Hineni snaps his fingers.

- Nothing happens.

The man, not really noticing how loud his bedroom has suddenly become, how bright it has become, how he is now standing up, despite the fact that he was laying down only a moment ago, snaps his fingers again.

But no ash comes out.

“Boy!” growls a loud voice from behind him and he feels his head suddenly lurching forward. His ears ring, as something heavy and hard strikes him.

(???) has struck (Hineni) for {1} damage !

Bewildered and disoriented, Hineni stumbles around. The frogs are here! They’ve struck again. He has to…

…He has to…

Hineni’s blurry vision comes together, his eyes having left the silhouette of the big-frog and focusing on the heavily bearded face, towering above himself.

It’s impossible. But, there he is.

“Watch your manners!” barks Hineni’s father at him, lifting a hand into the air again. An instinct that he didn’t know was still inside of himself takes over and Hineni winces for a moment, preparing to be struck a second time.

“It’s quite alright,” says a voice from behind him. A girl. “I take no offense.”

“- Snapping your fingers at her like she’s some kind of servant…” His father tsks and reaches to the side of the room, grabbing a broom. He shoves it into Hineni’s small hands and points him off. “Sweep,” he commands.

Hineni looks at the broom and then at his father and then at the big-frog and then at the lively adventurers’ guild, that he finds himself inside of. He’s standing in the restaurant area and it is full of a strangely nostalgic life and color.

“Go on! Get to it!” barks the old man, looking over his shoulder towards a table of people who are starting a fight.

Hineni now only notices how small he feels. His body is small. His hands, wrapped around the broom, are small. The room is so very big and so are all of the people inside of it, sitting at full tables of frightening scale.

He is a child again.

Hineni looks ahead of himself, staring at the big-frog, who stands there now at his own height. Her womanly body has reverted to that of a child’s as well.

He throws the broom to the ground, lifts his fist and strikes straight towards her face.

“Hold still!” fusses a familiar voice.

Hineni struggles, squirming as something binds him, constraining his body. He fights his way through the fabric wrapping itself around him and pushes his head out to freedom, his soft, well groomed black hair bouncing around his head. The overpowering smell of water-lilies comes to him.

The woman hisses, grabbing him. “- Please?” she asks in exasperation, grabbing him beneath the arms and straightening him back right, now that his sweater was on.

Hineni looks up towards the face of his mother.

He’s standing upstairs, in one of the rooms for rent. But it isn’t for rent, it’s a little office and working space that she had set up here. She pulls the tufts of his hairs to the side and dabs the top of his head with a cloth.

Hineni winces, as a sharp pain comes to him.

“That’ll have to do for now,” she says, sighing. “You know how your father gets when things are busy.” She shakes her head. “Don’t cause trouble downstairs, okay?” His mother blinks, looking at him. The woman leans down and stares into his eyes. “- Hineni, are you alright?” she asks in worry, placing her wrist on his forehead. “You feel a bit off today.”

Hineni doesn’t really know what to feel or to say, as he stares at the ghost of his past. “…I’m fine,” is all that he replies with.

He looks around the room, trying to orient himself. How did he get here? He was just downstairs with the big-frog, he had just tried to attack her and then…

- The big-frog.

Hineni looks up at his mother’s face.

The frog-god had finally made her move. Is this some kind of dream-magic? She has been influencing his dreams a lot, so is this just a more advanced form of that same illusion?

His mother gets up. “Stay here and behave, okay?” she asks. “I’ll make you your favorite soup for dinner tonight, if you’re good.”

Hineni slowly nods and watches as his mother rubs his head and hair and then exits the room, leaving him behind and closing the door.

“Wait!” calls Hineni. But by the time he manages to croak out the word, she has already left the room and closed the door, the handle of which he can’t reach.

It’s quiet.

Sensing a presence, Hineni lowers his hand and turns his head. “What is this?” he asks, looking at the girl, who wasn’t there just a moment ago, while this scene had unfolded. She just crawled out from beneath the bed, where she was hiding while his mother was here.

This isn’t a memory.

This isn’t something that had ever happened in his childhood.

