The next morning, Kimi woke in confusion.
“Where am I?!”
“You’re in the hospital. My name’s Juno, nice to meet you.”
“What happened?”
“Your friends asked for some assistance. You have quite the head injury.”
“I- thank you, but I need to go home right away!”
Kimi hopped out of bed, and as she landed her knees buckled beneath her, but Juno caught her and eased her back into the bed.
“You can’t go home right now. You’re hurt, and poorly dressed for the weather. I’m going out to the market to find you three warmer clothes.”
“Why do we need warmer clothes?”
“Alright, kid, I dunno about Ioski or wherever you came from, but it’s cold here in Juniko. It’s really, really cold here.”
“How cold? I have good cold tolerance. I can go out in the middle of winter with only a small sweater!”
“One time I went outside with slightly damp hair and it froze in ten minutes.”
“Frozen? Like ice! Father paid thousands to get ice for my eldest brother’s birthday!”
“Really? Here, it’s so cheap, some people sell it a gyep for eighty pounds!”
“Sorry, what’s a gyep?”
“If all you have is one gyep you could purchase a twig, and nothing much else. They’re practically useless.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Mhm, uhm, oh! We have two queens here!”
“Really? That’s funny, we have but one king in Ioski.”
“Yeah, they love each other a ton. They have one kid too, Princev Jackie. Queens Sophie and Maxine. I’ll take you to meet them as soon as possible.”
“Princev?”
“Gender-neutral term for princess or prince. The Princev is agender.”
“Agender?”
“Agender is a term for people who don’t have gender at all. It’s one of many.”
“Huh. On Ioski we had men and women and that’s it. Father said the god Helano would smite you if you loved those of the same gender as you, which never made sense to me because the sea serpent loved all of humanity, why would it kill you for loving somebody?”
“Ew. We have a deity similar to Helano, the dragon of life and the moon, Korowa. She has lived in the depths since before time began, and loves all the stars in the night sky. She modeled the creatures of the land and sea after her thousands of starry loves, and every morning she flies up to snuggle up to them. She was the spirit that gave us so many ways to live our lives, with her hundreds of thousands of starry wives.”
“That legend is so much prettier than Helano’s! He was born in the oceans and created the land. He created the creatures for the deepest parts of the sea and the highest mountains too, then decided humans were his favourite, so he made them intelligent enough to build palaces and boats. And that’s it! It’s so boring, and they couldn’t even be bothered to make it sound nice!”
“Bleh, that is boring.”
“Yeah, it really is.”
“Alright kiddo, great talk, but I oughta get you three new clothes,” They said, hopping off their chair and out the door. “Stay in bed, I’ll be back soon, but not too soon and I don’t want you collapsing again.”
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