Wraithvine visits Amatu, the half-halloblood / half-hellkin that is his friend and adopted brother. Amatu has a wife, an adopted child, and a large family now. -- Anon Guest
Grey showed too early in mortal hair. Some lasted longer. Some were gone in a blink. For a friend and baby brother, it was... jarring to see snow settling on a far younger man's head.
Then again, everyone was younger than the immortal Wraithvine. Except a few other immortals, of course.
Baby Corbinian was half-grown already. Picking up their father and hucking him towards a given destination. Laughing and clapping to watch their dad fly. Their fledgling wings could not lift them off the ground, and may never do so, but they still flexed and flapped in imitation. They spotted Wraithvine approaching and hollered, "Unty Wraif!"
They were edging past seven foot, six inches, and still relatively scrawny for an Ogre's build. They had their father's horns and a quasi-bad habit of picking up otherwise full-grown creatures. Just like they picked up Wraithvine now.
"You got small!"
"Gently," said Wraithvine, just in case. Ogre hugs tended to get... thorough. "I'm the same size as always. You've grown."
It was difficult for the Ogre side of their genes to not be dominant. Ogres dominated wherever they went, after all. Often by accident.
Corbinian charged back to the house - it had a greatly enlarged door and much higher ceilings. "Mama, Mama, Mama, lookie who came! Unty Wraif has shrunk!"
There was a swarm of young children inside. All the more startling since they were medium-sized children and Wraithvine had Corbinian for comparison.
Hellkin, Hallobloods... even a Human or two. And some of them had fuzzy toes.
Sometimes, family is all about who steps up, Wraithvine reminded hirself. Amatu had been raised by the Witon. The smallfolk who burrowed into hills and measured each other by their good hospitality. It was only natural that they had some morphic influence on Amatu's children.
There were quite a lot of them.
"How many years have I been gone?" wondered Wraithvine, trying and failing to do a headcount of the bedlam.
Yllayra laughed, juggling a staring infant on her hip. "We keep having twins," she said. "And at least one set of triplets. Ami does fuss about it all, but the farm's plenty big enough to feed 'em all. And the yields are always good."
Indeed, nobody was starving. Everyone was happy, or at least happy enough, with the way things were.
A full house, a warm hearth, and no empty stomachs. Somehow, the heroes' journeys always wound up at those conclusions in one way or another.
[Photo by Shan Li Fang on Unsplash]
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