Hineni turns around to face her, scanning the room for a weapon, since his magic doesn’t work. “I warned you to leave us alone,” he says, eyeing the razor sharp letter-opener on the desk.

“I wish we could have met differently, Hi~ ne~ hi~ ni~,” croaks the big-frog.

She gets up from the chair that she was sitting on, her legs having been dangling freely. One of them is a fake, a terribly made wooden prosthetic that is little more than a stick.The frog-god limps towards him, lifting a hand. Shes missing a finger. “But I couldn’t manage any other way,” she explains. “It took a long time to prepare.”

She’s wearing a plain outfit, like any girl of this neighborhood would wear. It’s not rags, but it’s also not exactly a nice dress. It’s something in between those two things.

“But this is our chance,” she says excitedly, lowering her head and grabbing the sides of her dress to curtsy. “This is our fourth meeting,” she says. “And our first one in reality. This is the moment for which our hearts have been waiting.” She smiles, lifting a happy face towards him. “Hi~ ne~ ni~ hi~.”

Hineni cracks his neck, walking towards her. He yanks her forward, grabbing her by the collar of her dress with surprising ease. She’s light and she doesn’t put up a fight or yelp or use any form of magic. She just sort of hangs there in his grasp, not fighting. “One, I’m engaged,” says Hineni, narrowing his eyes. “Two. You’re a frog and I don’t want anything to do with you,” he explains, tightening his fist’s grip on her dress. “And three-” he glares at her in disgust. “You smell like frogs.”

“And fourth?” she asks happily, lifting her hands to clasp them around his constrained fist by her neck. “What’s the fourth thing?” she asks. “Ribbit~!”

“There is none,” says Hineni. “Put me back into reality and leave us alone,” he says. “I don’t care if you or I look like kids. I’ll drag you into the forge and break your teeth in,” he threatens.

The big-frog smiles. “You don’t even know. Three whole lives and you don’t even know,” she says. “Isn’t it wonderful?” asks the big-frog. Her long, black hair dangles loosely over his arms and wrists. “Isn’t it just the best?” she asks. “That we can finally get you started on your fourth life, Hi~ ne~ hi~ ni~. There’s so much for us to learn together.”

Hineni lets go of her collar and grabs her throat.

“- And I’ll be staying here with you the entire time,” says the big-frog. She smiles, lowering her head in a curtsy. “If you’ll please have me.”

Hineni tries to orient himself. He’s somewhere else again, sometime else.

“We’d love to,” replies Hineni’s father, staring at the sizable bag of money on the counter. “A rented room is a rented room,” he says, opening up the bag and looking inside at the more than generous payment for several years of rent. “I won’t ask where you got this money, or why you want to stay in this shithole of a neighborhood with it.”

His wife elbows him in the chest, clearing her throat. “What my husband is trying to say is that we’ll be happy to accommodate you, misses…?”

“Nekyia,” replies the big-frog. “And in the interest of being honest, I’m planning on marrying your son,” she says, without remorse.

The room is quiet. Hineni’s parents look at each other for a confused moment, before turning back to her.

His father starts laughing and then hits Hineni on the shoulder a few times.

At this point, Hineni is beyond dizzy and disoriented.

“Enough!” he says, turning to try and attack her a third time.

The two of them stand out in the forest and they’re walking along the edge of the pond, hand in hand.

Spring is upon them and the sun is out in full force. Frogs are croaking and birds are singing and the calmness of the water is disrupted by the rippling splashes of jumping fish, trying to reach the sun every now and then.

It is a beautiful day and the hand held inside of his hand is warm and soft. He tightens his fingers around hers.

“What the hell is this?” asks Hineni, turning his head to look at her.

He blinks, disoriented. He’s taller than he was before. It feels like a little time has passed. He has grown and so has she.

A few years, if he had to guess.

His head spins, as the memories begin to flood him. Memories of a time spent together with her. She was just a long-term guest, but after her bold proposition, Hineni’s father immediately took a liking to her, as did his mother, despite her initial worries and deep confusion.

The two of them became awkward friends and had spent many days together. She would secretly help him with his chores and in return, Hineni would sneak out of the house with her during the day, so that they could walk together and find flowers for her room. It’s become a sort of ritual, at this point.

