Old Bones and New Magic [DragonSong! <3]

[Rhindeer]

"Oh, you want to take the boar by yourself? Have at it, my friend!" And with a cheerful grin, Makani hefted the bag off his shoulder and slung it around Kiri's to test her strength. If she wanted to carry two-hundred pounds alone, he was definitely curious to see her try!

[DragonSong]

"Oof!" Kiri staggered under the sudden increase of weight—the damn board had weighed more than her!

"Well," she puffed, admitting defeat easily and dropping on of the sacks. "I would have put it on a leaf mat to drag, rather than try to deadlift it," she laughed breathlessly. "But fine, fine, you've made you're point."

She knelt, shifting to get the strap of the bag she'd dropped over her shoulder. "Now. If you'll excuse me, I feel like I should at least carry this a couple of steps. My pride demands it."

[Rhindeer]

Oh. Makani's eyebrows raised as the girl announced she was going to carry the sacks, at least a little. With an approving smirk, he stepped beside her and made a small spectacle of stretching out his arms and wings, back popping pleasantly, silently showing off how nice it was to be free and unburdened from all that weight.

"Pride makes us do silly things, doesn't it?" he remarked as he watched her, not offering to help until she relented. "Who are you proving this to, out of curiosity? Yourself, or me?"

[DragonSong]

Kiri huffed--partially at him, but mostly from exertion--and gave a slightly vague nod. "Me. Mostly. I think." She managed a few more steps before she simply dropped to sit on the jungle floor. Tipping her head back to look at him, she let the sack he'd originally been carrying slide off her shoulders.

"Alright, I give."

[Rhindeer]

Grinning in sheer amusement (Kiri was such an interesting, silly thing), Makani bent to gather up the sack and slung it back over his shoulder with a grunt.

"And...is your pride satisfied with the results?" he asked simply, peering down at her with his hands on his knees.

[DragonSong]

"I believe it is," she replied primly, though her smile was equal parts self-deprecating and mischievous. Properly shouldering her own sack once again, she got to her feet with a sharp exhale and rolled her head from side to side to crack her neck. "It's a fickle thing though, my pride. I try not to indulge it too often, but I've got to sate it every now and then or it never leaves me in peace."

She scrunched her nose up at him before starting off down the trail again. "C'mon! Should be there by dusk if we move with purpose."

[Rhindeer]

"With purpose! Noted!" Makani said as he fell into step beside her--at least, when the path would allow it. When it narrowed from trees and brush, he let her walk ahead of him and followed single file behind her. After all, she knew the way.

"I'll also note you're in charge of our pace. I've no idea where we're headed." Coming up beside her again, he gave her shoulder a playful nudge with his own. "Not that I'm calling you a slacker or anything, slacker."

[DragonSong]

"Oh, no," Kiri laughed, stumbling a bit when he nudged her shoulder but recovering quickly enough to turn the stumble into a nudge back. "No no, I've indulged my pride quite enough for one day, I should think. No foot races for me."

She hefted her sack and added with a slight, crooked smile, "Not that I'm afraid of one, though. Maybe another day."

It was a rather long trek back to her mother's home, but strangely she didn't feel nearly as tired as she should by the time she could pick out the shape of it through a gap in the trees: situated comfortably just at the edge of the village she'd been born into, it was one of maybe three houses that nearly brushed up against the jungle itself.

There were three children playing outside the house, and as Makani and Kiri approached, the seemingly oldest raised their head and peered into the steadily darkening trees. When Kiri raised her hand, they called over their shoulder into the house, "Maaaaaamaaaaa! Kiri's back!"

Another of the children piped up with pure mischief in her eyes, "And she brought a stranger!"

"And a boar," Kiri protested with a laugh, dropping her sack so the youngest of the three could jump up into her arms once she was close enough that a running start was doable. Glancing sidelong at Makani, she quirked one eyebrow and muttered, "Sure you're ready for this?"

[Rhindeer]

Makani would have been lying to say he wasn't tired by the time they reached Kiri's home.

But he made a good effort not to show it, and took an extra effort not to let anything slip along their connection. For all the playful shit-talking he'd done and teasing her about her pride, he wasn't about to let on that he had his own pride issues, too, and his sack of boar meat had somehow seemed to grow twice as heavy over the course of their journey.

