[PRP] The Begats (Kraken x Uchekeshi)

[Princess_Feylin]

"Hinoko Outlander and Jezebeth Outlander begat a litter of...five? Who bore the names Svartis, Kaitrus, Karaliskas, Pockpicker, and Snotrag. I don't know!" Kraken flung himself dramatically onto his side. He was never going to learn all of this.

It wasn't true that a lawspeaker had to know every single member of the pride and all of their ancestors back to the dawn of time. At least, that enormous burden didn't fall on just a single lawspeaker. The knowledge was divided among them, for the most part. It was only the very first Stormborn and the current Stormborn that everyone had to know, which wouldn't be so bad except everyone seemed to be exploding with cubs lately.

"Everybody needs to stop having babies. Just...stop," he grumbled, flopping onto his back so that his stomach was exposed to the wind, which ruffled the portion of his mane that extended down his chest. "Or maybe they could all give their cubs the same name. No, that wouldn't work. Then I'd just have to learn their monikers and, bah!"

The lion rolled the rest of the way over and then decided that felt pretty good, so he rolled and stretched and arched in the dust, scratching all the itchy places and doing an excellent impression of a housecat.  

[bipolar bee]

When she was bored (as she often was), Keshi sought the company of mortals. They were always fun to play with. Most of the time they were so serious, and it was Keshi's job as the Goddess of Humor to rectify such things. Sometimes, for her own humor, Keshi liked to approach lions while not in her mortal form. It was more entertaining that way, because they always looked so shocked, and that was fun.

It was also fun to teleport to a random location simply because she could, which was precisely what she did then. Sometimes she didn't even know where she'd end up, which was always exciting - to Keshi, at least. Half the fun was never knowing what would meet her where she appeared. As a Goddess, she didn't generally have to worry about what was waiting for her. She could always teleport again if she ran into too much trouble, or simply fly away.

When she blinked into existence, the first thing that caught her attention was the lion rolling around on the ground. Actually, it was the octopus on the lion's side, which delighted Keshi. Without any thought for her own well-being - and without hiding the glass-like wings that bobbed above her - Keshi moved in close. Very close.

"Does it have a name?!"  

[Princess_Feylin]

"Y'gaahaha!" Kraken exclaimed intelligently, leaping to his feet and nearly getting the four of them tangled up in the process. His brother was the more graceful member of the family, from training to be a reaver.

He frowned at the suddenly-there goddess, and then realized he was frowning at a goddess and tried to make his face into another expression. Any other expression. One did not frown at goddesses as if one disapproved of them, even though his hadn't been a disapproving frown but a "what the hell am I looking at here and where did you come from?" frown. It didn't occur to him to bow. Stormborn don't, as a rule.

"Sorry. Er. Does what have a name?"

Whatever she was talking about, it probably did. In the Stormborn, everything had a name. Usually more than one, plus a number of alternative ways to refer to it that had to do with its function, history, appearance, or resemblance to the function, history, and appearance of some other thing. The traditional ballads were full of things like that. So, yes. Probably it had a name.  

[bipolar bee]

Keshi couldn't help but laugh outright at his expression, and the noise he'd made. She knew she'd startled him; that had been half the fun, after all. For her, anyway. It was obvious he didn't see the humor in it.

"Your octopus." She sounded a little exasperated, but the smile on her face made it clear that she really wasn't. The way that her long, bushy tail idly bobbed behind her probably made it rather obvious that she was in a good mood, and really no danger to the lion she'd surprised rather violently.

Keshi didn't mind being frowned at. In fact, she was pretty used to it. She considered frowns to be something of a challenge. Frowns were meant to be smiles, or laughs, or giggles, or guffaws. Frowns were not Keshi's favorite thing, but frowns did mean that she had a job to do.

"I'm Uchekeshi. You can call me Keshi. I'm a goddess."

Her diaphanous wings made that abundantly clear as they gave a little bob above her shoulders.

Keshi cleared her throat.

"Of humor."  

[Princess_Feylin]

Oh. His octopus. He grinned and barely caught himself before he told the goddess that he hadn't named the octopus, but there was a different part of his body that had a name. It would probably have gotten him smote into oblivion. Or maybe not, since she seemed a cheery sort, but he didn't want to risk it.

"No, no name. You could name it, if you like," he offered, not entirely oblivious to the risks involved in allowing a goddess to name any part of his body, but willing to risk it for someone as pleasant as the crystal-winged goddess. She made him want to smile and laugh.

"I guessed the goddess bit all by myself, actually," he confided with a daring wink. "I would never have guessed the name though. Mine's Kraken."

