Goro: A Sanctum Hidden in the Wilds

The chicken thing started as an offhand comment when Goro and Raef were walking back from town one morning, toting a few dozen eggs, along with milk, ham, and fresh fruit.

"We should just, y'know, get some fucking chickens," Goro said. "Then we won't have to go buy eggs anymore."

"You know anything about raising chickens?" Raef asked.

"Not a goddamn one."

But after that, they'd always chitchat about it any time they went into town together. And one day, they just bought some fucking chickens. Had Hansel build a coop. Goro asked Leigh to tell him the basics of chicken care, but it turned out he didn't need much coaching, anyway. Those birds fucking *loved* him. It was the weirdest fucking thing.

It alarmed him, the first couple times he went out in the yard and got swarmed by them. But he figured out soon enough they weren't trying to eat him, or anything. Just seemed to like being close to him. Little fuckers practically lined up to take turns being petted and held by him. It was wild. Raef tried to join in one day and he just got pecked.

So Goro became the castle's official chicken keeper, just by default. In the mornings, he brought in fresh eggs for Hansel and Raef, cooking together in the kitchen. Then, although he ostensibly had other shit to do, he liked to linger around. Just watching them at work, listening to them talk. Lurking close enough to get dragged in for a kiss whenever Hansel had a hand free.

They made the most amazing omelets with those eggs. Loaded with melty cheese and fresh herbs, and ham and bacon for those who wanted it. As the weather warmed up, Amari started bringing in greens and juicy tomatoes from her garden, and those got thrown in there, too. Goro volunteered to go around passing out plates, and he always saved the meatiest, cheesiest ones for Mishka.

Mishka left his shit all over the place. Goro could practically find him just by following the trail of stuff he left behind. Oddly, it seemed to get *worse* the more he tried to pick up after himself; he'd gather something up to take it back where it belonged, get distracted on the way, leave it somewhere even more misplaced and then be unable to remember later where he'd put it.

Goro found it appalling at first, but it actually kind of soothed him after a while. If Mishka kicked off his shoes at the top of the stairs one evening, they'd still be there the next morning, exactly where he'd left them. If he left a gold earring sitting on top of a desk in the war room when he'd taken it out absent-mindedly to scratch his ear, it'd still be sitting there a fucking week later, untouched.

It was… bizarre. The notion that a piece of jewelry could be left out, untouched, indefinitely.

It was *good*.

Goro liked it so much, he started noting it on purpose—all the places Mishka had left his stuff. Just so he, personally, could reassure himself by checking on their continued presence day after day. Mishka's belongings became landmarks, a route around the castle. One that changed from time to time, sure, as Mishka ran across stuff again and reclaimed it. The earring did eventually disappear from the desk, but Goro spotted it in Mishka's ear the same day he noticed it missing.

The unintended but handy consequence was that Goro always knew where Mishka's shit was, when Mishka couldn't find it.

One day Goro walked into the bedroom to find Mishka tearing apart his own drawers, throwing things on the floor and digging through the piles, groaning. "My lilac sweater's gone. I can't *find* it, Goro."

"The one with the…" Goro gestured ineffectually, trying to convey the fluffiness of the material.

"The angora one."

Sure, whatever the fuck that was. "You left a purple sweater sitting in the sun room the other day. It fell off the end of one of the couches, and it's kinda hanging off the corner of the side table now."

"*Oh!*" Mishka pushed himself up and took off to retrieve it, leaving the rest of his clothes strewn all over the bedroom floor.

It didn't take Mishka long to catch onto the fact that Goro always seemed to have an answer for his missing belongings.

Green silk scarf? Hanging off the door handle of the first floor privy.

Deck of playing cards, the one where all the court cards were caricatures of Skyport nobility? Oh yeah, in the kitchen, by the coffee grinder of all places.

The corkscrew? No, the expensive one with the wings you push down to get the cork out— In the bedroom, on the floor under the bed. It fell off the nightstand.

Got to be when Mishka couldn't find something, he'd just come find Goro instead.

Eventually, Goro started taking pity on him, if he found stuff *really* out of the way, or if it was really important shit. One evening he found one of the paired lover's lockets on the floor under a bench by the baths. Probably got kicked aside accidentally when Mishka was dressing or undressing.

