Chapter Text
“Oh. Oh, no,” Okarun said, long fingers tightening still more around his shoulder pauldrons.
“It’s fine, Okarun. It’s not that different from how it used to be! You already knew he was a high-ranking official in the Dajia empire.” Momo said, trying to be cheerful as she glared daggers at Jiji, who was watching Okarun’s meltdown with the same expression you’d expect of someone watching a rabid animal near a loved one.
Okarun moaned in despair, an eerie tenor. “No, no, no, no, no.” He hunkered down further, until his helmet was buried in his crossed arms.
“Okarun, it’ll be fine. Don’t you think you’re being a bit dramatic?” Momo asked.
He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Miss Momo. This changes everything. I didn’t know—I should have known as soon as I saw the Kitos were after you. Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, voice trembling.
“Why would I tell you?” Momo said sharply. “I’m on the run from a prince of an enemy country. Do you think I was lying to you for shits and giggles?”
“I—no, but why didn’t you tell me after we got closer?” Okarun pleaded.
“We’ve both been keeping secrets, Okarun. Don’t insult me by pretending you were going to tell me your secrets.”
Okarun flinched. “I wasn’t on purpose! There are things I can’t talk about.”
Momo shrugged, the spark of anger having left her. Now, only an aching exhaustion remained. “Just as there are things I can’t talk about, either. I’m sorry you had to find out like this, but I can't apologise for lying to you.”
“Momo, can I talk with you for a bit?” Jiji asked. “...Alone?” he added as Okarun got to his feet and lumbered forward.
“If you can say something to her, you can say it in front of me,” Okarun said. “I don’t trust you.” He stood up slightly until his face was eye-level with Jiji, who bristled.
Momo rolled her eyes, placing a quelling hand on Okarun’s forearm. “Okarun, chill. Jiji’s an old friend, and I can handle myself. I’ll be fine, okay?”
Okarun tilted his head down at Momo. “What if he hurts you?” he said baldly.
Jiji’s face was turning red with anger. “Why would I hurt Momo? I’m telling you, we’re friends. We go way back. And how long have you known her, huh?”
“Stop. We aren’t doing this, you two, especially if you both are coming to Sumer with me. Jiji, I haven’t seen you in over a decade. I can’t blame Okarun for being defensive! Okarun, stop needling Jiji. I’m going to talk to Jiji alone, and then I’m going to go to sleep, and neither of you are going to wake me up.” Momo’s voice pitched louder as she spoke.
“Miss Momo!” Okarun protested. He shut up as Momo glared at him. “Fine.”
Momo was excruciatingly aware of how easily noise carried in the slot canyon. Judging by how Jiji lowered his voice, he was as well. “Momo, do you really trust him?”
Momo nodded. “With my life. He’s a friend.”
Jiji’s brows furrowed, then loosened. He stuck out a gauntleted hand, which emanated a faint violet glow. “Let me check you over for spiritual influence?”
“You’re trained in magic manipulation?” Momo said, surprised. Then again, he’d used that burst of light during the fight.
“Kind of have to be to be safe to be around,” Jiji said ruefully. “Your grandmother taught me herself.”
Momo stifled the reflexive feeling of jealousy that Jiji was the one to get personal instruction from her grandmother while Momo was meant to fumble out the basics of her powers on her own. She refused to let him know that, though. She took his hand and suppressed a shiver at the sensation of creeping energy swirling up her arm.
After a long moment, Jiji let her go. He was frowning. “Your magic is unsettled. Have you been meditating?”
Momo shook her head, an embarrassed flush on her cheeks. “Is it that important I meditate…? Granny always told me to, but I thought she was being dramatic.”
“Of course it’s important! Magic manipulation is like a muscle, if you don’t stretch and train it, you get weak!” Jiji said, his voice loud enough to bounce off the canyon’s walls.
Momo shushed him with a hiss. “Not so loud!” She brushed her bangs out of her eyes. “I haven’t really… been to any shrines recently. For obvious reasons.”
Her grandmother could meditate well enough to reach Santa Dodoria without use of a shrine’s nexus of magical energy, but Momo wasn’t anywhere near skilled enough to do that. And, well, the only shrine she’d been to since she’d fled her home was the one she and Okarun had fallen into while fleeing an angry mob. And that shrine’s guardian spirit hadn’t exactly been friendly.
