Momo blinked at the answer to his joke, his ears giving the slightest twitch. For a moment, he simply stared at Rois, seemingly unsure whether the man had actually just responded to him with complete sincerity. Then a quiet breath escaped him through his nose, and the corners of his mouth lifted despite himself.

“Well. I suppose I should be flattered.”

There was no real offense in his voice. If anything, the exchange seemed to have done exactly what he had hoped it might. The oppressive tension that had hung between them had eased, if only a little, and Momo noticed the difference. His gaze drifted briefly toward the shadow above, catching the way its terrible maw had slowly closed. He couldn't say what that meant, if anything. He still didn't understand the thing nearly well enough to make assumptions about it. But at least it wasn't trying to bite him at the moment, and that seemed like a reasonable improvement.

When Rois began asking his questions, Momoshiro listened without interrupting. The words came quickly, almost tumbling over one another, and there was something in the urgency behind them that made his expression soften. This wasn't curiosity for curiosity's sake. Rois genuinely wanted to know if there was something he could do. If there was some way to make the thing inside him less dangerous.

“I do talk to them,” Momo answered after a moment. “Though that's not the reason they listen to me.”

His fingers brushed lightly over the sleeve of his haori again, an old habit whenever the subject of the spirits inside him arose.

“They don't have a choice. I fought each of them into submission and then consumed them. Now they're my thralls.” His shoulders gave the faintest shrug, though there was no pride in the admission. “I'm not entirely proud of it, but it's better than allowing them to wander free and terrorize innocent people. I use them for good. Or, at least, what I believe is good.”

He paused, his fingers brushing absently against his sleeve.

“They retain their personalities, for those that had anything beyond their base desires and urges. Little mannerisms and quirks still come through from time to time, which can be... interesting.” A faint, almost wry smile touched his lips. “But they're little more than pets now. Perhaps even less than that. A dog can still bite the hand that feeds it.”

His gaze lowered briefly.

“They cannot.”

He looked back toward Rois.

“I don't think you should expect yourself to be able to calm it immediately. Especially if you've spent so long simply trying to survive it.”

Momo glanced once more toward the shadow, studying the vague outline of it as it lingered there. He couldn't tell what it wanted beyond what Rois had already told him. He couldn't tell what happened when it took control, or whether the thing could even understand anything he said. Those were answers he simply didn't have.

“But you said something important.”

His eyes returned to Rois.

“You said you can't talk to it unless it talks to you first.”

Momo's ears tilted forward slightly.

“So perhaps that's where you start.”

He shifted his weight, considering his words carefully.

“Don't try to make it safe all at once. Don't try to make it something it isn't. Just... learn it. Pay attention to when it appears, what happens before it does, what seems to make things worse, and what seems to make things better. If it really is part of you now, then understanding it might be more useful than fighting it every time it surfaces.”

A pause followed, and Momoshiro's expression softened.

“And if it only knows how to eat, then perhaps the first thing you need to teach it is that it doesn't always have to.”

His tail gave a slow, thoughtful flick behind him.

“That may take time.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, his mouth curved into a small smile.

“And if you ever manage to teach it manners, I'd be particularly grateful. I would rather not be eaten the next time we happen to meet.”
 


They were questions he had always wanted to ask.

Questions for spiritualists past that he had gone to for a certain other problem, only to find them useless in the whole ‘my haunted brain’ field, and then to find them useless again in the actual ‘spirit’ problem. Failures upon failures--

Though no part of him pretends to really understand Momo’s answers.

“... Forced them into submission.”

The look Rois was giving the foxkin was completely flat. Now how in Khurun was he supposed to fight something that could not exist at the same time as him, let alone when it was so big, let alone when he had nothing to fight with. There was an actual spirit-talker before him and even the fluffy one had been shocked at the sudden cleaving of teeth against earth, the heedy desire to rend bone from flesh, the fire of a beast scorned-- so to put it bluntly, the red-head was very aware that he had no chance. Sub zero, in fact. Momoshiro’s words were correct… he was surviving it and that was all. The truth did not feel bad being said out loud.

“Can’t… you tame it?” Uttered with absolute sincerity, “Don’t you… island people… do dances and chant and hit things with purified sticks? I was blessed by a visiting priest from Sonshan once. He dressed sort of like you but had a big hat and weird shoes , and he hit me with sticks with paper on them and a little bell… nothing happened.”

Forgive him for the random orientalism, the Suldazan has not spent much time around ‘island people’ and thus isn’t quite sure what is offensive or isn’t. And it is not spoken with any kind of malice, but rather the thoughtfulness of remembering how the loud chants had hurt his ears at the time… he breaks free from thought when the fox offers something that maybe he could do, listening diligently to the strangers words as if the half-beast really did trust what was being spoken… because there wasn’t any other option. It was not like people were queueing up to help someone like him.

