This was a success.

Hineni has no other way of looking at it as he steps back inside of his house, the coins jangling loudly in his pocket, the smell of meat emanating out from his bag. Real meat. Not some dried provisions made out of ‘meat’, like it literally said on the menu. He’s never really needed a lot of fancy food or even diversity in his diet, but now that he’s smelt it this entire time on his way home, he realizes how hungry he is. He’s famished.

Plus this is his way of making peace, for whatever grievance he’s caused.

“Are you here?” asks Hineni, walking through the rows of tables. No voice comes in response, but there is a scuffling sound to his right. He looks, turning his eyes towards the library-door behind the receptionist’s counter. “Obscura?” asks Hineni, hopping over the counter and looking inside of the room. There is a flurry of noise, of feathers and paper the second he opens the door. A moment later, the upstairs door slams shut. “Hello?” he asks, perplexed.

The library has clearly been used. Dozens and dozens of books have been pulled out of their shelves and lay scattered around the room, half-open and laying every which way. He isn’t really bothered by the mess, though he does get uneasy as the memory of the old-librarian returns to him. If she caught him now like this, she’d think that he did it and he’d get in a lot of trouble. The books are from every section, stepping inside, he notices that most of them are from the ‘H’ section, however. “I got some food,” he calls up to the door upstairs on the second tier of the library.

No response.

He sighs, his stomach grumbling. His head turns to the right, towards the rickety metal spiral staircase. Well…

Steeling himself, he steps onto it and starts climbing up it. Sure, he could just take the long way around, through the bath-house, but he’s starting to notice that he can’t put stuff like this off forever. Plus, if it falls and he dies, at least he died adventuring, right?

Hineni doesn’t laugh at his newest joke. He’s never going to be an adventurer if he lives his life afraid of something as simple as a staircase.

He finds himself half-way up, the thing certainly makes a lot of unsettling noises as he moves up it, but nothing gives way and he finds himself on the second tier of the library, feeling an odd pride at having ascended it.

Walking around the inner balcony, he grabs the door and opens it, looking beyond into the long hallway. A shadow vanishes down the end of the upstairs corridor, not towards the door to the bath-house stairwell, but towards the door at the back. The free rooms.

Curiously, he walks down the hallway, opening up the first door to the many rooms that were once for rent. Each one is exactly the same on the insides. A bed, a wardrobe, a small nightstand and a tiny desk and chair. There are nine ‘cozy’ rooms on this floor, including his own. Upstairs, below the roof is a large attic space. But he never liked it up there. Too many spiders. Plus it got brutally hot in summer, beneath the roof.

He opens the second room, looking inside. Nothing. Hineni makes his way to the third door, pretty confident that this is going to be the one. He opens it and looks inside, staring at Obscura who sits perched on the back of the chair by the desk in the form of a giant owl, tilting her head to glare at him and doing a fantastic job at keeping her balance on the old thing.

“WHO~!” protests Obscura.

“Uh…” Hineni looks around, nervously rubbing his head. “I sold the daggers and got some food. Do you want to eat together?” he asks. She glares at him. “It’s not a frog, but it’s pretty good too,” he says, setting his bag down. “But it is big.”

“Big food?” asks Obscura, apparently able to be reasoned with after all. “Big?”

Hineni pulls the parchment-wrapped, roasted rabbit out of his bag. “Sure is,” he says, lifting up some of the paper to show her. The owl studies him for a moment, before hopping off of her chair. “Do you wanna go downstairs?” he asks. “We can eat at a table,” he suggests.

“Obscura accepts Hineni’s apology,” says the owl, clicking with her mouth. She jumps down from the chair, her body twisting and changing into her more humanish form.

“Uh, sure,” he says. “I’m not even sure what you were mad about, though,” replies Hineni, watching the somewhat grotesque sight of her transformation.

She glares at him. “I was motivating Hineni by suffering with him,” she explains, spreading out her arms. “Alluring dance! Very precious! A rare sight for humans!” she hoots. “Who~! Seduction! Hineni rejected Obscura! KEEWIK~!”