Goro took it with him upstairs and set it on the nightstand on Mishka's side of the bed. Hansel and Mishka were off somewhere, so Goro crawled into bed alone with a book to read until he got sleepy.

A while later, Hansel and Mishka returned, chattering about something or other. As soon as they came through the door, Mishka said, "Ah, see?" and strode over to the nightstand. He picked up the locket to show Hansel. "I told you, right where I left it."

Goro bit his lip and hid his face behind the book, trying not to snicker.

#

There hadn't been much reason to visit the cave behind the waterfall since Nixie left, but Goro wanted to show Theo something cool.

*Can I live down here?* Theo asked, looking in every direction with eyes wide and mouth hanging open in astonishment.

"No," Goro said, frowning.

*Can I build a fort?*

He eyed at the damp cave walls doubtfully. "I guess."

Since he wasn't looking, she grabbed and shook his arm to get his attention again. *A treehouse*.

"There's… there's no trees down here, baruska."

*A treehouse but without the tree.*

"Uh… sure. Yeah."

And with that, she was off. *It should be three stories tall, with lots of ladders. And there should be two slides, one that's a water slide going into the lake, and one that's a dry slide, with lots of twists and loops in it. Maybe two slides like that. Also, one really tall slide, that starts from all the way up at the ceiling.* She waved as high as her arm could reach, toward the top of the cave. *And instead of a living room, there's a ball pit.*

"Ball pit," Goro repeated in Common. "What the hell's a ball pit?"

*It's like a big hole, and it's just full of balls you can play in.*

"Wh… what?"

Theo frowned. *Hansel will know what I mean.*

"I don't… okay… yeah. Yeah, Hansel's the one you wanna talk to about all this, I guess." Goro snorted and dragged Theo close to him to hug her and kiss her head. "Freakin'… three story treehouse. Good god. You know the *castle's* three stories high, right? That's how high that is."

*There will be a secret badge you have to have to get into my treehouse*, she continued, ignoring him. *I think I might let you have a badge.*

"You think so?" He grinned and tickled her a little, and she kicked him in the shin. "Hey, hey, hey! No kicking."

*No tickling!*

"Alright, alright." He stepped back, hands in the air, still grinning. "Deal."

#

Roddy got it in his head to put on a play, for some reason. Tried to rope everyone in the castle into helping with it. Any time Goro ran into him, it was all he'd be talking about, day or night.

One afternoon, when Goro was passing through the throne room, he found Roddy fussing over some large sheets of canvas, which he'd made a half-hearted attempt to paint green.

"Oh good! Goro. You can help me with this. I need these backdrops for the set painted. Is that something you can do, do you think?"

"Uh." Ordinarily, Goro would've said no. No interest in committing himself to this random-ass task with everything else he needed or wanted to be doing. Painting, though. Painting was nice. "Guess so. I've painted buildings before."

"Great! That's good enough. Okay, now, this is supposed to be a forest, so just… do some trees or something." Roddy pushed a paintbrush into his hand, and then he was off.

Goro got to work. It was just as soothing as he'd remembered, dragging a brush back and forth. Watching the bright colors it left in its wake. Did something nice to his brain, somehow.

Roddy had painted pretty much the whole thing green, so Goro had to go over some parts of it again, adding blue for the sky and brown and gray for the ground. Wasn't a perfect cover-up, but it all kind of blended together into something neat-looking, and *good enough* as Roddy had put it. Wouldn't be the main focus of the stage, anyway, just something to provide atmosphere, and it had good atmosphere.

Goro added the trees next, and some underbrush. Squirrels and shit hiding in some of the branches. Took him quite a while; he had to stop for dinner, and stay up late after, and he still didn't feel quite done when he finally went to bed that night. But Roddy was already nodding over it in approval when Goro came out the next morning to finish.

"Goro! Did you do all this? It's actually really good! I thought it'd be kind of sucky but—" And Roddy grabbed him for a hug.

"Uh," Goro said, jostling from Roddy's backpats. "Th-thanks?"

"Okay since you've got the talent for it, I need two forests. This is a good daytime one but I need a spooky nighttime one now, too. Okay? You'll do great!"

"Alright," Goro said, but Roddy was already halfway out of the room. "Pfff."