And then something Momo says causes a veil of hesitation to appear upon Rois’s expression.

… They are lapsed into silence as the larger of the two needs to think again, eyes wandering off to the side with hands sliding against the hems of his pockets. Reluctance. Trust. Awkwardness. Again. Something he’d never admitted aloud to anyone ever before, something that gets caught in his throat every time that it is even thought about, no yet, not so soon, it couldn’t be said. It was too… the idea of even admitting out loud causes his big dumb heart to flutter insecurely, mouth forming a wobbly line as Rois attempts to think on his feet, something the butcher is usually good at doing: but not in the setting of a ‘pleasant conversation’. He does not have pleasant conversations with people. The idiot rebuffs the feeling for a moment and stalls for time to ponder by voicing something bizarre aloud,

“Are you a homosexual?”

……………………………. Amazing. And then, hurriedly after,

“Do- do you have a family, I mean. Children. If you’re a homosexual you wouldn’t have children, that is why I said that…”

Jesus christ.

“... I mean, I guess gays can have kids, pick ‘em up from the orphanage…”

Stop talking.
 
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For perhaps the first time since their conversation had begun, Momo looked genuinely caught off guard.

His ears rose slowly, and he stared at Rois in complete silence for several seconds. The question seemed to hang between them in all its blunt, bewildering sincerity, followed immediately by an increasingly desperate attempt to explain it. By the time Rois reached the part about orphanages, Momo's expression had become an almost perfect mixture of confusion and amusement. One ear twitched. Then the other.

“...I'm bisexual.”

He said it with such simple sincerity that, for a moment, there was no indication he found the question particularly strange. Then the faintest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Though I'm not entirely sure how we arrived at that question.”

A quiet breath escaped his nose, something dangerously close to a laugh.

“And for what it's worth, I don't think being attracted to men prevents someone from having children. There are rather a lot of ways for that to happen.” His brows lifted slightly. “Though I suppose that is a conversation for another day.”

Once again, there was no judgment in his voice. If anything, Momo seemed more entertained by the sheer awkwardness of the situation than anything else. His tail gave a small, lazy flick behind him before settling again.

“As for whether I have a family...” His smile softened.

“I did... I-I do.”

The answer came more quietly than the others.

“I grew up rather surrounded. A mother, a father, brothers and a sister, not to mention the rest of my clan. I had people around me who taught me, fed me, argued with me, worried about me...” His gaze drifted briefly toward the ground. “The usual things, I suppose.”

A small breath escaped him, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.

“I haven't seen them in a very long time.”

He didn't elaborate. The memories were there, certainly, but Momo had never been particularly inclined to lay them out for strangers piece by piece. Also something else lingered underneath those memories, coiled in the shadows. He didn't want to delve further. Instead, his eyes returned to Rois, and the faint smile came back.

“No children, though.”

His ears tilted slightly.

“And I don't think I'm quite ready for that particular responsibility.”

There was a hint of dry humor in the admission, as though he could already imagine the chaos of trying to raise a child while carrying several cursed spirits inside himself.

“As for the rest of what you asked...” Momo's gaze shifted toward the shadow again. “No. I don't think I can simply tame it for you.”

His expression was gentle, but firm.

“If I could, I would. But whatever is inside you isn't a spirit, cursed or otherwise. I don't know its nature, and I don't know how deeply it is tied to you. Trying to force it into submission might do more harm than good.”

He paused, then looked back to Rois.

“But I can help you understand it.”

There was something deliberate about the way he said it this time. Not a promise that he could solve the problem, but an offer to stand beside him while he figured it out.

“And for the record...” Momo's smile returned, a little more playful now. “I don't think I need to start hitting you with sticks or bells.”

His ears perked.

“I admit it would be entertaining though.”
 

“I did have a reason for asking all that. It wasn’t curiosity."

Comes the somewhat flustered and accidently yelled out response, rushed and filled with hesitant emotion. He had just got a little side-tracked by the scatterbrain effect that happened whenever Rois was forced to find a way to speak around something; the act of wanting to speak with confidence… and not being able to. Something besides just the lack of trust between the two. Because it did not really matter if Momoshiro was bisexual (his gaydar was as accurate as ever), the point had been the family aspect, and the poor fox afar briefly seems to lose a beat of happiness.

“... I see.”