Of course, they wouldn't be so lucky as to take a little break upon arrival, because no sooner had those homes come into view when a child's voice rang out.

Followed by another announcing Kiri had brought a stranger.

Makani snorted a laugh at that (ahh, a child's unfiltered honesty never got old) and grinned over at Kiri's question. "I'm one of seven," he said, eyes flicking from one child to the next, ending on the one in her arms. "I think I can handle three."

[DragonSong]

"Oh, the kids aren't the issue," Kiri muttered back. "You should really be nervous about--"

"Well, it certainly took you long enough."

Rolling her eyes, Kiri turned toward the woman in the doorway, who apparently had come in response to the children's summons. "I wasn't even gone the whole day, Ma," she said with a crooked grin, shifting her niece onto her hip so she could hold her with one arm.

Her mother, a pleasantly plump woman in her late fifties who shared the blue streaks in Kiri's hair though not the violet, folded her arms and raised one eyebrow. "I wasn't talking about the boar," she said meaningfully, and looked Makani up and down.

Oh boy. Kiri gave her new mentor a look that screamed, I warned you.

"Well, the boar is heavy, and the immediate issue," she responded brightly. "Mind calling in some reinforcements?"

Her mother smiled and placed two fingers in her mouth to give a short, sharp whistle. There was a scuffling noise behind her--evidently the "reinforcements" Kiri had asked for.

Without waiting for her other progeny to make an appearance, she approached them both and nodded politely to Makani. "Well met, stranger. I'm Hekila. It's not often Kiri returns to us with new folks in tow."

[Rhindeer]

[welp, according to autocorrect, Kiri is Kirk now, lmao.]

Oh dear. Makani knew that look, all right. The one that said mama was hungry for some grandbabies and hoped he was the solution.

He returned Kiri's look with an amused smirk. Guess this would be a test, then, to see if Kiri's mother was capable of terrorizing him. He generally thought of himself as calm and unflappable, but he was open to being surprised. And in the meantime, he was also very, very open to leaning into the joke.

He shifted the pack on his shoulder and smiled warmly at Hekila. "Well met! I'm Makani. Your daughter just sort of found me and I somehow ended up adopting her. Still not quite sure how it happened, but we've become quite close in such a short amount of time."

Of course, he was talking about their connection. But from the grin he flashed Kiri, he was also quite aware that Hekila would likely only take that one way.

[DragonSong]

[Lolol has definitely happened to me more than I'd like XD]


Ooohhhh boy. He was playing a dangerous game with that. Kiri shot him a quick Are you sure about this? sort of look as her mother raised her eyebrows.

"Have you now?" Hekila asked with a pointed look at her daughter.

Kiri had just opened her mouth to start to explain, "Well, we--" when the reinforcements she had requested arrived.

"Well now, who is this?" Her sister, Akila, gave Makani an almost identical look that their mother was giving him as she knelt to help Kiri with the boar. Ioani and Pika, two of her older brothers, circled the both of them before one moved to help Kiri and the other offered a hand to Makani.

Kiri sighed, admitting defeat. She was never going to get a chance to explain this properly until they were all settled. Which, knowing her family, could be days.

"This is Makani," she huffed, abandoning the idea of a proper introduction.

"Makani," Akila repeated, grinning at him. "I've gotta say, you're not my sister's usual type."

[Rhindeer]

Makani simply beamed back at Kiri. Hey, he wasn't the one that had to live with her family! He shrugged at Hekila, wings fluffing. "Oh yes. Close close."

But before Kiri could attempt to salvage the situation, the reinforcements arrived and circled them like sharks. He felt like he was being weighed and measured and judged, which was fine, why wouldn't he be as a random stranger showing up with Kiri and hinting at their closeness? He offered his pack to Pika, secretly relieved to be rid of the weight after carrying it so long, and that was when one of her sisters sized him up and made her statement.

Not her usual type, huh?

He snorted and shot Kiri a sidelong look. "Ahh, she has a type, does she? Interesting. But you know, sometimes too much of the same thing gets dull and you need a little break in the monotony. If you eat honey too much honey, no matter how good and sweet, you'll eventually grow sick of it."

