Tale of the Lost Bird

"Whatever are you three doing?"

Tesei stands before the tapered opening to the wine cellar, hunching low to peer inside and between the hanging vines usually shrouding the 'forbidden door' from sight, unsure of what to make of this conundrum. In front of them are squatted their two brothers and sister - Milohi, Yiona and Balu, their arms full of miscellaneous vintage decanters no doubt pilfered from their father's stash. They kept stock still until Tesei called after them, whereupon all three hooligans deflated with disappointment and dropped their gargoyle disguise.

"Cripes, it was supposed to be a surprise!" Yiona whinges, annoyed.

It strikes the centaur that they'd likely stood like statues, hoping Tesei would overlook them while they'd ambled down the stairs in a sleep haze, concerned by an irregular noise. They wonder idly if this is a jab at their eyesight but can't fault them after it took squinting at Milohi's horns for a solid minute for Tesei to put two and two together. They can fault them for nearly getting themselves killed, however.

"Oh no, it was certainly a surprise, I nearly trampled you lot to death." Tesei remarks sleepily, then rises from their crouch. Goes not much further in stature before their horns scrape the tall ceiling and their back complains. Na'vock is beginning to get cagey. "Now, someone care to clue me in?"

Yiona harrumphs like he's mad at anyone but himself for getting caught, the world conspiring against his brilliant persona, as per usual. Tesei has no doubt he was the instigator.

"As you are being kidnapped-"

"-as you are going away,," Milohi corrects gently.

"-to those self-important Sa'vel freaks. That cannot keep their hands off anything-" Yiona doubles down, baring his teeth in a sneer.

"-we thought we would introduce you to the wonderful world of alcohol. Sibling birthright and all." Balu ends the argument with a flourishing display of the two wine pitchers she has.

Tesei's sleep-mush brain needs a moment to catch up with everything, the scene is still a bit ridiculous even with added context. The first thing they think to say is 'I'm a freak too' but they glance at the loot instead.

"That will never get me drunk... and we are all too young to be allowed into the cellar anyway." They cross their arms with a small, knowing smile. "Who is this really for?"

"Us!- I mean, all of us, you too!" Yiona whisper-screams with mock-hurt frustration. "This is a sibling-reserved experience, understood? As for your delicate condition, well, so much for plan A."

Tesei follows his miserable gaze to the floor and realizes what had made enough noise to rouse them. A decanter of expensive spirit lays in shards on the floor. Old blend. One of their father's favourites to break out at parties. Strong enough to knock out the most resilient ant Avarri. They cock an eyebrow in surprise. The pipsqueaks really had planned to get them drunk.

"Oh, you are in deep trouble..."

"Tell me about it! If father notices-"

"No, I mean to say-" Tesei shuffles their feet apologetically, but still lets out a chuckle. "I.. woke mother and father up, before I came down."

Their collective, comically exaggerated look of horror is picturesque and lasts for all of ten seconds before footsteps begin at the top of the landing and Yiona loses it completely.

"YOU AWFUL TATTLETALE!"

Tesei snorts gently and shrugs, not feeling particularly sorry. "I thought there were intruders..."

---

---

The next day Tesei finds their siblings miserably askew on the moist grass and mud of the hanging gardens, looking like their souls about left them. On the plus side, their mother's plants look immaculately upkept - trimmed, weeded, with fifteen rows of newly planted vegetables watered with sweat and likely some blood. A worthy punishment for last night. There's a clutch of gardenias in a vase on the porch table in an act of desperate kissing up or apology, a clear 'please mother, enough' that Tesei can almost imagine in Yiona's overdramatic tone. Yiona who's just as dramatically draped across a pile of upturned pennyweed like he's just finished playing the part of a particularly tragic and currently dead prince. One hand above his head in woe and a wing jabbing Milohi in the face, who appears to be the less graceful but equally dead brother of the prince. Balu's sitting a little ways ahead, cursing at a flower bush between her splayed legs that she's having trouble trimming.

Tesei takes them in with a pitying smile.

They'd always enjoyed gardening unlike their siblings, first since it was the only group activity that allowed quality time with their mother without bending and crouching to avoid ceilings, and second, because reaching the high branches of their garden was no trouble for them. Meanwhile, they don't doubt the trio had spent an ungodly amount of time flying around the house, tending to hanging plants. Balu sounds like she's about to cry out of frustration. She sniffles angrily when she turns to glare at Tesei, or rather tries to. It comes off as a childish pout.

Tesei smiles apologetically and lifts the bottle in their hand higher.

"Truce?"