It was a nice way to spend the day, anyway.

#

He didn't spend much time in his own bedroom, these days. Still had his altar set up there, so it was where he prayed and meditated every morning. He spent the night there sometimes with Hansel, or by himself if he stayed up so late Hansel and Mishka had already gone to bed.

He'd lose track of time, now and then, staying up taking notes on whatever weirdass book he'd found most recently. At some point he'd realize all the noise in the castle had died down, and it was dead silent.

But at that point, he'd usually be too excited to sleep. So he'd creep down to the library and knock softly on Ombre's table to see if she was still awake.

She'd poke her head out, and he'd hold up the book. "Wanna see something weird?"

She'd grin, and invite him under the table.

Usually, though, he went to bed with Mishka and Hansel. Sometimes he caught himself thinking of the room as just *the bedroom* and not *Mishka and Hansel's room*, which always made him feel sheepish.

He knew they didn't mind him being there. God knew he'd asked (obliquely) enough times to see a pattern. Hansel straight-up fucking told Goro in advance if he and Mishka were going to spend some time alone together. Apparently, *apparently*, Goro's presence was kind of expected, and not an anomaly.

But. Fuckin' bedrooms, and shit. Goro had his own room. Hansel and Mishka just had the one. Goro did like having his own space, and he couldn't imagine ever *not* having his own space—he didn't need to be in it; he just felt better knowing it was there. So, that was that. He didn't think he was supposed to slap his name on two fucking bedrooms. Fuckin'… tough shit.

The important thing was that he slept longer and deeper curled up against Hansel than he ever did by himself, and he didn't give a shit where that happened.

One night the three of them had turned in early, not really to sleep, but just to lie in bed together. Hansel had one arm around Mishka and the other around Goro. He was playing with Mishka's hair—running his fingers slowly through the length of it, over and over. Goro watched, almost mesmerized. Just studying the way the light played off the ashy color of the strands, all fine and silky.

After a minute Goro let out a faint growl, took the hand Hansel had resting on his shoulder, and put it on his own hair. Hansel snorted and kissed Goro's head, then started playing with his hair, too. Goro's eyes drifted closed in contentment as chills ran down his spine.

His hair was getting long. Long enough it frustrated him on a regular basis, falling into his eyes. He'd tried to tie it back a time or two, but he couldn't quite get enough of it up to make a difference. Normally, this was the length at which he'd get it cut short again. Kept putting it off, though. He just loved it so damn much when Hansel ran his fingers through it.

#

When he could, he saved up one Sending a day for the express purpose of hassling Larkin to come out to the castle.

*Laaaark. Larkin. LARK. Come visit me.*

*Come to Skyport*, she'd send back. He never got into bickering with her about it.

Sometimes, he tried new strategies. *Sleepover. You know, like the rich kids used to do. We'll make a pillow fort and shit.*

*Hey, you know how there's Mother's Day and Father's Day? We should make a Cousin's Day.*

*Lark, just an update, Cousin's Day is on June 1.*

*Larkin, you're not gonna forget Cousin's Day, are you? It's coming up fast.*

*Hope you got me a gift for Cousin's Day.*

He was just fucking around, and kind of spaced it all later. Wasn't like he was checking a calendar, or anything. Then one morning, after he'd spent the night with Hansel and Mishka, he came up to his own room to do his morning prayers. He undid all his locks, deactivated his warding glyph, and walked inside.

Someone dropped down from the ceiling. Goro screamed and triggered his springblade.

"Happy Cousin's Day, buddy," Larkin said.

Now, that was actually fucking remarkable. Goro had never given Larkin a single fucking hint when it came to breaking into his room. He hadn't given her a key. He hadn't told her the password to the glyph. He hadn't told her the locations of his traps. And it wasn't 'cause he was trying to keep her out—he just figured she didn't need the help.

He always kinda figured that if she managed to find a way in, he'd be super fucking proud.

There was a *fucking hole* in his ceiling now, though.

"Oh my god," he said, gaping up at it. "Who's gonna fucking fix that, huh?" Him. He was the one with magic that could manipulate stone. God damn it.

"Where's my present?" she asked, handing him a small wrapped package.