And naturally, Rois would not share a lick about his birth family in return. They belonged to a different body, a different person, in a different time and were wholly irrelevant to the greater picture, which seemed abstract in the moment but would be tied into the whole half-fiend aspect eventually. A good part of the butcher is thankful Momo did not want to delve deeper. He did not know what to say to those who found their memories came like the fierce crashing of waves against the soul, and though the red-head can relate, he lacked both the verbiage and softness to simply state; I’m sorry. I am sorry you hurt at some point, we have stood upon the same beach and felt the salt sting at our eyes, felt the lashing of long-gone wind whipping against tender skin, we are the same, you and I. Even if he did have some semblance of grace with words… Rois knows deep down that the sentiment was pointless. The emotion was not fruitful. Such statements would neither fix nor salve the fox’s muted pain.

And words that had no meaning did not need to be spoken.

'I don't know its nature, and I don't know how deeply it is tied to you... But I can help you understand it.'​

“I… I have a family, I guess.”

… Stupid, stupid, he feels the skin beneath his eyes heat, the Suldazan is thankful for the shades of his skin, they do not betray the flush easily. Was it still too early? Well, what was the point of seeing a doctor and not telling them the symptoms, logic questioned loudly. Did one stand before a store and refuse to put in an order, expecting the clerk to guess? It was a waste of time and effort and hesitating was prolonging the awkwardness of the moment, if he did not say it then maybe a chance would be missed to learn something from the expert, fuck it, he should just state it. Just admit it. The rolling of a shoulder and the blunt voice is an attempt to make the prior words seem like not a big deal, like he doesn’t care,

“You are correct.” Voice faltering to almost a whisper, “I guess you could say I’m a man who has fooled with men who… has children. Not willingly, I’ve never felt ready for the responsibility, but circumstances forced it. I’ve been... raising two girls for a good while now. They’re little things.”

… He remembers the first time the tiny, delicate hands of child elves had reached for his own and sought comfort from his rough pads, had looked upon the span of his gnarled palm and black-clawed fingers and did not shy away, they had… never shied away. Years had passed and they never turned their brilliant gazes upon him with fear of him, only for him, children, how could they find worry in their young hearts for a beast like him? Embarrassment causes Rois to look ashamed of himself, fully, truly and openly, it hurt to rationalize it, hurt more to wonder why, like Momoshiro, they could still find it so easy to smile in his terrible, depressing presence.

He did not know where they found the strength to do it.

‘And if it only knows how to eat, then perhaps the first thing you need to teach it is that it doesn't always have to.’​

“I am bringing them up because… you mentioned understanding it, and teaching it… ” Best to tip the conversation away from the inevitable conclusion, but such overwhelming emotion is hard to swallow. The half-beast has not looked at Momo for a while now. He does not want the emotion that cannot be kept from vibrant eyes to be discovered, even though it is the very same emotion that causes that strong voice to almost tremble. It’s so difficult. He is awash on an island with no boat.

“Those two… it… doesn’t hurt them. It never has. I do not think it can. It…”

Because he became half monster, and it became half human. Because when they became one creature tied to existence they lapsed over each other like the wild sun to the dark moon, and it taught him the violence to do things he never thought he’d ever have the courage and drive to do by way of blood and bone…

… And he taught it love. It loves them, because he loves them. This is a fact lingering in the air unspoken, implied, never directly addressed.

He was such a pathetic, miserable, frail creature that even a Shroud fiend became weaker being next to him. How laughable, the ‘L’ word sticks in his throat like glue, never to roll off of his tongue. To love and be loved, to be held with reverence and adoration. Soft, warm memories that felt like tender hugs against the heart, sometimes the awful, burdensome, man-eating butcher sat there and felt like he could weep beneath the stars with fists curled at heavy eyes like a child himself, someone loves me. Someone knows all of me, and still, they love me. Flitted about him like little lights, excited by his attention, wanting of his affection, Rois had once thought himself stone just to find those small hands had shifted him like clay, year by year, he learns. And it learns. And from the mouth of babes came a story of a monster stilled, sitting there without the threat of destruction, a hurricane stilled by the cotton-touch of affection--

“Have you… ever heard of something like this happening before? Your feelings…” A glance at his claws to Momo’s hands, he bet Momoshiro would never have trouble with love. An effortlessly handsome thing like him would always be able to find it easily… unlike himself. He was loved because he was a victim of circumstance, he’d been lucky, the emotion would never be at home in that dreadful shell he called a body-- “... Affecting spirits… changing their nature?”

The butcher presses a hand against his face in stress, rubbing at a cheek in a self-soothing manner.

“Maybe not with sticks, but could it be tamed… another way… in a kinder way. If it responds to…”

Rois’s voice is miserable. The ‘L word' is dodged again.