[DragonSong]

"Mmmm." Akila grinned, clearly loving the excuse to torture her sister. "She usually doesn't go for, ah, such broad shoulders."

Kiri groaned and bapped the side of Akila's head with a quick flex of her wing. "Can we get on with this? Look, I brought food! See? Food!" She gestured expressively to the packs she and Makani had hauled through the jungle. "It wasn't easy to drag all the way here, either, you bunch of ingrates."

"Thank you, Auntie Kiri," one of her nieces said sweetly, tugging on the hem of her skirt. She looked down into her guileless little face and her shoulders slumped. She couldn't even pretend to be irritated with the kids.

"Alright, chick, c'mere." The child reached up, giggling, and she bent and scooped the girl up into her arms.

"Well, won't you come in for something to eat?" Kiri's mother offered Makani as her brood clucked and moved around them in a carefully choreographed dance of curious laughter. "It seems there might be a story to tell."

[Rhindeer]

"Oh really?" It took every ounce of willpower not to wheeze with laughter. Broad shoulders, huh? He slid a look over at Kiri and winked. "Guess there's always room for exceptions."

As Kiri wrangled the children, or they wrangled her (it was hard to tell the difference), Makani turned to Kiri's mother and smiled graciously at her. "I would love that. And I'm certain Kiri would love to tell the tale of our whirlwind meeting and everything that blossomed from it! Isn't that right, Kiri?" he called, just to put her on the spot.

Hey, she'd as good as challenged him.

[DragonSong]

Ohhhhh she should've known she was going to regret baiting him.

Giving her new mentor a very dry look over her niece's head, Kiri replied brightly, "Of course! I guess it really is quite a story, huh?"

Her siblings tittered at that, the whole throng of them now ushering the two into the house and toward the rather heavenly smell that was emanating from it.

Kiri quirked one eyebrow at Makani. Hey, she'd play the game as long as he would, if he was up for it.

[Rhindeer]

"It's a fabulous story! And you have such a way with words."

Makani flashed her a cheeky smile. Honestly, he was just curious to see how she'd spin this. He was fairly certain she wasn't going to go with honesty, because "I bound myself to some blood mage I bumped into in the jungle and we're in each other's heads" would probably sound rightly batshit and dangerous.

But hey, that was her choice to make and her consequences!

"Something smells amazing," he said as they moved into their home. "Gods, it's been a while since I've had a proper meal. I'll admit I'm a boring cook."

[DragonSong]

More laughter from her siblings and mother--and it seemed an aunt, who smiled up at the chattering group as they were corralled inside from where she was stirring a sauce over an open fire.

"Well, there's no boring food in this house," she said with a quick wink. "Whether that means it's good is sometimes a matter of debate."

"Oh, don't scare the boy," Kiri's mother tutted, which earned a theatric eyeroll from her daughter. She rather thought Makani might not quite qualify for the boy moniker anymore--although, she thought the same of herself and girl, but her parents, aunts, uncle, and grandmother all seemed to vehemently disagree. 

"It's a pity for you Kiri's not much of a cook either," Akila teased, elbowing Kiri gently before taking the child that she still held to free up her hands. "Sounds like the two of you might be needing a third influence if you ever want a decent meal."

Kiri stared up at the ceiling and mouthed a silent prayer for mercy.

[Rhindeer]

Boy? Makani thought with an amused look at Kiri, both eyebrows raised. That was a word he hadn't been called in a good decade or so, but it was kind of endearing coming from the older woman.

And they were worried about scaring him off! Adorable. Kiri was more of a flight risk than he was, he thought as Akila mentioned a "third influence" and Kiri stared at the ceiling as though begging for divine intervention. Oh no, he was in his element here! The chaos was interesting, the air abuzz with a frenetic but warm energy.

And suddenly he realized with an unexpected pang that he had missed this. People. Family. Crazy, loud get-togethers, drama and all.

He shook the thought away. "The more the merrier, I say!" Makani said. "I think the biggest challenge would be finding someone willing to put up with us. Kiri's quite the handful and I can't say I'm much better. It must be why we work so well together, right Kiri?"

He playfully swatted Kiri with the tip of a wing, winking at her. None of what he'd said was a lie, this was a partnership of a sort and they were working together. But he knew damned well how her mother would interpret that.