"Pfff." He threw an arm around her neck and dragged her in to kiss the top of her head, jabbing himself in the face with a horn in the process.

#

Amari wanted to fix up the old Eldath shrine on the far side of the lake. She took Goro with her to help, loading him up with cleaning supplies and candles and incense and shit. Her own arms were full of flowers.

When they arrived, she frowned at the scorch marks marring the stone. "Why does it look like there was a fire here?"

She didn't wait for an answer, just put him to work scrubbing. While he cleaned off as much soot as he could, she swept out dead leaves and pulled weeds out from between the rocks. She set up the flowers she'd brought in vases and hanging bundles, but also surveyed the area immediately surrounding the shrine, talking out loud as she did. "A nice flower bed here, I think. And a hedge across this side, over here—hydrangeas. Oh, it will look so beautiful with the lake in the background."

She disappeared around the back side, and called for him a moment later. "Goro, come here."

When he joined her, she showed him a shelf on the back of the stone wall. "This side could be yours, if you want it," she said.

"For what?"

She smiled and nudged him with the back of her hand, like it was a silly question. "For Mask."

"Eh? Oh." He rubbed the back of his head, considering it. "I don't really need a shrine to him out here, Ma. I got an altar in my bedroom."

"I know you have all you need for your work. But it's nice to erect sacred spaces out in nature, too. Sometimes where people least expect."

Goro thought about that. It reminded him of how in Skyport, in real out-of-the-way places like tight alleys and dead ends, you'd find little nooks and crannies where people had built shrines. A loose brick would be pulled out to make a niche, for example, and inside there might be a figurine and any offerings people had left of roses or spilled wine. It was decidedly not *out in nature*, but it had the same feel, he thought—a sanctum hidden in the wilds.

"Guess I could," he said.

She patted him on the arm and went back to work on the other side. Wasn't like there was much he could do here at the moment, though; he'd need to go back to the castle to get his own supplies, perform a ritual to consecrate the area. A stone statuette would be nice, but he didn't have any on hand; he'd have to procure one through other channels back in the city. He had a new project now to work on, in any case.

After they'd finished setting up the shrine to Eldath, Goro stood back and observed quietly as Amari rededicated it. When she was finished, she turned to him. "Let's pray together. It's been so long."

"Yeah, 'cause we don't pretend to serve the same god anymore."

She beamed. "That will make it all the better. For the first time, it will be genuine and unhindered. I'll bring in the Eldathyn tradition, and you'll bring in the Maskarran, and it will be like two very different voices singing in beautiful harmony."

"*God*, Ma, that's cheesy. But yeah, sure. I've prayed with Luci a few times, and it's kinda like that." He took the hand she was offering him and let her lead him to a place they could sit in the grass by the shore.

Praying with Amari was as familiar as washing his face in the mornings, but she was right—it was way fucking better with both of them doing it in total honesty. He felt a little nervous, at first, reciting his prayers; he knew Amari had suspected for years which god he really served, and he'd made zero secret of it for the past year or so, but he'd still never *shown* her. Made him weirdly shy.

Was alright, though. She acted like it was the most normal thing in the world. When they finished, he scooted next to her and put his arms around her, head resting on her shoulder.

"I was talking with Lucienne the other day," she said. "She told me the two of you discovered a very unusual spell, recently."

"Yeah?"

Amari was quiet for a moment. "I'm so proud of you, sweetheart. You've worked so hard, and you've learned so much. More than I could ever teach you."

"Uh huh." He started chewing his lip.

"I want you to know I'll *always* be there for you, as long as I'm around in this life. I'm here if you need guidance, or advice, or if you're confused about something. And of course, I'll still be your mother. I love you so much."

He didn't say anything.

"But I have nothing more to teach you as a cleric. You've already surpassed nearly every other I've known. You're no longer my apprentice, Goro."

"Yeah." He sighed and kicked a rock weakly toward the water. "I know."

She gave him a squeeze. "You are the wisest person I know—"

"*Pffff.*"

"—so I knew it wouldn't be a surprise to you."

"God. Lunatic."

"And you're so young, still. I can't wait to see what you'll be capable of, in ten years or so. It will be astounding."

"Fuckin' crazy lady."

They stayed there by the shore for a while after, enjoying the peace of the afternoon.