It didn’t take much to make Casey a happy man. Waking up next to a steady boyfriend was one thing that always made him happy. It had been a while since he had an actual relationship, something he could call “steady”. Whether that bled over to being so-called “exclusive” didn’t matter to him much. They were just labels that men put on things to define their thinking, instead of going with their natures, their guts.
The clouds started rolling in. He didn’t remember anything about a storm coming in. As he headed down the road, suddenly a lightning strike hit the ground a few yards in front of him. He jumped in shock, losing control of the bike. It toppled and he skidded across the road, dragging him by his leg under the bike with it.
Casey kept his head up, skidding along the road into a ditch where it settled to a stop. His leg was bent to an awkward position, the asphalt tearing skin, then muscle almost down to the bone. The pain was bad, but he’d had worse, much worse. He lay his head down for a minute to catch his breath, and then tried to sit up to push the bike off of his leg.
Something lifted the bike for him. He watched as the bike went up in the air, and then settled down on the road, and stayed upright without the kickstand being down. He turned to see who was doing this.
A man with dark hair and eyes, dressed in surplus combat fatigues, stood there. “Thekan-kse” he said. “I have found you.”
He spoke in Croatoan, his native tongue. The language of his Goddess.
“I am Hino. I have received your offerings. Where is my consort.”
Casey ignored the pain of how his leg reset itself and stared at Hino. He’d never seen him, though Soniac had described him enough.
It didn’t look like him. A red-winged blackbird sat on his shoulder. “This is the Black Fox,” he said to Hino.
“I know this,” Hino said. “Where is my consort.”
“I…I…don’t–”
Hino lifted Casey straight up by the wind and held him suspended in the air. He could still move his arms and legs, but he couldn’t bend down. “I don’t know!”
“She is not in the Earth, I cannot see Her. I have torn up the Earth. I cannot find Her under the Black Greasy Stone.”
“Great Hino, I do not know.”
Hino came in close and looked at him so they were eye to eye. Casey didn’t realize that the man was effortelessly hovering. He watched as he shimmered, like Aerem did, and the dark vestige fell away, like water. Before him was the creature that Soniac had described – long white hair and white beard, blue skin, blazing blue eyes, and wings that could encompass both of them if he folded them around him.
The blackbird hovered, “He doesn’t know, Great Thunder.”
“She left me during a war, and an Angel of Fire came and told me–”
The wind was taken right out of his lungs and he gasped for air. “Those of the Earth make too much noise.” Casey got enough air to make him stop gasping, but not enough to speak. “Find my consort.”
He tried to speak. The blackbird said, “Let him speak, Great Thunder.”
Hino gave him air for that, and he said in a raspy voice, “I am.”
The next thing he knew, he was unceremoniously dropped to the ground, landing hard on his bad leg. The god went straight up into the sky, setting off a loud boom. The bike toppled over, barely missing him as it fell.
Casey took a few deep breaths of bracken air. His leg had mostly healed. He examined the bike, which was tougher than it looked. He righted it, and it started up.
He meant to find Soniac. Only one creature knew where she was. And they had killed it.
Words: 661
Okay. This one was NOT easy. I knew what I wanted to say, what the end game was, but had no idea how to get there. I wrote and rewrote their dialogue often. I need to explore Hino more. I do believe that he wouldn’t be the type to stand around and gab. But I think he was too short there.