"What in the depths of Noc'te-"

"I bought alcohol as a respite for my tireless workers!"

Yiona raises his head blearily off the pennyweed. "Wha-"

They make quickwork of gathering around the outdoor table, making haste with glasses, and uncork the bottle impatiently, aware of the precious time they have before their parents come home.

"You bought this?" Balu gawks at the large bottle, then at the amber liquid in her glass. It looks like a golden, forbidden drink, and they're all clearly excited, since it is.

"I- yes." Tesei pinks a little, the high of rulebreaking finally catching up to them. "Well, the uh- the council... sent me some funds. For supplies." They speak the word quietly, in an almost revered, nervous whisper, but then allow themself a snicker. "I am not sure they are aware many folks can hunt just fine. And I don't even need a mount."

"Therefore, logically, you went and bought drinks. While on babysitting duty. Shoddy job you've done of it so far, I must say." Balu intones playfully, her eyes bright despite the circumstances.

Circumstances being Yiona glaring at his glass. Tesei glances at him and internally sighs, tired of this newfound, misplaced territorial streak of his, but supposes they'd provoked it. Council was a dirty word in their youngest brother's presence.

"Bribing you, are they?" Yiona pouts, and though he's doing his level best to keep a neutral expression, his tone has sharp, gnashing teeth.

"And what would you call this?" Tesei shoots him a small half-tired smile, pleading for him to drop it, and raises their glass. Their brother eyes it with a brow half-cocked.

"An acceptable apology is what i'd call it!" Milohi, who's been waiting impatiently for his siblings to stop being bickering dolts, enthusiastically extends his hand too, glass full. "A toast! Eh?"

Balu joins in a second's fraction, stoking the fire. "A toast. To new horizons, taller ceilings- ."

"-to our baby sibling finally spreading their runt wings, -" Milohi adds, provoking some laughs, then fixes the lone opposition with an expecting look. Tesei and Balu follow suit.

Yiona's lips are pursed and his hand is tight around the glass. He looks perplexed finding himself scrutinized by three people and four pairs of eyes. There's something sad and nostalgic curtaining his face, but the end their bright expressions makes it impossible not to smile. Tesei feels that in their soul.

Yiona snort-sighs. Concedes. "And to coming back home soon." The fourth glass finally raises.

"Hear-hear!"

Laughter bubbles in Tesei's chest, heart warm. They sit in a sunspot. Balu is smiling bright. Yiona has pennyweed in his hair and Milohi's face is stained with mud. It's all soft and sweet for a moment. They crash their glasses together and take a cheery sip.

And like all poorly-constructed decisions, it makes the precious familial moment grind to a halt immediatelly.

The taste is flagrantly disgusting.

Tesei's lips find themselves unintentionally curling into a grimace and the centaur slowly closes one eye in a flinch. Balu makes a nondedcript noise of pure disgust. Yiona spits his drink right back into the cup. Then there is Milohi, ever the overachiever, who has decided he's going to shotgun it and, understandably, chokes on the first large acidic gulp. It comes out of his nose and he doubles over in a premortem coughing fit.

"Well..." Tesei says, a statement in and of itself.

They sit in a disappointed pause for a while, basking in the audial accompaniment of Milohi's hacking.

"What k- ind of monsters are ad- ults?!" he bemoans amidst fishlike gasps, sounding so utterly betrayed that Tesei would laugh if they didn't understand the sentiment.

"Yeah, eho would drink this garbage for fun?" Balu seems to read their mind. 

Meanwhile Yiona's trying to look unimpressed even though he's running his tongue over his teeth covertly. "Can't say they didn't warn us, I suppose.." When he shrugs, it's just to spite Milohi. Who elbows him.

"Help m- e you bastards!"

They set about hiding the bottle and making sure Milohi doesn't meet a miserable end upon taking his first steps into adulthood, then act the part of well-behaved kiddies the rest of the day.

Still, late evening finds them all crowded into Tesei's large bedroom, scattered about on the floor in various states of intoxication. It isn't about the drink, but the experience, according to Balu. And truly, Tesei feels warm and soft, away from their own mind in the most pleasant way possible, as if on the edge of sleep. They're talking in hushed tones, mindful of their sleeping parents and a repeat of last night.

Milohi is trying his best to laugh quietly. "I am so sorry!"

"Did you have to breathe on me?!" Balu's currently laying face-down, shaking with laughter and trying to regain her sense of smell, after a whiff of her brother's destructive drunkard breath caught her right in the nose. She hiccoughs in a pre-vomit fashion and then giggles stupidly, but for all her lamenting, she's really not too upset about it.

