Did feel like smothering his flame. Her body, small to everyone else but to him it was all-encompassing. Fire dies too, when it doesn't get to breathe. Maybe that's all he'd ever be, something aggressive that had an obvious weakness. Something built up in myth but that could be quelled with one known secret. He laid there under her and tried not to think elicit things when Phil's driving had her bouncing on him. He had dreamed that skinship too many times, even when he was inside Moira. It made him think of other things than what annoyed him, and that annoyed him more. Petulant; he didn't own that many years either. In love with the slights that gave him fuel. That made this open-grilled furnace out of him. He had half a mind to choke her, and the rest of his mind was there for other things. Always Lilith. He'd run this endevor in the ground, whether it be the earth underneath city asphalt, or the forgotten one in Yga, it would be buried one day, and it'd be in her name by his hand.<br/><br/>So, when Philip's driving had him dry-fucking his baby sister enough, she started speaking. At first it drew every wrong response in him. The confidence, the inevitability of her words, it was too much of Devana too soon after he'd warned her. Might have lost it then. Might have shaken her until vertebrae disconnected and her head was limp and he had to keep her in a box. Might have sunk his teeth in too deep and torn out a piece, just to shut her up and have that salty, iron gratification. Why did everything he thought, even with disdain, have to be about her youth-strung body?<br/><br/>But she didn't stir to talk about his shortcomings like Devana. Didn't give him glory while riding him when she oughtn't, suckling him with a place that he'd come from. Didn't sell his own emotional poverty back to him, and make an echo chamber out of his doubt. Her worship was other than mother's. And so he liked it just because of that. So he gave her his hand and he looked at her face while her eyes were on the wound she made. He'd bleed for her easily, and only punish her when she was like that other woman. The wound supplied a ruby row quickly, to compliment her for her cut, but it didn't easily flow. It just thrummed there, a crimson line, like it was a thread from his heart, beating like the center mass and all its chambers.<br/><br/>He listened to her story about him. She had said them when she was even younger, those words, celebrating him when he was exhausted and beaten, and didn't know if he was laying down on mothers' floor because he was going to die or sleep. And Lil in her clean dresses as per mom's orders sat there when mom was gone, satisfied with and by her son. Lilith told him he was not only worthwhile, but worth more than the sum of them all. Fortified his ego. It was hard, because he'd been smithed to be her armor, but now she was trying to reforge him into a king all of his own. He clutched her hand firmly. Talked of his son. It had never been in the cards. Mother was obsessed with the female line. And said his seed was pretty, delicious and useless. Only Lilith's womb mattered.<br/><br/>More of him. He squeezed harder when he thought about it. She would know there was some emotions there. She did spin her magic in the ride, but it felt like hers because it was gentle on his raw. Still, there was momentum of being offended by the table, with Kormir. It may be Salace himself that nailed Devana's ghost to Lilith, but that didn't mean he could unsee it even if he understood his own pathology. But she did well in reminding him she was something he loved, and that had loved him when all the damage had been created on him. By the time they left the car his mood had at least calmed, though not subsided.<br/><br/>He squinted in the night, indeed like the totem she named him as. They were familiar with this air, this spirit surrounding their town, and was strong around the sign they'd put up. Like everything in Yga, the sign was made out of failing parts, but held up some magic that others wouldn't understand. He licked the corner of his mouth when he saw her smoke. It almost made him laugh. He still saw the little girl made to grow up and mantle the reign of Yga too soon. It was strange seeing her with a cigarette in her mouth even if it happened all the time. In his mind she still had chubby fingers and a honeyed washcloth between her lips. Little thief enjoying her loot. Ah, but a toddler couldn't do the things she did now. A frown did sweep in, uninvited, when she asked her bit.<br/><br/>"Yup." Sore. But when he said it with a smile she knew it was alright. He just wanted to prolong it. He nodded to Alchem, who was now tasked with the bags and the coat as they strode through. Maybe the forest son liked the gift from Kormir more than he let on. It was imbued with respect, that fur, but there was something that just spoke to Sal in it, too. They went beyond the sign and in through the vehicular debris that lined the entrance to Yga. True to their nature there was living fires to greet them.<br/><br/>A few were still up, some of them in chairs on their porches, some of them standing, hunched from fatigue. He went by the watering hole and thought it was a pity it wasn't lit too. Didn't know he had the energy to be merry, listen to Moira sing while they got ruined on moonshine, but he wanted something to dispel the anger gone bad in the pit of his stomach. A handful of them came up to him. They were sleepy and tried to small-talk. He didn't answer them, didn't have to. Just nodded to Al and he threw the bags over Lil's head onto the ground, and the townsfolk cut into them like rats. Sal held up his bloodied hand and Alchem tossed his coat into it. While the son made king of Yga was done with his task to feed them the green they'd been craving, he was hungry for something for himself.<br/><br/>And, like any king, he was wondering when it would be served up to him. A friend brought a bottle, and he bit the cork off and drank, the coat still hanging like so many slain wolves in his other hand. Like he'd come home from a hunt and won the pack. He liked the drink. It was stronger than what he'd had in front of Kormir, and it tasted faintly of Lil's magic. A few of his beloved natives tried to talk to him, but the fact that he'd grown up alongside them, and ate the same shit crops and bled the same people in The Running Ritual didn't matter to him now. He was sucking his tongue in the firelight while the others took their handfuls of bills behind him. Sal looked around in the darkness of the young morning. Yga proper wasn't very much. At some point there had been a traditional economic direction here, which meant stores, but since then it had all been repurposed to whatever they needed. It reflected his heart, especially when all the hollows and shadows dug the town out, like screaming maws calling for the sun to snuff them out. He was also repurposed. And he needed to see over it now, with something to sink his teeth into. There had been too little violence for how he was feeling.