“... But I’m not… capable… I’ve learned something, but I don’t know what to do with the information.”
 
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Momoshiro remained quiet as Rois spoke.

He didn't interrupt when the words became tangled, nor when the red-head's voice faltered around the things he clearly found hardest to say. He simply listened, his expression gradually softening as the pieces began to fit together. Two girls. A creature capable of slaughtering everything in its path, yet somehow incapable—or perhaps simply unwilling—of harming them. Something that had once been nothing but hunger now possessing enough restraint to recognize two small lives as something worth leaving untouched.

His gaze drifted toward the shadow.

It was difficult to reconcile the thing before him with the creature Rois had described earlier. The same terrible hunger was still there. Momo could sense it. But there was something else now, too. Something quieter. The beast had stopped trying to bite. It had stopped burning the earth beneath them. For all its monstrous nature, it was listening in its own strange way.

Momo's fingers moved absently against his sleeve as he thought about his own spirits. He knew what it was to force something terrible into obedience. He knew what it was to strip violence down to something manageable and put chains around instincts that would otherwise hurt people. But this was different.

His spirits had been conquered.

Whatever existed between Rois and the thing inside him did not feel conquered at all.

It felt... shared.

The thought lingered.

Momo looked back toward Rois, and there was no judgment in his eyes. If anything, there was a quiet sort of wonder. He had spent years believing that spirits were shaped by their nature, their deaths, their memories, and the circumstances that bound them to the world. But he had also learned that spirits were not as simple as people liked to believe. They could remember. They could attach themselves to things. They could change.

Perhaps living alongside another soul could change them, too.

He considered Rois's question carefully before finally speaking.

“I've never seen this exact thing before.”

A brief pause.

“But I think you've already answered part of your own question.”

His eyes flicked toward the shadow again.

“It doesn't hurt them.”

Momo's gaze returned to Rois.

“And whatever you're doing, it seems to know that.”

There was something almost reassuring in that simple observation. Momo didn't pretend to understand the strange bond between them, and he certainly wasn't going to promise that affection alone could tame something capable of such destruction. But Rois had spent so long believing himself incapable of controlling the monster inside him that perhaps he hadn't considered another possibility.

Maybe control wasn't the only thing that mattered.

“You said it became more like you.”

His voice was quiet.

“Perhaps you became more like it, too.”

Not physically. Not in the ways Rois feared.

Momo's expression softened.

“Maybe you taught it that there are things in this world worth protecting.”

His gaze lingered on the red-head for another moment before drifting back toward the girls' absence, toward the lives Rois had chosen to carry despite everything else he carried inside himself.

“And maybe it taught you the same thing.”

The words were simple, but Momo didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. The answer seemed to be sitting between them already.

After a moment, the foxkin's mouth curved into the faintest smile.

“So no. I don't think you should try to tame it.”

His ears tilted slightly.

“I think you should keep doing what you're already doing.”

A quiet breath.

“Learn from it. Let it learn from you.”

His smile grew just a fraction.

“And perhaps, eventually, you'll both figure out what the other is trying to say.”

For once, Momo didn't make a joke about bells or sticks or otherwise.

He simply watched the shadow, thoughtful and strangely hopeful.

Because whatever else the creature might be, it had learned one thing already.

Who was to say it couldn't continue to do so?
 

Its eye is but a red dot, the glint of implication, no emotion wavers there because it cannot; maybe the ‘host’ feels enough for the both of them. It is like an overfilled jug of water that keeps getting trickled into, feelings spill and stain horrid claws, it cannot understand why it loves… but it does not fight the emotion. Does not spurn it. It is no dog biting against its masters hand, it would bite all others because it could, but something deep in the space where its soul should have been said no… not these two. Never these ones.

It feels sort of like a therapist session. He had had a few before, the word ‘therapist’ was never used, it was something along the line of ‘a herbalist specializing in mental wellness’ when his parents and he had wrongly believed that epilepsy was something that could have been ‘thought away’. Because seizures could be ‘a manifestation of terrible thoughts, ideas and emotions’, and Rois had been a gentle child, a determined and practical one… and maybe he was so ‘good’ that the ‘bad’ was actively fighting back inside the boys head or something, they did not know. No-one did. They sat him down in his room and had gently asked him about things like hopes and dreams to be met with absolutely normal answers, I want to be rich, I want a horse, I want to be married, I want my own house! The youth had been described as so normal in personality and disposition that the herbalists struggled to dispense even tinctures upon him. Regardless, being asked such questions somehow felt good.

And there, in that moment… he really did feel good.