"I am so, so sorry..."

"Goddess, get away from me, that smell can kill a man..."

Milohi guffaws a little too loudly, then grins like a wolf. "And it will, tomorrow, when I find Jako. Or Enya. Anybody. Anybody that crosses my path is getting the whiff of death. And I am taking that damn bottle with me." He's talking himself up like some malevolent world destroyer in possession of the deadliest poison, completely overlooking Yiona watching him with an eyebrow half-cocked.

"Milohi"

"Eh?"

"Do you ever wonder why no one wants to date you?"

There's a second of silence before the room explodes into loud, choked laughter half-smothered into pillows and carpet. Milohi's eyebrows are drawn together in pure sorrow and he's covering his face with his hands, weep-laughing into them. There's a high, whining chant of 'oh no, oh no' coming from him as Yiona doubles down as always, adding insult to injury. 'Huh, you idiot? You ever wonder about Alina and Vassi? Huh? When your finger's always knuckle-deep in your nose? And you stink like sweat all the time?!'

They spend a few solid minutes to calm down after that. Tesei has to wipe their eyes by the end and spies pillow trackmarks on Balu' s face when she lifts it again. Yiona looks way too proud of himself, watching a limp, defeated but smiling Milohi with a smirk. 

"So, what do you think Sa'vel will be like?"

Tesei's head swivels in surprise. Balu's laying on her back on the bed, hugging the pillow with her chin propped on top. Picture perfect kid-waiting-for-a-story.

She seems to be the only one not petrified by the prospect of them leaving for some unknown land and never returning home. Tesei loves her so much right now. Doesn't know if she's sensed their enthusiasm and the gnawing guilt that comes with it, or if she's genuinely happy for them, but they're thankful either way. Yiona groans but they ignore him.

"Well.." Tesei begins, smiling, already in their element. "There are so many legends about the Spire for one... The mystical tower that hides all the secrets of history. The eye of the heavens." They recall a sketch of it - a needle pointed skyward, ready to pop the clouds like bubbles. It lay between the loose pages of a memoir they'd read once, so odd and unearthly they refused to believe it was real. But hoped it was. "Beyond that, they speak of tall walls and towers that cast mile-long shadows. Foggy lakes with cursed fountains nestled within. Monuments of ancient wars..." They catch Balu following along, dreamily looking at the ceiling, and catch themself before they get carried away with their imagination. "And... demigods, apparently."

"Think you might be one of them?" Milohi whispers, half cautious, half entirely out of it.

"They think so."

"The mythical skarrid themselves think so? Or the council that has no way of proving it does?" Yiona bites out, speech too slurred and neigh unintelligible to hold any malice. He just sounds miserable.

Yet Tesei has no desire, nor courtesy to feel sorry for him right now. They simply regard him with all four eyes and flip their veil over one shoulder too matter-of-factly to be in character.

Trapped in the crossfire of tension, Milohi ventures to mellow it out: "Well... Tesi looks.. mythical enough?"

"That's one way of putting it."

Tesei sighs. The wayward looks had always said enough. But there the problem lay: that they could not blame a single person for looking at them strangely. They were, by all accounts, strange. Physically, for popping out an egg the size of a kitchen pot, then growing the size of the kitchen; for the extra legs, the veil, the eyes (with one missing), the tail and the worried looks their parents affixed to all these parts every time Tesei wished to leave the house. Enough for them to feel like a coveted secret.

And when the solution finally comes...

"Do you have to go there to find out what you are?" Stuck on the issue like he had been for weeks, Yiona finally breaks and asks.

There it is. The pull in the opposite direction. That guilt that freedom would impose upon them for leaving everyone that loved and accepted them behind on the off-chance of even more love and acceptance elsewhere. The rest of Na'vock is cold and lonely, but this little nook right here, with these people... is home. And every time Yiona acts like they're an estranged runaway in the making, it makes that guilt all the worse. Enough... just enough to make them feel trapped.

But now, drunk on some odd confidence and unusually strong resolve, they clench their jaw.

"Estriis says it's my birthright."

The look on Yiona's face is heated enough to melt ice. Yet Tesei's gaze remains level even as the argument reaches a boil.

"You were born here... Alongside us. We're your family or have you been daydreaming so long you've convinced yourself you'll make some cathartic journey to that... walled off hole and the stars will show you a magical place where you belong?"

"Better than here, where I have never belonged."

They can hear how firm and unflinching their own voice sounds, like never before, and can see how frantic it makes Yiona. He doesn't look angry anymore, just fully desperate.

