One might be perplexed if trying to understand the rules of the universe. Strange coincidences always seem to happen at the oddest times and it is impossible to decipher if these synchronicities are merely just that, coincidences. Ones which have been attributed with meaning by the mind, or if there really is a higher purpose behind them.

The threes, the fours, the fives — It’s not so much that these are forced into play by the hands of the people involved, but rather, that the universe already has things lined up in set ways.

These strings of fate, stretching from today to the horizon of a lifetime from now, sometimes shimmer in through from the spirit-world and into reality.

That’s what the big, fancy-pants academics at the magic academy might say, at least. A more pragmatic man might call it a bunch of wobbly-woo.

Hineni stares at the owl, sitting atop a burning tree.

He has been here before.

This is the strange spirit-world he had found himself inside of, back when he first met Obscura, when he had tried to kill both her and himself in one of the perhaps lower points in his life.

— Not including the time he almost married a frog.

He looks down at himself. He’s still the same sort of stretchy, blobby entity that he was last time. But now, he is more defined, he is more in the shape of a person. He is a man. A blobby man, but a man nonetheless. His body is made up of strings, woven from a dark, ashy thread.

His eyes return to the owl.

“So…” says Hineni. “Were you just going to wait until after the wedding to tell me?” he asks, assuming that he’s lifting an eyebrow. The great owl sits on its high, elevated perch. “This seems like something that was worth mentioning.”

“I worried that you would fear me,” replies Obscura, looking down his way.

Hineni holds his arms out, gesturing blankly to the empty spirit-world all around them and perhaps metaphorically to the situation at large. “You realize that the first time we met, I ran all the way home pissing my pants, right?”

She clicks with her beak. “Perhaps Obscura was too mouse-hearted in those days?” she hoots. “A very exciting time, yes?” The strange, spirit-like owl lifts a wing. “Poor Obscura. She has gotten old and tired. But her heart still beats for the Hineni-man.”

Hineni tilts his head. “It’s been a few months at most?” he says.

“Dramatic Obscura,” says the owl, covering her face with her wing.

Hineni rolls his eyes and walks towards the tree.

“Who~”

“Get out of the way,” says Hineni, climbing up onto the tree and the branch. “If you aren’t coming down here, I’m coming up there,” he says. “I’m not talking to you if you’re gonna look down at me.”

“A throne!” she hoots, indignantly. “Indignant Hineni! He climbs the throne of migh-”

Hineni lifts a hand and grabs her beak, shutting it gently with two fingers. “Look,” he says. “I’m mad and I’m trying to be nice. Please stop playing cute. What’s the deal?” he asks.

She clicks in annoyance, after he lets go of her beak. “Does he not fear for his life?” she asks, puffing out her chest and spreading her wings, presenting herself. The strange landscape quivers and shakes as a magical residue begins floating around the space.

He looks into her yellow eyes. “I sleep next to you every night. You squeak in your sleep.”

“SHE DOES NOT!” protests the owl-god-not-god-demon-thing, who is his sort-of-but-not-really-yet-wife.

Hineni lifts a finger and starts making a squeaking noise with his voice. “*ih-ih-ih*”

“WHO~!” she hoots angrily, flapping her wings and parading along the branch of the tree back and forth. “The Hineni-man sits on the throne of the owl and he shows no reverence! NONE!” She parades for a time and then she stops, sighing and letting her head droop. “He will really never change.”

“Nope,” says Hineni. “I’m pretty good the way I am. I’m going to ask you two more times at best,” he says. “What’s the deal?”

Obscura stares his way, not saying anything.

“What’s the deal?” asks Hineni a third time. “Did you lie to me?”

“Who~” hoots the owl-god, offended again. “Obscura has never lied to her Hineni.”

“Then why are we here?” he asks. “In this place? Why didn’t you just talk to me in the room?”

“To show him,” says the owl.

