Clouds and Currents - VoK & HW 2021 Event Prompts

   It had been several days since the incident with the sorceress and the titan came to a close. For the first time in... possibly her life, and certainly as long as she could remember, Tamaya awoke feeling genuinely well rested. She'd been allowed to catch up on the sleep she'd spent so long missing, and it felt good.
   But on the other side of things... it was nearing time for the others to depart. This wasn't their realm, after all. They were gods, and the gods' disciples. They had duties elsewhere - With the cataclysm over, they were no longer needed here.
   Which is why, when they stood before her, she looked sad, in spite of everything. "Coming to say goodbye?" she asked softly. "It was... nice. Meeting you all." Tamaya's ears and wings drooped. "Ugh, sorry. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine," she said.
   Bora looked at Mintovo, then at Tamaya, and started to speak... but before any words could come out, Nahia had jumped in, leaping up and laying her paws over her friend's shoulder.
   "Hah, woo!" she cried, as Tamaya flinched just a bit. "Not as easy with these big ol' wings now!" She grinned. "Anyway, that's the thing, though. You don't have to stay here, if you don't want! You can come with us instead, if you feel like it!"
   Tamaya gave her an odd look. "What?"
   "Yeah," Nahia said, "I kind of talked Bora and Mintovo into offering you a place as a disciple! Helmi, too."
   The seashell-horned lion poked her head out from behind the gods and waved awkwardly. "They, um... Mintovo said it seemed like I would be good to have around," she said, tilting her head, and yelping as her flower once more fell into her eyes. "Agh, I thought I fixed that!"
   Tamaya giggled a little in spite of herself, then turned her attention to the gods. "So... Wait, really? Me, joining you as a disciple of the gods?" She was quiet. "I..."
   "It is... somewhat more complicated than that," Bora said. "But we won't get into that just now. Regardless, the offer stands; you are free to come with us, should you like." He nodded, then paused. "Do not feel pressured to do so, however. We may be gods, but the choice is yours. You've spent long enough having your life dictated for you by others. Know that neither I nor Mintovo would force this on you." The smilodon knew all too well what it felt like to be unable to refuse such an offer, and to hold some... regrets about caving to that pressure. He didn't wish the same for her.
   Tamaya looked at Nahia again. "You're going with them?" she asked.
   "Yeah," she admitted, letting herself slide off the webbed part of the hero's wings. "Kinda have to. They know I'm here, and they're not gonna let me get away that easy." She pouted. "But hey, I'm not gonna be alone there any more, right, Helmi?"
   "Oh, uh, right!" she agreed, still trying to get her flower to stay in place.
   Nahia grinned. Good enough. "And besides," she said, "I've still gotta get my powers! These guys are gonna give em to me one of these days, I swear."
   Mintovo looked at Bora incredulously. That was something else they would have to get into at some point... and by they, the ice god meant Bora, and not himself. When Nahia wasn't looking, he flared his wings and shrugged, raising a paw as if to say, "Not my problem."
   Regardless of all this, Tamaya seemed satisfied with that answer. "Alright," she said. "If Nahia's going, then I will, too." She smiled. "Glad to join you, Bora, Mintovo, sirs. Helmi. Nahia."
   Nahia rolled her eyes. "Oh, god, you sound like Bora. Doesn't she sound like Bora, Mintovo?"
   "No kidding. If I have to deal with another mentee who can't relax, I'm gonna seal myself in a glacier and not come out for a hundred years," Mintovo joked.
   Tamaya laughed. "I'll try not to be too serious, then, si- er, Mintovo."

   The gathered residents of the kingdoms and sea and sky shuffled awkwardly as they waited for Tamaya to speak. She'd sounded rather serious when she asked them to come together here, where the chains met... and, given her status of hero, they were, as a whole, understandably nervous.
   She stood before them, watching them settle down before her. The tension was as prevalent in the air as the salt from the breaking waves nearby. And it was her turn to break it, now.
   She wouldn't do so delicately.
   "I'm leaving," she said. A simple statement, almost too much so. So she continued, "Don't expect me to return. After everything I went through here, I'd rather not come back."
   There were quiet murmurs amongst the crowd in response to that, though none of them seemed willing to speak up.
   So Tamaya continued. "I'll be honest. You took everything from me when you chose me as a hero." She gazed out at the crowd, a look almost like a glare, but softer. "I know why you did what you did. You were desperate, and you needed some sort of solution. I'm not going to hold that need against you. This whole thing wasn't your fault," she acknowledged. "But it doesn't make what you did right. You stole my childhood from me, placed all your hopes and expectations on someone who was merely a cub, and told her to solve an impossible problem, lest she and all she'd ever known be destroyed. You made me hate myself." She paced before them, frustrated. "You needed a solution, and rather than working towards one together, one which you could consent to collaborating on and sticking to, you chose someone who was too young to even really be aware of the world around them, and decided that she needed to be the savior, and the scapegoat, for something far beyond her control." Her glare grew harder now. "Frankly, that is disgusting, and the people who made that choice, and those who went along with it, never speaking up to suggest that this was wrong, unfair, cruel? All of you who went along with it, continued to put that pressure on a mere child? Each of you should be ashamed of yourselves." She flicked her tail, and her fins stood on end, their spines sticking up and out with the anger she felt. "I was a cub. A cub, taken from a family she'd never gotten to know, and tossed between sky and sea on a whim, because you decided this was somehow my responsibility, a simple infant. I never knew my mother or father, if I even had them both, or either. I never knew my siblings, if they existed. I never had a home. I never had a childhood. I was never a person. I was a hero, and that was all I ever was to you. And you didn't care how that would impact me. You only cared that it might save yourselves." She huffed, then sighed, wings and fins and ears drooping. "You were desperate. I get it. But you hurt me. You can apologize, if you want. I don't really care any more. You're not getting an 'It's okay,' from me. You'll just get an 'Okay.' Because what you did wasn't okay. I'll acknowledge your apology, but know that this wasn't okay, and will never be okay." She spread her wings. "Do better, next time, if one ever comes - And I truly hope that it doesn't. Don't put anyone else through this."
   And, not waiting for a response, she took to the air and left.

   "Get it out of your system?" Nahia asked when Tamaya returned. She rubbed her cheek against hers.
   "Mmm," she mumbled, closing her eyes. She felt exhausted again, after that. But at least she knew it would pass this time.
   "Are you two ready to go?" Bora asked. Tamaya looked up to find the two gods standing before a rift in space and time, Helmi between them.
   Tamaya turned her head to look back at the sea, then up at the sky, and at last to the expansive horizon. All she'd ever known... but never a home. Nahia stood, and Tamaya joined her.
   "Yeah," the former hero said. "We are."
   Together, the group walked through the portal.
   Perhaps she would find it here, instead.