There is a rustling on Hestia’s lap, where her loose, oversized hoodie spills into an ocean of haphazard folds. Nestled deep within, a lion stirs. Its plush, fuzzy mane frames a lump of white wool, and its baggy limbs end in hand-stitched pawprint mittens; currently unoccupied, that he might better handle a spoon. “Yes,” Dolce replies, and the lion’s ears flop to and fro as he nods. “Yes, I heard everything.”

He takes his time, scooping up another bite. The ideal spoonful, with just the right ratios of each topping, and not so much sauce that they’re drowned out, takes a careful, practiced hand. He doesn’t get it on the first try, but you can’t rush these sorts of things. A good meal, you take the time to savor how you like. And he won’t continue, not until he’s remembered the sweetness and crunch anew. 

“Do you remember the send-off the Starsong gave us?” Long ago, before they’d taken one step of this journey? “The party lasted three days. All that time, singing without end. We took it up on the ship’s drum, and we carried it with us to the banquet halls, the parks, the contests of strength, and always I could hear somebody, somewhere, singing. A farewell-song, for good friends.”

“We knew that nobody would be coming with us, and they knew we’d be going on alone. Some people said their goodbyes, and never mentioned if they’d ever see us again. Everyone who did bring it up, talked like it was a foregone conclusion. Four…maybe five, I think? Five told us that they’d see us again, alive.”

There’s no room under his hood for a hat. It lies discarded. Across the room. On another island entirely.

“Because that was the worst that could happen. We’d fail, and die, somewhere far, far away, and they’d have to decide when to stop waiting for us. I imagined they’d give us a Starsong burial all the same, to remember us by.”

He doesn’t have a hand free to man the spoon anymore. He needs them both, to hug his little bowl close. To feel it press into his chest as it rises, and falls, in deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

“I might see them again. Years later, after we’ve made our wishes, and changed the galaxy, and beaten every odd that ever existed, and. And I wouldn’t know a thing about them. Or, the Starsong, or goodbyes, or, anything. We might not.” His voice crumbles to dust. “We might not even get along well enough to try again.”

In the heat of the kitchens, in the lap of the goddess of the hearth, wrapped snug thrice over, Dolce shivers.

[i]”...gods above and below.”[/i]