Hineni is outside on his usual midday stroll.

It has become a typical part of his routine these days to just sort of wander out of the house without ever really saying anything, only to come back after about an hour or so. He spends all day there, being trapped inside and he thinks that it does him a lot of good to just sort of wander every now and then.

Usually, he leaves the city, as walking through it is more than troublesome. He always gets stopped on the way by someone wanting to talk about something or someone needing something or something else of that nature.

Instead, he finds his peace outside of its walls, out in the minuscule forest, which has been harvested to quite an extent. There really isn’t much of it left these days.

He remembers when he was a child. The forest was much bigger back then.

Or sometimes he’ll go to the pond or the river. One time, he even went to the adventurers’ guild, down the way and had a drink there in secret.

He found that he had a strong liking for the taste of the drink and even more so for the strange way that it made him feel; burnt on the insides and a little dried out and leathery, but more… complete, than he is in his day to day.

- He never went back, realizing immediately the trap he had stepped into there.

The man lifts his head, staring at the clouds. They are all blobs of indistinct shapes and sizes.

Today, he has different things on his mind.

There are talks of a war-effort, brewing down in the southern regions of the world. The elves of the deep-forest seem to want to break off from the rest of the region’s governance. This is very likely to escalate.

He doesn’t know if it’s true, exactly. Adventurers will often tell tall-tales, especially when they’re drinking. But there have just been too many whispers and rumors to discount lately.

A war, huh?

He places his hands in his pockets, despite it being a warm, sunny day and continues strolling through the forest.

It sounds like a terrible thought, honestly and he knows that he shouldn’t be thinking it. But it seems, in a way that he can’t really, healthily explain, like an exciting prospect.

A war?

This might be the first real ‘thing’ that happens during his life and even as terrible and horrific as such as thought is, he almost hopes that the rumors are real.

- He’s just so desperate for something, anything, to happen.

A man isn’t made to live a perfect life.

Hineni turns his head, looking at an odd, rickety shrine, which someone had made in the forest, consisting of what amounts to sticks and rocks.

People take their worship of the gods with them to all sorts of places.

But he doesn’t really have anything to do with any of that. He just lives a quiet, ‘normal’ life, surrounded by quiet, normal people.

The worst part is that he doesn’t even have a reason for being dissatisfied. This is the life path he himself chose to walk, after all.

It is night-time, several weeks later.

Hineni sits at his desk and runs the knife into the wood over and over. He sits there, hunched forward and stares intently at his markings. Given that he’s done this so often, there really isn’t any space left in the desk where he could hide his ‘work’. So he has taken to simply running the letter-opener through the already carved words, deepening them and severely scarring the table.

He turns his head, looking to the right for a moment, looking at a small box that is set on the desk.

His gaze falls back to his desk and he continues his scratching and carving, clenching his fingers tightly around the knife.

A glimmer of a glowing ember releases from his fingers and he hisses, quickly snubbing it out with his bare hands.

That damn ash-magic. It’s never caused him anything but trouble.

He never really used it, mostly focusing on his carpentry as his lifestyle focus and his parents had never really spoken to him much about it. It’s an odd result of his birth, given that his mother has very strong water-magic and his father has earth-magic, but only very weakly. By all accounts, he should have something in that range. That’s how this typically works. But he has ash-magic and nobody can really say why.

Life is a mystery.

*Dhuk**Dhuk**Dhuk**Dhuk*

Hineni blinks, turning his head to look at his door, as he is roused from his daze.

Quickly, he rubs the wooden dust away, covers the spot on the desk with the mat and stashes away the letter-opener.

The man gets up and heads to the door. It’s unusual for someone to be here in the middle of the night.

He opens it and looks at his mother. She stands there in the corridor, looking rather confused and dazed.

“Have you seen my fairy?” she asks.

Hineni stares at her, recognizing the half-vacant look in her eyes. This often happens at night, specifically, for whatever reason. Especially since she’s gotten much older. The horror of old age spares no body, nor soul.

“Mom, it’s the middle of the night,” says Hineni, stepping out of his room. “Come on, let’s get you back upstairs.” He grabs her shoulders, gently turning her towards the door to the attic and then grabs her hand.

“I can’t go upstairs,” she says, looking around at the dark corridor. “I have to find my fairy,” she says. “There’s a problem and I need her help.”

“Mom,” says Hineni, slowly guiding her towards the attic. “I live here. I’ve grown up under your roof,” he explains. “If there was a fairy here, I would have seen her by now.”

The woman sighs.

“What’s the problem?” he asks, pulling her back towards the door. “I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

“You can’t,” replies his mother. “The demon’s coming back, Nini,” she says. Hineni turns his head to look at her worried face. “I need my fairy to put up some protection on the house.”

Hineni gently grabs both of her hands. “Mom. Look at me,” he pleads. “Demons aren’t real and we don’t have a fairy in the house. Please. Go back to bed.”

The old woman turns to look at the door to the attic and then to his face. “It hasn’t forgotten about you, Nini,” she says. “It will never forget about you," she explains. “You still smell like the forest.”