Hineni steps to the side, letting her walk out of the room. “Uh, how about we just have dinner before we talk about anything like that?” he asks, wanting to change the topic. His mind is already going to places and asking questions that he really doesn’t want to think about right now. Maybe he’ll have to double-check the owl-book in the library later. “Your dance was great, thank you,” he lies in the interest of keeping the peace.

The two of them head downstairs, going through the bathhouse stairwell. Obscura hops down each flight of steps, flapping her arms like wings as she jumps down. He can’t say for certain how effective it is, but the deity can clearly fly anyways. So maybe she’s just doing it to be playful. He tilts his head, looking at her as he comes down the stairs. “So you can change shapes?” he asks, remembering the small owl from the forest or the giant-version of it that she was just a moment ago when he found her.

“Obscura has many forms! Who~!” hoots Obscura. “All are elegant! Mystique!” she hoots, flailing with her arms like a drowning person fighting to reach the surface of the ocean as she jumps down the last stairwell. “Powerful!” Hineni shrugs, watching as she struggles to open the door with her taloned hands, managing only shortly before he gets there. Once they reach the hall, he gestures to the spot across from his on his favorite table. There are still a few blood-stains on his spot from a few days ago.

Grabbing some plates, he wipes them off with a dish-towel that likely hadn’t been moved in years, bringing them and some silverware back. Some gnawing voice in the back of his head tells him that by the time he returns, the rabbit and the owl are both going to be gone, but sure enough, she is still sitting there and so is the rabbit.

Somewhat uneasily, Hineni sits down across from her, setting down the dinky plate and cheap tin silverware. She looks at it curiously while he unwraps the paper from the roasted rabbit. It smells amazing and his hunger is really starting to get to him now that he’s been smelling it this entire time.

“Uh…” he thinks for a moment, wondering how to portion it. “Just cut off what you like,” he suggests, shrugging. He’s never had a guest before, let alone someone to eat with since he’s become an adult. In all honesty, he’s sort of forgotten the decorum. However, Obscura seems to be just as indifferent to any such formalities and pushes her plate to the side, sinks her talons into the rabbit and, rather grotesquely, tears it in half.

Somewhat unnerved, but also not surprised, Hineni watches as she then tears off a full quarter of the rabbit and simply tilts her head back, lodging the whole thing into her throat, bones and all. Mystified and disgusted, he sits there, leaning back and watches as she essentially struggles to swallow the entire thing at once, janking her head up and down as she forces it down her gullet like a snake. With a small, bony leg sticking out of her mouth, she turns her eye sideways towards him.

Feeling watched, Hineni clears his throat and simply takes his fork and knife, cutting off a small piece of the unmolested left side of the rabbit’s hind. “Enjoy,” he says, putting some onto his plate and stopping for a second as he realizes that he has to remove his scarf now. His hands hover above the fabric for a while. The thought of removing it in someone’s company weighs overpoweringly heavy in his mind. But she’s already seen him without it, right? Several times.

Feeling his skin growing cold and clammy from fresh sweat, Hineni begins unraveling the yellow scarf and sets it down to the side. If Obscura has anything to say, she doesn’t seem to mention it, perhaps still being busy trying to eat her part of the rabbit. “Maybe a smaller piece, next time?” jokes Hineni, poking a small sliver of rabbit with his fork and eating it. “It’s easier.” He stops, looking down for a second as he chews. It’s delicious. He’s forgotten what ‘real’ food tasted like.

- [Roasted Rabbit] - - Quality -Normal - Composition - Meat: 96.4% Salt Pepper Basil Water: 3.6% - Quality Effects -None A single slice of roasted rabbit meat. It has a very high protein content, but contains very little fat. Restores {30} STAMINA Weight: 0.23kg Value: 12 Obols

RESTORED

+ {30} STAMINA

Obscura finally manages to swallow the entire chunk of rabbit. “I wanted to impress Hineni,” she admits, hitting her chest for a second.

Hineni raises an eyebrow. “I’m very impressed,” he says in a half-lie. Does being disgusted and fascinated at the same time count as being impressed? It’s close enough, right? He points at her with his other hand. “But you’re gonna have to do better than that if you want to eat the big frog,” he jokes, trying to force a conversation to start.