The landscape around them shifts and changes, warping from the empty plane that it was to a dense, thick forest made up of trees, that Hineni has never seen before. They’re like strong oaks, but are gnarled and they twist into each other. The whole place is a thick bramble of hardwood and thorny shrubbery for as far as the eye can see.

“The big-big forest of the south-world has many gods,” says Obscura. “It is rich with power,” she hisses greedily, pointing at a disturbance in the air above them. A ripple moves through the crowns of the trees, almost like a gust of wind.

Ambient magic, stemming from the world itself.

This must be what Sockel and Rhine were talking about in their discussions of the leylines in the southern region.

“But of them, many are more revered than others,” says Obscura.

Below them, a line of people forms. They merge out of the forest, coming to the foot of the tree that the two of them sit on. Their arms are full of offerings. Offerings of food and treasures and trophies of the hunt.

“And with great reverence, come great tidings,” she hoots.

Hineni watches as a woman sets down a bundle, next to several others.

Infants.

“A common practice amongst the south-elves of the Sockel people,” says Obscura. “It is a powerful offering,” she explains. “Their tribes will recieve a strong blessing in turn.”

Hineni looks at her. “You don’t think that sacrificing babies is a little messed up?” he asks.

“Obscura would never abandon her young,” hoots the owl-god. “But it is the way of their people,” she says. “We accept their offerings,” she says.

The vision changes, moving from the dense forest to the grasslands outside of it, where a majestic, giant stag sits adorned with gold and gifts.

An elf approaches holding out a bundle, but the stag-god stamps its hoof and feigns a charge, chasing her back into the forest.

“The other gods do not,” she explains. “They disregard the old ways. The old traditions.”

The vision shifts back to the dense forest, where the elves continue to line up to drop off offerings at the tree of the owl-god.

A person appears down on the ground, peeking in from the side. A moment later, she sprints towards the tree, breaking out of the woodland unexpectedly. She grabs a bundle from the pile of infants and tries to escape with it. She isn’t an elf. She's a human, with long, black hair.

The shadow of a giant owl swoops down, tearing her leg off in an instant as its talon, the size of her chest, smashes her to the ground.

The vision shifts from the grassland, to an overgrown, lush pond in which several frogs of varying size sit. “There are those who do not understand the old ways,” says Obscura. “But there are also those who would go so far as to seek their destruction.” A body is dropped down into the water of the pond from above.

The mutilated girl with black hair floats there face down, her blood leaking into the pond from her gruesomely severed leg and mutilated hands. Her small fingers have been removed on each hand as punishment for thievery. A bloody, empty fabric bundle floats in the water next to her.

Nekyia. The big-frog.

“These are the ones who would besmirch my divine title!” she hoots angrily, clicking with her mouth.

The frogs hopping around the pond begin croaking louder and louder in agitation, swarming around the pond like an aggravated hive of wasps. They jump around, landing on top of the floating body, as if it were a pad or a water-lily like any other.

Turning towards the spiritual tree that they sit on top of, the frogs hop up the tree by the hundreds, climbing up towards the roost.

The vision shifts back to the dense forest, where the elves had left their offerings.

Two large, feathered carcasses lay on the forest-floor, being devoured by a swarm of amphibians.

“These are the ones who would call us demons,” she says, not looking away as the frogs eat the corpses of the dead owl-god and his mate, Obscura's parents.

Hineni scratches his cheek.

This is a complicated situation to be in.

“How do I play into this?” he asks. “How does my mom know about you?”

Obscura looks at him for a while.

She then looks back to the ground and lifts a hand, spinning her finger. The world spins around and around, as everything they just saw replays in reverse, as if the flow of time had turned the other way around.

She stops.

The scene is as it started.

A row of people lay their offerings before the tree.

A woman bends down, setting down a bundle at its base.

The elf bows her head and walks away.

The scene stops, freezing in place.

And this time, Hineni notices the overpowering perfume of water-lilies coming up his way from the woman below.