A thought occurred to him that he couldn't help but puzzle out aloud, and so he completely missed the throat clearing and clarification of the goddess's domain. "Kraken means...octopus. Huh. I guess if I'm named for the thing it doesn't need a name of its own. Or maybe if I'm named for it and it doesn't have a name, then I don't really have a name. It looks like you'll have to name me."

He had no idea the risk he was taking because he had not heard that he was talking to the goddess of humor. He was too busy being clever. That happened to him more often than he cared to admit.  

[bipolar bee]

Ahhh, that was more like it. His grin brightened her own expression, and she felt rather proud of herself for putting it there. He was a pretty thing. Keshi was not new to males and their certain... uses. She'd birthed a lone cub long ago, though she'd never stopped to wonder about the little female in the days since then. Keshi did not consider herself the best mother in the world. She was too childlike, too silly. Flighty. It didn't bother her to be considered as such, in all honesty. It was simply the way she was, and it was the way she would always be.

"Kraken," she trilled the name, giggling softly under her breath. It was a nice name. Keshi very much liked it. It seemed to suit him, especially once she learned the meaning of the name.

"So the octopus is named Kraken, and now you've made yourself nameless. A name for you, hmm?"

...Keshi was terrible at names. The little white bird that was her companion had been given the name 'Ping' only because Keshi liked the way it sounded when she said it. Ping. Ping, ping. Ping. It was nice. Like the sound a pebble made when it hit the surface of the water.

A dazed look came into Keshi's eyes before she shook herself free from her thoughts.

"If I name you, you'll be mine."

Keshi didn't really know if that was true or not, but Ping was now hers so it only stood to reason that the lion that stood before her would become hers. It made perfect sense to Keshi, though it probably would need some explaining should Kraken ask for the reasoning behind it.

She didn't give him a chance to change his mind.

"Your name is Seaspray now, because you've a pretty mane and I also like the marks on your face - they remind me of ocean waves. And you've got bubbles on your legs, so it makes perfect sense that you be named after the ocean. Plus the ocean smells very nice, and you smell very nice too."  

[Princess_Feylin]

"Seems that way," he agreed, clearly not bothered by the prospect. Among the Stormborn, names were easily earned and lost, so if he was named something awful he didn't have to keep it. Although even being named something awful, if the name was bestowed by a goddess, had a certain panache.

"I think I can live with that," he told her, grinning slyly. But he did not actually swear himself to her. He knew the old tales well. One should be careful about the oaths one swore.

Seaspray? Well, there were worse things to be called, and she had said he smelled nice. Lawspeakers in training did not often hear things like that, and the occasions on which they heard it from goddesses were even rarer.

"So, having named and claimed me, what do you want with me? I'm...really not well-suited to questing, but I would try." He could always bring Kjell along to handle the things he didn't want to do.  

[bipolar bee]

Well, she hadn't really thought about where she was going with all of this, but Keshi supposed it was all turning out to be a little fun. When she'd named Ping, the little hummingbird really hadn't done much aside from nagging her now and again. Ping was very good at nagging, and on the rare occasions such as this where she was without the little familiar it was a little refreshing to be without the constant smothering. He was a nice little bird, but he was so sour at times.

"Well," Keshi was thoughtful for a moment, lips pressed together as she mulled over her options. "Tell me a little about yourself."

That seemed like a good way to pass time. "If that's boring for you, maybe you have ideas?"

Keshi gave him a sly grin of her own, translucent wings fluttering slightly.  

[Princess_Feylin]

A little about himself? Okay, he could do that.

"All right. You'll probably be bored though. I mean, I think my life's pretty interesting, but you, well." He refrained from pointing out that she was a goddess. Probably she was aware of that. "You have probably had more exciting experiences than I will ever dream about."

His coat twitched and he was suddenly aware that he was probably covered in dust. That was sort of embarrassing, but there wasn't much he could do about it at this point. It was probably the height of rudeness to begin grooming in front of a goddess. Or maybe it wasn't. Tomi's instruction had never covered encounters with deities.

"I was born to the pride of mermaids up the coast, but since they don't keep male cubs my brother and I were brought to the Stormborn and abandoned. Because we apparently look like a lion who isn't very popular, we were split up to make our markings less noticeable, or something. My brother's training to be a reaver and I'm training to be a lawspeaker. So he gets to learn to fight and all that and I get to memorize very long lists of names and events." Gods, that made him sound really, spectacularly boring.

"I promise I'm not as boring as I sound."  

[bipolar bee]

Keshi listened with interest. She really did enjoy spending time with mortals like this. It was how she'd met her dearest friend, after all - the father figure she'd never had, really. Dvija had taken some time to open up, but once they had she'd become really quite fond of the lion.