Momoshiro hadn’t laughed at him, had not brought scalding comments-- are you a pedophile? A sicko? Why do you have two young girls-- to batter that fragile self esteem. Momo was someone that continued to surprise Rois, every single time he had expected the fox to put up some resistance of every kind the notion vanished like smoke. And it was as confusing as it was pleasant as it was refreshing, it made… it honestly made him want to smile. To be consumed by the happiness and to display it outwardly knowing that the spiritualist would not seek to chastise him for doing so, would not think of him as a lesser man as he in turn did to the other, it was ok, it was ok to say things out loud! That weight had been there for nothing, all that shyness and reluctance, it was for nothing because there had been no depressing outcome, no jeering, no giggling--

“... I gotta’ go.”

All the niceness did not stop him from being a coward, however.

Above him the crocodiles head twisted with his, violent glimmering rubies turn downwards with his gaze to the dead doe in all its bloody splendor collecting flies as it slowly began to stiffen, he always did this. Always ran, even when the heat consuming the larger males insides was of a blissful nature he was too afraid to let them manifest into something as easy as a smile,

“I have a lot to think about.” A pause, the pair of eyes in the same shade watch the wind stir the speckled fur of the animals back, white and tan and bark. “You gave me a lot to think about, so… yeah. I am sorry about the beginning of this little interaction. I feel…”

Awkwardly with a hand risen in uncertainty. Even now, after all of this, he seems unsure of how to speak to the other.

“... Enlightened?”

Happy.

Maybe... love isn’t as much of a weakness as I thought.

“Whatever-- I feel like the gap between me and it is a little bit smaller, so…” A rolling of the eyes, claws against the neck, “... Thank you.”
 
Momoshiro watched him for a moment, the faint smile still resting on his face.

There was something almost amusing about it. Rois had spent all this time worrying about what Momo might think of him, only to discover that the fox had no intention of judging him at all. Now, having finally said what he needed to say, he seemed desperate to escape before the conversation could become anything more embarrassing.

Momo couldn't fault him for that.

His ears tilted slightly as Rois offered his thanks, and for once there was no clever remark waiting behind his expression. Just a quiet understanding.

“You're welcome.”

His gaze drifted briefly toward the shadow looming over them before returning to Rois. Momo's fingers brushed absently against the sleeve of his haori.

There was no elaboration needed. No promise that everything would suddenly become easy, or that understanding the creature would somehow make its hunger disappear. But perhaps that wasn't what Rois needed.

Perhaps simply knowing that the gap could become smaller was enough.

Momo's tail gave a small, thoughtful flick behind him.

“You don't have to figure it all out today.”

A faint smile returned. His eyes softened.

“When we meet again, you can tell me what you've learned.”

There was an unspoken if in the thought, but Momo didn't say it. Rois had already made it clear that he needed to leave, and Momo wasn't going to make him feel guilty for doing so.

Instead, he gave the red-head a small nod.

“Take care of yourself, Rois.”

Then, after the briefest pause, his eyes shifted toward the dead doe.

“And maybe... take care of your dinner before it gets any colder.”

Momo turned to walk back in the direction he came, offering a lazy wave from over his shoulder. He was sure they'd meet again someday, on another road, in another place.
 

Submission and learning, control being possible, a visible thing, talking to it; a world of possibilities he thought long, long dead had finally opened up before the man, maybe a future where Rois did not feel like he could never reach out to anyone because of both personality and demon-related reasons… and he didn’t remember giving Momoshiro his name. He also did not remember if Momo had given his. Names usually did not matter to he who pledged after first contact to never see that person again (there was no need to remember anyone who was not a permanent staple in his hectic life).

No, the butcher managed something of a smile, more of a smirk without the bite, there will not be an ‘again’.

The doe is hauled up with all the might of a man who did as such for a living, slung about broad shoulders with a bent leg swinging,

“Bye bye, Mr. Fox.”

Mr Crocodile said aloofly with a lingering glance at the beast-kins back, memories of the literal moments prior making him cringe (but it still felt so good…), Gods, what was it about beastfolk that turned him so soft? Thoughts of Safya, his birdkin slave and her fluffy head that felt good to gently pet and how she did the same thing, like sandpaper to wood the peahen shaved down his hard edges and gave the idiot the ability to be gentle, Rois turned and began to skitter back to his camp with the speed of a beast absolutely fleeing the situation. No-one had to know. Nothing had happened in these woods.

… A look down to where a single strand of silvery fox fur clung to the sleeve of his shirt, and Rois pulls an expression like a child, sticking his tongue out between fangs in mock disgust.

Animal folk.
 
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