Obscura slams her fists onto the table, their plates rattle. Without saying anything, she grabs an even larger piece of the rabbit, apparently having accepted a challenge that he wasn’t even really making.

All in all, dinner is still fairly pleasant. Hineni, not used to company, doesn’t feel so awkward and out of place sitting next to the owl-goddess, who is apparently much the same. Their dialogue is always brief, but not tense. He doesn’t feel any need to impress the creature with any boisterous talk to help polish his image and he doesn’t feel the need to hide his flaws, to protect it. They’re just talking on a one to one level, as workable as that is, given their slight communication barrier.

What Hineni does manage to decipher though is that his crafting is an essential part of her plan to gain power. She explains this using some rabbit bones that she’s pushing around. Unfortunately, these are bones that she had regurgitated, after they were cleaned of any meat. So they're all a little… waxy looking. “Who~!” hoots Obscura. “I give power to many,” she explains, pointing at the big bone lying in the center of the table. It is surrounded by many smaller bones, all facing every which way. “Through Hineni,” she says. Hineni nods, understanding. That’s where that one odd value on his crafted-items comes into play. ‘Obscurantism’ is literally a unique stat-value, directly related to her, Obscura, as a god.

She goes on. “They get power. POWER!” she says. “And then they give to Obscura,” she explains, her voice hissing greedily as she turns all of the small bones in the circle around the big one so that they all face towards it. Items enchanted by proselytes are particularly strong, because of their god’s blessing. The price for that is that people using and wielding magical equipment made by the gods or their chosen passively give a portion of their magic back to that god, when holding the items. That means that the more adventurers use items with her blessing, the stronger she will become as a deity.

That’s why she needs him to make things for her. Though she seems to have a particular liking for weapons. Hineni nods, understanding. “So what’s the ‘three’ thing about?” he asks.

“Three?” asks Obscura, her eyes going wide.

“Three,” confirms Hineni.

“All good things are,” she explains, not adding the number at the end because then they would have said it four times. That would be bad.

Hineni leans back, thinking. They’ve finished eating and have just been sitting here for a few hours. It’s nice, actually. He’s really enjoying himself. “But why?” he ponders, looking up towards the very distant ceiling.

Obscura makes an odd, throaty noise. He blinks, looking back down towards her. Her body is convulsing in a sort of slow pulsating motion. He’d be sure that she’s about to vomit, if she didn’t have such an assured, confident look on her face. She leans her head over forward and a large heap of now meatless, undigested, rabbit bones, congealed together in some gooey mass, comes out of her mouth and lands on her plate.

Well, it looks like dinner is over.

Clearing his throat, Hineni gets up. “This was nice. But I think I should get to bed,” he says. “Good night. You can sleep in one of the rooms if you want.” With that, he leaves her downstairs and goes to get ready for bed.

But actually sleeping is an awkward proposition. Hineni lays there, holding the blanket and staring at the creature, who is perched on his dresser in his bedroom. Obscura, rather than having gone to one of the other rooms, now just sits there in the dark, staring at him in the form of a great, large owl. “Uh…”

“No talk. Hineni sleep,” says the owl, widening her haunting, yellow eyes as she tilts her head, staring at him from across the dark room. “Tomorrow is busy. Big work. Big hunt. So, big sleep!” she hoots.

He sighs. “It would be easier for me to sleep if yo -”

“BIG SLEEP!” hoots Obscura, her talons tapping angrily against the dresser in anger. “BIG!”

Hineni rolls over onto his side, fairly certain that he isn’t going to get a wink. He lays there for a time, about ten to fifteen minutes, perhaps. Then, quietly, he lifts his head, turning to see if Obscura is still there.

“BIG!” she screeches at him, flapping her wings, apparently now having transformed into her half-human form that now stands at the foot of his bed. He hadn’t even heard her move.

Not sure if he should be terrified or not, Hineni closes his eyes and pretends to sleep, until eventually he somehow manages to sleep for real.