"A– An evil spirit? A hungry one?!"
Ikky had changed into new clothes. They were baggy, most likely with the purpose of concealing his thin body, albeit highlighting it even further. His clumped long hair had been washed, brushed and combed very thoroughly too; then tied to the back of his head in the shape of a bun.
"Yes, one almost as hungry as you are." Arley answered, taking disgusted stares at Ikky's bad eating etiquettes. Although she did think it was a good thing he was eating his heart out. He looked so starved and frail after all. While to her, only fit men are men at all.
She continued,
"It is one of the 5 Mortal Fears, the Gashadokuro: Fear of war. The other four are scattered throughout the Lokahs, and maybe the Realm of Augury. They are:
-The Jorogumo: Fear of seduction.
- The Manananggal: Fear of betrayal.
- The Chimaera: Fear of plague.
And finally, the Baba Yaga..."
Finding the dramatic stop behind that last Mortal fear strange, Ikky pushed,
"Baba Yaga, the fear of..."
Arley moved her face closer as she spoke slower this time,
"... What time of the day brings thoughts of fear?
...What time reminds us Prophets of all the terrible things this world is hiding away?
...Come on, the children remind you of this fear everyday;
it is the 'Fear of the dark'."
Ikky and Arley locked eyes with each other for nearly a whole minute before Arley clicked her tongue.
"Man, Patrick does a better job at telling these stories. But don't tell him I said that." She slapped her thighs and stood up from her seat.
"Bring the dishes down to the kitchen when you're done." She drank the remaining water in her cup and dropped it back on the table.
Left to ponder, Ikky soon asked the only other person close to him,
"Fear of seduction sounds familiar to you, doesn't it?"
Sitting on her flying plate, Yaga nodded slowly.
"Was that thing really on the level of... this?"
Ikky peered into the distance from the round rooftop of Arley's restaurant. But even if he was at the ground floor of the two storey building, the figure he was staring at would still be visible. Everyone in this town could see it if they just stretched turned to its direction.
There was a monolithic skeleton in the distance with its head far above the clouds. Their were many weird spirits around, but the thing about this one was that, although it sat silently with the sun in the browning sky behind it, it wasn't even casting a shadow like the rest. It was like it was there, but again not. Rather than a spirit, it resembled a ghost.
That was the Gashadokuro, a spirit supposedly on par, with the Jorogumo— he guessed— that he had faced in his first omen.
Ikky had a lot to worry about, and was curious as to why the monolith was being left alone so casually. But something bigger might seemingly be just lurking within his own shadow, alive, and sentient, making the skeleton the least of his worries.
'Yaga.' Ikky feared to whisper her name out now. Because, what if the Baba Yaga from the 5 Mortal Fears was the Yaga dangling her little legs right above his shoulder? Ikky didn't know, but if that was the case then his life has yet to see any improvement; in fact, it seemed to be getting worse.
———
"No no no! What are you even washing? Never done the dishes before? Forget it. Go get some sleep in that room I showed you earlier. Brush your teeth and put on your pyjamas before you touch that bed too." Arley shoo-ed Ikky out of her kitchen.
"There is still stew on those plates, I can—"
Arley grabbed his shoulders before he could finish. "Listen boy, if I ever catch you putting your tongue on my plates again, I will feed you peppers and salt down a straw as you are strapped to a hospital bed! Now go away! We'll work on your bad etiquettes at sunrise."
Ikky finally backed off and walked out to the restaurant, murmuring,
"Why do spoons get to go in the mouth and plates not? Pshh! Stupid rules."
Over at one of the tables at the now empty restaurant, Ikky found Rick sitting at one of the tables, eating with his bare hands. His face was a little red, and he was sweating quite a lot. But Ikky could notice he exuded a certain glow that definitely wasn't there this afternoon. The glow seemed to grow brighter with each handful of food he bit and each gulp of beer he chugged down.
Ikky's eyes lingered on the man's figure for a few more seconds, wondering when was the last time someone this close to him had that comfortable aura surrounding them.
Ikky then looked down at his palms, his eyes sliding to the glass counter beside him.
Equinox... Nox, took a trip down memory lane and realised another thing incredibly wrong. Someone took him into their place, gave him food and even offered him a job. And not once had he caught a sight of unreasonable scorn in the faces of the people who had seen him— other than fascination about how he looked that is.
"What's wrong with me?" He walked up the stairs with confused eyes.
Nox might have been the child with a thousand curses, but Equinox could swear that he was born with one too. That curse was seemingly the reason why no one wanted to get close to him, not even the wild inhabitants of the forest.
But Equinox thought he had found out what that one curse was and named it, 'being ugly as all hell'. Yet, his appearance hadn't changed that much, based the reflection he had just glanced at. So what was different?
"You know about the Prophet anointment exams, right?"
Rick suddenly asked as he stood up with his empty dishes and cups in his hands.
"The what? When?"
"Six days from now."
"Uhh... sure?" Ikky shrugged before continuing along the stairs. But before that, he stood back to question Rick more about those five mortal fears Arley had failed to explain clearly. And about the exam he'd just mentioned.
———
A while later, Ikky found himself standing barefooted on a lea of black sunflowers, under a grey sky. As he looked at the grassland around him, he wondered what this dream would have been about if he hadn't just hijacked it. But he quite liked the landscape, so he would definitely be re-imagining it in the next dream he would have.
"A lucid dream. How often do you get these?" Yaga asked, standing on her small plate and floating ahead.
"Most of the time." Ikky answered simply.
"Wait, how are you here? Don't you need permission for peering into something as private as my dreams?" He pointed out, waiting a little before Yaga replied,
"Well... I guess you haven't mastered complete isolation. Or maybe it's just the fact that you're only about half conscious at the moment."
"... Oh well. I was going to try and figure out my Totem anyway, so it's a good thing you're here."
Yaga squinted her eyes suspiciously as she answered again,
"... I see."
Ikky then summoned his prophecy scroll, with the intention of reading closer into his Totem. Apparently the scroll also had to fall from the sky and burn away even in his dreams.