She smiles, holding his hand. “We couldn’t meet right the first time,” says Nekyia, the big-frog. “So I made sure that we could this time.”

“This isn’t real,” says Hineni, trying to orient himself. He wants to get ready for another attack, not having given up his fighting spirit yet. “Once I wake up from this, I’m going to set your operation on fire,” he says. “Consequences be damned.”

But the problem is doing that this would be his fourth attempt at an attack.

- And he isn’t sure if him trying won’t just speed up time again?

The big-frog laughs a genuinely sweet laugh, turning towards him and playfully covering her mouth with the back of her hand as she does. “Oh, Hineni~” she croaks, with something true in her voice. “You’re such a firebrand.” She pulls her hand out of his and gently takes off her fabric glove.

Hineni looks at the four fingers beneath it. She’s missing her smaller one on both hands. It's the same thing that took her leg and her hair. Some kind of circulation issue with her blood.

Inside of the glove is a piece of wood, carved to give the impression that all five fingers are there while she's wearing it. The poor girl is very insecure about her disfigurements.

- She throws it into the air and Hineni lets out a surprised noise, scrambling to catch it and only managing by the tips of his fingers, stopping it from falling into the pond-water.

“What’s your problem?!” he barks, waving the glove at her and looking down at himself. He’s covered in mud now, from having dived to the ground to save it. “I spent a month trying to make that prosthetic!” he exclaims.

Only after saying it does he realize the absurdity of that statement.

He never did that.

But the memory is certainly there. He remembers the nights spent in secret in his father’s workshop. He remembers getting caught once and then explaining to his fuming old man about why he was in such a dangerous place, working in secret in the dark. He remembers that after he told him the truth, that he was making it for her, how the old man sat him down and had a long talk about boys and girls and things of that nature and he remembers, fondly, how the old man had then helped him make it for her.

- Not directly, but only by giving him some tips and notes on the design.

It’s a precious memory.

Hineni’s eyes wander up towards her face, gazing over the simple, prosthetic leg that she’s wearing, hobbling on. He had made that for her too.

The big-frog bends down, her ungloved hand touching his face and wiping some mud off of it. “I know you did, ribbit~” she says and he remembers the glowing feeling he had felt in his chest when he finished making the project. He remembers the racing of his heart and the sweat on his forehead when he nervously stammered out his feelings and gave her the thing, hoping that she wouldn’t think it was a terribly weird or offensive gift.

She’s very self-conscious about her appearance after all and is very emotional about it.

He remembers the feeling he felt when she cried and her face twisted into an expression he hadn’t ever been able to identify as distinctly sad or happy and finally remembers the nervousness in his heart, striking violently for fear of what might happen today, now.

He had brought her out here to steal her first kiss, after all.

The memories, the sensations, they’re all so strong.

A finger presses itself against his lips. “This isn’t a dream, Hineni,” she says. “This is real.” Nekyia sits down in the mud, dirtying her knees and her dress as she lowers herself down towards him, her face moving towards his. Hineni fights the instinct to protest as he sees her getting mud in her prosthetic. It’s going to ruin the wood and gunk up the joints.

Wait? What the hell? Who cares?

“We’re going to live your fourth life together and it’s going to be perfect. I promise,” she says, her breath touching his face. “I didn’t like the way this one started though, so let’s try again, okay?” she asks softly, her body and words carrying a familiar scent. “- From the start.”

Hineni’s eyes go wide.

“Boy!” snaps a loud voice from behind himself.

Hineni turns around, looking at his father, who stands there with an annoyed expression. The guild is busy today and absolutely full of life and noise. The old man grabs a broom, shoving it into his hands. “Don’t just stand there bothering her!” he snaps. “Sweep!”

“It’s quite alright,” says a voice from behind him. A girl. “I take no offense.”

Hineni’s father runs off to a table full of troublemakers and Nekyia places a finger to her lips and winks. She leans in towards him, dropping that hand and running that finger along his chest.

“Let’s do better this time, Hi~ ne~ hi~ ni~,” she whispers lovingly into his ear. “Ribbit~.”