"Not in Na'vock maybe but we have all tried so hard to make you feel like you belong with us at least. In this family. And the first chance you get, you're ready to up and leave?" 

"Yiona" Tesei pleads, tired.

"To some big unknown place much less, alone, or worse, with some 'mentor' you haven't even seen that claims relation to the boogeymen auntie scares her kids with?"

"Yiona..."

"Wouldn't you be happier... if you stayed here?"

"You would be happier if I stayed here..."

The creak of Yiona getting off the bed and his retreating footsteps says enough. The door would have slammed after him if not for the time of night.

Tesei closes their eyes and sighs.

A pregnant, uncomfortable silence permeates the room and the centaur uses it to intently stare out a window, familiar thoughts running through their head. What a foolish endeavour it had been to hope this would ever be easy. With Yiona especially, who keeps everyone suffocatingly close and looks upon intruders like they're plagued.

Milohi and Balu, though they have little more faith in the mysterious Estriis stranger, trust in Tesei's perception and decisions at least. That means something.

Their oldest brother rises from the floor.

"I will... go talk to him."

Tesei doesn't have to look at Milohi to know he's of unsteady footing and swaying gait, but lets him do what he wishes. Balu, on the other hand, still has the heart to chuckle softly.

"First room to the right and try not to fall down the stairs." she prods and her cherubic laughter rings out when Milohi mutters some good-natured insult back at her on his way out.

They were both such sunshines. Tesei feels envy for them on occasion, that Milohi can navigate the world so breezily and Balu can find her smile in times both good and bad, and then infect others with it. For being quadruplets, Tesei feels they're the actual twins here, Yiona is the baby brother and they themself - some far away entity awkwardly adopted into this dynamic.They look most alike as well, mature-featured, raven-headed, with pit-black eyes and smiles that made them look as young as children and just as mischevious. Then there's Yiona, much more sharp and icy-eyed, but equally as dark haired and pale, tinted in blue hues like the rest of their family. All colorful, striped and dotted. And then there was Tesei, dull, beige, a large and ugly puzzle piece boxing all other pieces out of their way to find a nook.

Yes, they're very envious of Milohi, Balu and Yiona. And Milohi and Yiona don't understand.

But Balu does. Sometimes they wonder if she dreams of Na'vock's beyond and tires easily of the crowded forest herself. She understands their need to find their place like she hasn't found hers either.

Now she's bundled up in the too-large bed, looking tired and uncharacteristically sad.

"He'll come around, you know. Always does. He's just a knucklehead that thinks everything's solved with beating up a few bullies." She props her head on the pillow the proper way now. Her voice is airy and sleepy, yet thoughtful. For being so childish, she can sound like a wise older sister so effortlessly. "He gave Jinae that black eye because he said something about you... Did he tell you? And we threatened the bastard's posse too, to leave you alone. Yiona's brash and impulsive, but he had a point."

Tesei can't help but huff out a gentle laugh. Of course they did... They should've known Jin wouldn't just get tired of heckling the obnoxiously large and awkward horse on his own. They open their mouth to ask the obvious.

"We didn't tell you because you're a bleeding heart, Tesi." Balu beats them to it and fixes them with a smiling glare. Tesei purses their lips shyly. "We love you, alright? We just get worried... You think peace and smiles can fix everything. Like Yiona, but opposite. You two need to learn to balance and I fear you learning that lesson the hard way. By getting hurt in some foreign place where we can't run to help."

Her gaze is curtained and concerned, half-buried in the pillow and the dejected smile forms on Tesei's face by habit.

"I'm nine feet tall..."

It's meant to be a reassurance, but Balu pouts and closes her eyes.

"Well if you used it to your advantage, maybe i'd care how tall you are, stupid."

Tesei grins and gets up off the floor to approach her. "I don't have to, people are scared already." They sit at the edge of the bed and pull the blanket up to cover Balu. "I'll keep safe, you know me..."

She sighs softly. "Just promise to write us..."

"I will."

"Regularly..."

"I will" 

"Wait... where are you gonna sleep if i sleep here?" 

"Balu..." Tesei raises an eyebrow gently. "Rest."

---

Tesei lets her sleep and busies themself at their desk instead - a piece of propped wood positioned in front of the open-hole window overlooking Ni'jrul's forest. They can't shut their mind off now, not with the trains of thought running through it so quick they narrowly avoid collision.

A small bound tome of parchments lays at the edge of the desk and Tesei pulls it close, running their fingers lightly over the carved protective cover.

'Denna. Memoirs.'