So no, she hadn’t meditated.
Jiji winced. “Sorry. We can try and find a friendly shrine? There are more shrines in Shono the closer you get to the Sumerian border, surely we can find at least one that will let you use it.”
Momo heaved a sigh and nodded. “Let’s do that.”
“Great!”
Breakfast was…uncomfortable. Jiji and Okarun sat opposite each other, staring one another down, while Momo found she had, for once, little appetite.
Jiji cleared his throat as he took a large map out of his backpack. “So…plans for the day? Where are we planning on ending up?”
Momo stared blankly at him.
He laughed awkwardly. “Okay, maybe Okarun was the one with your route planning?”
When Jiji turned to look at Okarun with a vaguely desperate air about him, Okarun just shrugged.
Jiji slumped theatrically. “Guess it’s up to Mapmaster Jiji to lead you both to safety!” He thumbed his chest and winked at Momo, who rolled her eyes. This Jiji reminded her more of the Jiji she used to know than the Jiji of last night. He unrolled the map and pointed to a squiggle. “We’re here right now, see?”
Momo did not see, but Okarun made a noise of reluctant interest.
Jiji beamed. “Right! So, the nearest shrine to us is,” he pointed to a dot a fair bit away from the squiggle, “here! Which is either two days of easy travel or one day of hard travel, depending on how fast we want to go.”
“We usually don’t go very fast,” Okarun said. “Miss Momo’s a slow walker.”
Momo whipped toward him, offended. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “It’s true.”
“Let’s do two days, then! We can get to here,” Jiji pointed at another little squiggle about three-quarters between where they currently were and the dot, “by tonight and have an easy night before getting up bright and early tomorrow to go to town!”
For some reason, the map really solidified how much area they’d crossed from Momo’s home shrine to where they were now—and how much they had still to go. She felt exhausted just looking at it.
There was a stilted silence, then Jiji coughed. “Y'know, Okarun, my odachi is really heavy, if you could carry it…?”
Okarun turned to stare incredulously at Jiji, tapping the dent in his neck from where that same odachi had crashed against it only a few hours earlier. “Sir Jin. No.”
Jiji, upon hearing his full name, gagged and clutched his chest. “Please, not wanting to carry my stuff is one thing! But to call me Jin…well! I simply won't answer you! Just Jiji, please, no need to be so formal!”
Okarun didn't respond, instead shouldering Momo's bags and standing up. “Let's go, Miss Momo and Sir Jin.”
Although Jiji’s presence had made things infinitely more awkward between Momo and Okarun, Momo found herself glad for his presence. He was fun to travel with and had a seemingly infinite amount of riddles and word games that kept her mind occupied while they walked. Okarun stayed stubbornly silent, giving only one-word responses when directly asked.
Stupid hunk of metal. Was he still mad at her over the fiance thing? It wasn’t her fault that she was caught up with this whole thing. She didn’t want to marry a short, murderous freak!
When they stopped for lunch, Momo kicked his greaves with a hollow clanging noise as he stood with his back turned to them, ostensibly checking for other people but she recognized that sulky set to his shoulders. “Oi, dickhead.”
Okarun’s head slowly swivelled toward her. “Yes?”
“Come sit with me,” she said, holding her secret weapon behind her back.
The bright pinpricks of his eyes tightened. “I’m fine where I am, Miss Momo.”
“Really?” Momo said incredulously. What a baby. As Okarun turned back around, she reached out, summoned her powers, and grabbed him.
He shrieked, twisting in her grip until he was facing her. “Miss Momo! Let me go!”
“I’m not going to let you go until you tell me what’s up with you! Why are you suddenly being such a prick?” Momo asked, her hands on her hips. “I thought we were past this!”
“You have the social skills of an ox,” Okarun hissed.
“I’m just gonna—” Jiji said from somewhere outside her field of vision. There was the crunching of boots on the rock of the path. Momo waited for the crunching to become inaudible before continuing.
“Are you planing on staying or not?” Momo said, trying and failing to keep the thread of hurt from her voice. Some part of her sank at the prospect of losing Okarun as her guard, but if he was somehow loyal to her fiance… it was better he left sooner rather than later.
