Deep in his grief, Willow didn’t notice his brother’s arrival. Yew simply stood next to him silently in the misting rain.
Eos still burned quietly at his shoulder, trying to give their comforting warmth, but failing due to the falling temperature of the night combined with the cold drizzle.
The boy just kept looking from the hole in the ground, to the corpse of the old woman he’d failed.
His aunt’s future if he continued doing nothing.
His family's future if things continued as they were.
“We should get you out of the rain.” Yew’s dull voice snapped Willow out of his morose musings.
“What about Da?”
“Bough’s looking for him.”
“We should help.”
“Forest’s dangerous.”
“Don’t care.”
Yew closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Willow felt the frustration and anger he was bottling up, it helped distract him from his own similar emotions.
“Please don’t dig in your heels right now, gremlin. Things’re tough enough as it is.”
He was right, even if the boy didn’t want to admit it to him right now. Willow shut his eyes tight for a moment before letting out a brief yell of frustration, startling Yew in the process.
The boy then got up, despondently brushed at the mudstains on his sleep clothes, which did nothing except spread the dirt around more, causing yet more discontent for the situation that he tried to crush down. He then turned and gave his rather concerned brother a hug.
“Sorry.” Came the muffled apology as Willow buried his face in his brother's shirt.
“It’s fine.” Yew said but didn’t quite mean, as he patted the younger boy’s back awkwardly.
Willow broke the hug and turned to his fire spirit, after noticing how much the misty rain was affecting them he sent them back to their internal space to give them a hug as well.
“Sorry for making you stay out in the rain.” He sent to Eos as his projection hugged them. “Wasn’t thinking for a bit, didn’t mean to hurt you.”
They weren’t hurt too bad from what Willow could tell, but it still wouldn’t have happened had he been paying attention.
He felt like a lot of things wouldn't have happened this night had he been paying proper attention.
If he had checked the Blooms area sooner while searching for spirits, maybe help would’ve gotten here in time.
He looked once more at the corpse of the old woman.
If he had pushed harder to find the friends he needed, maybe he’d have been strong enough to help his family fight off the demon.
He looked at the upturned earth surrounding the hole in the ground.
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If he’d been a girl tonight, maybe he would’ve been taken in his aunt’s place.
He looked at the puddle of crimson ink, spat out from the flower of the Emerald Bloom, and now mixing with the misty rain.
His brow furrowed.
Willow walked through muddy earth in his bare feet, the slippery terrain ignored as he moved closer to the remains of his aunt’s spirits. Yew went with his brother, looking around in concern and rubbing at his arms from the cold.
The boy knelt down in front of the puddle, long past caring about the state of his clothes.
He felt something stirring in the sanguine pool. A small concentration of qi that was slowly growing. A mixture of the qi saturated rain, and the remnants of the ink spirit in the puddle at his feet.
Until finally a fat raindrop landed in the pool and popped back up, having absorbed the concentration of energy.
The newborn spirit both looked and felt a little unstable. The crimson liquid and rainwater weren’t mixed and instead there were small pockets of the red ink floating lazily inside of the little droplet.
Maybe a name would help stabilize them.
He thought hard for a few moments, trying to find the perfect name for the tiny raindrop.
He considered Ping. However despite the guilt he felt for the woman’s death, in the end she was the demonic flower's greatest ally as well as their biggest victim.
Her name wasn’t a hero’s one, sad as it was.
Jieun was discarded immediately. His aunt wasn’t dead even if she was a hero in the boy’s eyes. Giving something else her name when she was still using it would be rude.
However, thinking of his aunt did make his choice obvious.
He’d name the little droplet after Calypso the Artist. Aunt Jieun had said that she preferred those stories from his mother’s collection. Naming the spirit born from two of her friends after a story she enjoyed felt correct to Willow.
“You’re Calypso now.” The boy said as he started extending his thread of qi.
Calypso didn’t really react to their new name, though they did seem to accept it. An equilibrium was reached in their being, and the drifting blobs of ink coalesced into patterns and lines that now ran throughout the little droplet.
As the delicate thread of qi connected to the young spirit, Willow asked an important question of them.
“Would you be my friend?”
The spirit seemed to not register the question, their focus clearly shifting across various things in the environment. Though they eventually grew interested in the thread of qi connected to them.
Did they not understand words? That’s odd, the name seems to have stuck, maybe a spirit doesn’t need to understand what the words mean for them to be named.
Something to ask Change and Harmony later.
Willow asked the question again, this time with a pulse of intent carried by the thread.
“Calypso, would you be my friend?”
They answered positively almost immediately.
The bond was formed and the little raindrop was gently placed in their new home near Willow’s stomach and core.
The boy let out a breath.
The act of making a new friend and forming a new bond had helped center him, at least a little.
He looked to his now shivering brother and realized that he had been keeping him from going inside and warming up.
Oops.
“Sorry about that, found a new friend.” He said while scratching at the back of his neck.
His brother spoke through chattering teeth.“I noticed.”
Yew’d always been a bit more susceptible to cold weather, he even hogged a bunch of the extra blankets whenever winter was around, but the rest of the family didn’t mind.
Willow got up and took his brother’s freezing hand in his own. “Let’s go home.”
“That’d be nice.”
Willow still wanted to find his father and save his aunt, but for right now he’d do what he could to help the person right next to him.
As the two children started to make their way home in the night, the clouds dissipated and the moon began to shine down upon them.