“…That’s impossible,” he says, looking at Obscura and then down at the woman who left her baby here as an offering. “My mom’s not from the south?” he asks. “And she’s definitely not an elf. I think I would’ve noticed.”

Obscura points at the woman. “It is true.”

“I thought you would never lie to me?” he asks. “You can’t expect me to believe this.”

“It is true,” repeats Obscura, flying down. She pulls the woman back to the tree, turning her around and removing her shawl.

Hineni can’t deny what he sees. But…

“I think I would have noticed if my own mother had ears like Sockel,” he argues.

Obscura shakes her head, lifting two talons next to the ears and pinching them. “Sharp,” she says, making a snipping motion with her talons like a pair of scissors. “- And then ears are not sharp. She pulls a strand of the woman’s hair. “Pretty hair, yes? It will hide scars.”

The scene unfreezes and keeps playing.

A moment later, a girl runs out of the forest and grabs the bundle, trying to run off with it. The scene repeats itself, as before.

“Enough,” says Hineni, not wanting to watch this a second time. “I’ve seen enough.”

“He must understand the nature of the world,” says Obscura. “The Hineni-man must look to understand.”

Hineni sighs, lowering his hand from his face again.

The girl is pinned down and viciously attacked by the owl-god, the baby flying from her hands, soaking in a pool of her blood and screaming as loud as it can.

The elven woman who had offered it, allegedly Hineni's mother, stands there for a while, watching the scene unfold and, for whatever reason she might have to change her heart, she grabs the child from its bloody bundle and vanishes into the forest with it. Perhaps having seen what awaits it here was enough to convince her that this was a mistake.

“For her safety, she left the big-big forest and went to the human-place,” say Obscura. “There, she met the Hineni father and there, her Hineni grew,” says Obscura, flying back up his way. She points to the side of the branch, there, a small owl sits next to them, hiding in the foliage. “After the frogs came, Obscura flew away to find safety,” explains the owl-god.

The vision shifts.

An owl sits alone in a big-now-small forest just outside of the city they live in, sitting on the branch of a tree and staring out into the world.

It hunts and grows and sleeps and then it hunts and it grows and it sleeps and it does all of this all by itself, for many, many years.

And then, footsteps come from beneath it and its eyes open to look at the disturbance. Just another human, here to take more wood from the shrinking forest.

*Thook*

*Thook*

*Thook*

*Who hoo hooo~* hoots the owl, calling out into the world.

Nothing.

*Who hoo hoo~* calls the owl. The lonely whistle of her voice moves through the forest. But she receives no response, as always.

*Who hoo hoo~* she calls again, not even sure why she bothers. It’s just more instinct at this point than anything meaningful.

“I know the feeling,” mutters a gravelly voice down below her roost.

The owl, shocked that someone responded, quickly flies away in a terrified panic. Nobody has ever spoken to her directly before.

“Ah, the good old days,” says Hineni, watching the vision of their past unfold.

“Fate,” says Obscura, holding out her taloned hands. “Hineni was promised to Obscura once and fate had delivered him to her,” she says. “This is how I know the old ways are good,” she says. “If it was bad for us to be, then fate would not have given me the Hineni-man, who was promised to my blood so many years ago,” finishes the owl-god.

Hineni stares for a while, piecing the story together in his head.

He looks back up towards her and her still outstretched hands.

This is a lot to process. There are too many questions left, but his mind is already racing to keep up. Plus there are moral issues happening here left and right and honestly, it’s all a bit much.

He decides to do what he feels is best and lifts his hands, holding both of hers.

“So… did you ever actually eat a real baby?” he asks, getting the obvious question out of the way.

She tilts her head. “- If she did?”

“…It’s going to make kissing kind of awkward from now on…” he replies, looking up towards the sky.

“Who~” hoots the owl-demon or the owl-god, depending on one’s personal take on life.

The two of them leave the spirit world and return to what is, presumably, the real reality.