger than her—honestly, she’d put him at around nineteen or twenty—but he was one of the strangest people she’d ever met, and incredibly jaded for someone so young. “But wild magic is… different.”
“How so?”
“I…” he faltered. This was, noticeably, the first time he’d done so all night without it being followed by some sort of unnerving behaviour, which was a first. Of course, he immediately backed himself up out of the corner he’d stuck himself in with yet another incredibly defensive statement, because what else would he do. “I-I shouldn’t have to explain it to you! It just is! It’s not what the Titan wants—it’s unruly, and dangerous, and… and…”
“And I suppose you’re the arbiter of the Titan’s will? Whatever that means?”
He shook his head. “I can’t speak to the Titan. Only Belos can. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Belos just wants to help people. He wants to protect people, and it’s wild witches like you who’re disobeying the Titan that are hurting everyone.”
Alright, that was enough. She wasn’t really interested in this conversation anymore, especially if this twenty-year-old man was just gonna act like a fourteen year old and parrot stuff his incredibly xenophobic… relative, maybe (that was her best guess, anyway, and considering all the other insane shit currently going on in her life it wouldn’t be the most unrealistic thing), taught him. “Oh, come on. I’ve only hurt one person in the last week or so.”
He made a face at her.