“No!” Okarun said hotly, head jerking up to make firm eye contact with Momo. “I told you that I would get you to your grandmother in Sumer, and I wasn’t lying. Knowing that you’re e-engaged to… him isn’t going to change that.”
Momo held his gaze for several long seconds. Not for the first time, she cursed how unreadable he was when he was still. She’d learned to read his tells when he was fidgeting or speaking, but like this, with Okarun staring at her without moving, she was lost. “Promise?” she said.
“I promise,” Okarun said.
“Then stop acting so weird! You’re making things super uncomfortable!” Momo said, thumping his shoulder with a hollow thud.
He tucked one of the ropes braided into his panache over his shoulder. “Sorry for being upset that I’ve been lied to for the past month!”
Momo scoffed. “Please, like you haven’t been lying to me as well?”
“I have not!” Okarun hissed.
“Have too, you haven’t been telling me things. Like, anything! I hardly know you!” Momo snapped. It pissed her off, knowing that she’d basically poured out her heart in front of him during their late night talks and then Jiji had spilled the rest of the beans, while Okarun’s life was still basically a mystery.
“I’ve told you all I can!”
“And that’s nothing. You’ve told me less than the bare minimum about your life—I don’t know where you’re from, why you’re sealed into the armor, what you’re getting out of travelling with me, what your life was like before we met… anything!”
“Maybe I can’t tell you!” Okarun said, voice rising in frustration. “So would you just drop it?”
“Why not!? Why can’t you talk to me?”
“Because I can’t talk about it! When I try to say the words, words I don’t want to say come out! I’m trying! I’m really, really trying!” Okarun shouted. His words echoed through the canyon walls. He slumped and buried his face in his hands. “I’m trying, Miss Momo. I am.”
Momo licked her lips. “You can’t say the words? Are you cursed?”
He looked at her helplessly. He didn’t say anything, which was confirmation enough.
“Oh.” It made sense, she supposed. There were plenty of things about Okarun that didn’t add up to his whole ‘spirit in a suit of armor’ schtick, but she’d thought that was just because he’d been sealed into the armor. Curses were different. Curses were nasty work done by malicious spirits, magic woven through the very aura of the cursed being.
She’d never seen an actual cursed being before. Everything she knew about curses came from second-hand tales her grandmother had told her about her work. They were vanishingly rare in this day and age, after most evil spirits had been permanently sealed away.
She snapped her fingers. “That’s why you’re afraid of magic, isn’t it!”
“I—I’m not afraid of magic,” Okarun said indignantly. “It’s just a healthy respect, is all.”
Right. “I can help you with your curse! After we find my grandmother. Or, uh, she can help you with your curse. Santa Dodoria is one of the strongest spirits out there because she’s got a whole country worshipping her. And my grandma’s old as balls. So she’s seen, like, everything.” Momo said eagerly, her previous anger washed away. “The next time I go to a shrine, I can ask Santa Dodoria herself!”
Okarun flinched minutely. “You can talk to her?”
Momo wobbled a hand. “Ehhhh, kind of. I don’t have a very strong connection with her yet. But she’s not like whatever spirit cursed you, I promise. She’s mostly just interested in people.”
Okarun didn’t understand, that much was clear from the still-trepidatious set of his shoulders. He would, hopefully. Santa Dodoria was scary, but not cruel. When Momo connected with her, it felt like she was the bug under a magnifying glass, cupped in the palm of some unknowable creature that didn’t mean her harm.
“And, in the meantime,” Momo tapped her nose. “I’ll keep an eye out for any hints about your curse. Maybe if someone guesses what it is, you’ll be able to talk about it?”
Okarun didn’t reply, but Momo expected that. Grandmother had told her that most curses had precautions silencing the victims.
“Um. Sorry for yelling at you,” Momo said awkwardly. “I didn’t know you couldn’t talk about it. I just thought you were being cagey.” She didn’t want to undo the fragile relationship they’d built up.
“It’s fine, Miss Momo. Just knowing that you’re trying to help…it means a lot to me,” Okarun said. His fingers twisted together. “And I’m sorry for getting mad at you about not telling me who you were. I don’t think I would have wanted you to know who I was, if I was in your place.” Then, seemingly as a peace offering: “Tell me more about your grandmother?”
Momo beamed.