When Kraken mentioned the mermaids, Keshi stilled. She'd met Dvija when he'd been wasting away just outside of the mermaid lands, and she'd met his daughter in the mermaid lands when she'd slipped in to seek out his family. Keshi spoke before thinking, sort of disregarding most of what Kraken had said regarding his own father and his brothers and his duties within the pride.

"Who is your mother, then?"

Her voice was a little harsh, and even Keshi was surprised by the way she sounded.  

[Princess_Feylin]

"Katerina," he recalled, barely managing to make it a statement rather than a question.

The abrupt question had thrown Kraken for a moment, but he recovered quickly. Being questioned about ancestry was nothing new for him, and he did know his mother's name, at least. Not that he ever thought of her, really. She had abandoned him and Kjell, after all, which didn't exactly make her mother of the year in his book.

"I haven't seen her since I was very young. She was a lot quicker to get rid of Kjell and I than mermaids usually are. At least, that's what I was told."

He had vague memories of his half-sister protesting when their mother said she was talking him and Kjell away from the pride, but it was entirely possible, given how young he had been, that he was simply imagining that he had overheard that conversation and that it had never taken place at all. Since they weren't going to stay in the pride, it wasn't as if anyone had really bothered to teach him and his brother much about its ways.

"Is that important?"  

[bipolar bee]

Keshi was silent for a long moment, her eyes narrowed as she watched Kraken. This was the son of Dvija's Tempest, it would seem. That made Keshi feel a surge of sudden and irrational anger. It was not out of the ordinary for the goddess to fall victim to ill tempers. Her mood often swayed as quickly as a child's might.

She remembered those long nights that Dvija had spent curled up against her, crying in his sleep. She remembered the way that he'd looked when he'd talked of his Tempest. She remembered the heart-wrenching way he'd talked about his Mermaid.

Most of all, Keshi remembered that rusty laugh she'd finally urged from him, harsh and raspy from disuse.

"It isn't, no," Keshi finally answered, her entire expression brightening. Her train of thought was not the most mature, and suddenly it made perfect sense for her to seduce him into fathering cubs for the sole purpose of dumping them on him later. It would be a strange sort of payback for his mother's own behavior.

It made sense to Keshi, and that was all that mattered.

"Tell me, Kraken, my Seaspray, have you ever been with a Goddess?"  

[Princess_Feylin]

Throughout Keshi's thought process, Kraken had held himself very still and tense, hoping very hard that he would not be called upon to defend himself from the wrath of a goddess. He had no idea how one went about doing that. There were tales told that Captain Ruzanski had met with a number of deities, and even fought one with his band, but Kraken had not paid much attention to them. No one fought gods and lived to tell about it. Not in this day and age.

"All right," he said, now regarding the goddess with significantly more wariness than he had displayed up to this point.

Up to now, she had been genial and friendly, but her shift in mood had reminded him that he had best tread with care. It also occurred to him that Tomi would probably be disappointed in his conduct so far, and Kraken really didn't like to disappoint Tomi if he could avoid it.

Her next question made him gape. That really hadn't been the direction he'd thought this encounter would go at all. Particularly not in light of her pointed interest in his mother. He was definitely not doing Tomi proud today. Disrespectful and tongue-tied. This was not something he would be bragging about later. Not unless he came up with some clever dialogue that he could claim he said, instead of what he actually said.

"I haven't," he managed to answer her. "But you're joking, right? I'm...just a b*****d ghostkin. I'm not even a full lawspeaker yet."  

[bipolar bee]

Princess_Feylin

"Don't you think I'm pretty? You think I'm ugly, then?"

Keshi's muzzle drew downward in a slight frown, though her eyes were filled with humor. She wasn't the loveliest of goddesses, but she had certain attributes that one might find pleasant to look at. Her tail, for one, and her pretty wings.

"I wouldn't joke about something like this, my Seaspray." Yes, she totally would, but Keshi felt like being serious was a little more important than not being serious.

"Are you not interested, then?"  

[Princess_Feylin]

Oh gods. What was Kraken supposed to do with this? What was he supposed to do? A goddess was asking him if he thought she was pretty.

"Of course I think you're pretty. You're unlike anyone I've ever met."

And she really wanted to be with him? Like, sex? That was just so unbelievable. He was, as he'd said, nobody. At least, not compared to a goddess. But, hey. Who turned down free sex? Particularly free sex with a goddess? Only crazy people, and Kraken was definitely not a crazy person.

And she wasn't joking. Hells.

"I didn't say I wasn't interested. I just don't understand why you're interested. I shouldn't question goddesses though, right?"

And he should definitely shut up, before she changed her mind and decided smiting would be more fun than sexing. He didn't want to have to explain to Tomi that he got smitten for questioning a goddess's motives in wanting to have sex with him. The lawspeaker might asphyxiate laughing.