Hineni opens the door to the upstairs and slowly pulls her towards it. “Mom. You’re moonsick. You really need to go to sleep,” he says, turning his head to look at his father, who was on his way downstairs.

“Don’t open a door if anyone knocks three times, Nini,” warns his mother. “Don’t try to count its eyes, okay?”

“Come on. We’re going back to bed,” says his father. “Stop spooking the boy with your nonsense.”

Hineni nudges his mother towards him and the old man takes her and nods to him. Hineni nods back and closes the door behind them, listening as they walk back up the creaky staircase.

He sighs and looks out down the darkened corridor of his home.

The smell of water-lilies lingers in the air.

She always insisted on that perfume and has worn it all of her life. Sometimes a little too heavily, as the smell often lingers in places where she has been or on things she has touched. It used to bother him. It made him think he was sitting by a frog-filled pond all day. ‘Demons and fairies’, these have always been the topic of her rants. His mother had always been a little out there, in regards to her perception of reality. But it has really gotten worse as she aged.

Hineni rubs his forehead and walks back down the hallway, wondering what that 'forest' remark was about. He smells beneath his arm. He supposes he does smell a little like wood? He is a carpenter, after all.

A head pops out of a door.

“Is everything okay?” asks a familiar, tender voice. He turns to look at Nekyah. She’s standing there in a soft night-gown, rubbing her tired face and yawning. Hineni nods to her.

“Mom just had another bad night,” he says. “Everything’s fine.”

She frowns. “It feels like it's getting worse.”

“It is. Go back to sleep,” says Hineni. “We’re going to the market together tomorrow, remember? So it’s no good if you’re tired.”

She thinks for a moment and then nods, turning her head and pointing at her cheek.

Hineni obliges, planting a kiss there and then surprising her by bending down and grabbing her, lifting her up and carrying her inside.

She gasps, feigning surprise. “Is a poor, defenseless creature like myself being viciously attacked in her own bedroom?” she playfully asks, holding a hand in front of her mouth.

Hineni unceremoniously plops her down into the bed, grabbing the covers and tucks her in. “No.” He honestly doesn't even know why he just did that.

She frowns, an odd croaky kind of sound coming from her throat. “Oh… You got my hopes up for a moment there.”

Hineni stares at her for an awkward second and then looks around the room, rubbing the back of his head. “Come on. You know that you need to get some sleep too.”

“- Do you think that I’m ugly?” she asks, rather abruptly.

He blinks, turning back to look at her. “- That’s the reason, isn’t it?” she asks. “You think that those normal girls are prettier than me, right?”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Then why don’t you ever want to?” she asks. “ …You know…?”

“Because I’m waiting for marriage,” lies Hineni, making something up on the spot to get himself out of the situation. “I’m surprised you think differently about it, honestly,” he says. “We grew up together, Nekyah. You know me.”

She lifts a finger, pointing to her face. “Then why don’t you ever kiss me on the mouth?”

That one hit him. Hineni sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. She has never shied away from difficult questions like this.

There really is no way out of this, is there? In truth, he finds her incredibly attractive and he knows that she is open for him in spirit and in body, but…

- Something feels squicky about it.

Maybe it's because they grew up together? But something about the prospect always feels a little off-putting to him. Even if she is the special person in his life and even if he has a ring sitting on his desk, inside of a box, this very moment.

But maybe that’s just a piece of immaturity that he’s hanging on to? Or maybe there’s something that he’s scared of breaking? He’s always viewed her as a fragile, weak thing, after all.

Hineni comes to a decision, fueled perhaps more by his desire to escape than by his rational, long-term thinking mind. He bends down and kisses her, pretending to enjoy it, before tucking her in, getting back up and going back to his room by himself.

He closes the door behind himself and stares at the floor.

That felt wrong.

(Hineni) uses: [Ash: Smolder]

Hineni sits out by the pond in the forest, staring at a rock that is on the other side of the water. A spark glows around it, worming its way over the surface of the thing. But it never catches and it quickly dies out.

(Hineni) uses: [Ash: Smolder]

The spark renews itself and then goes out again.

(Hineni) uses: [Ash: Smolder]

This goes on and on for a time. The man snaps his fingers so fast over and over, the magic coming out, until his body feels drained and the skin of his thumb feels raw from the rubbing of his calloused digits.

He made a mistake.

Wasn’t he just out here yesterday, noticing how unhappy he was with his life?

But now he’s entered into a place that he can’t come back from. The door is closed. He’s cemented in now. He can’t just leave anymore. He can’t just walk away and say that he wants to see the world by himself or work a different job somewhere else.

- He’s stuck.

Hineni snaps his fingers again. He has no more magic to cast with, his soul-points having been drained. But, funnily enough, the rock shatters nonetheless.

He blinks, staring at it in confusion for a moment, before shaking his head and returning to his thoughts.

Maybe, if he’s lucky, they’ll call a draft for the war, if it really happens?

That’s his escape.

That’s how a coward like him can get out of this.

Hineni rises to his feet, a new hope in his heart, as he heads back to the suffocating atmosphere of home and his mostly perfect life.