Kinisis sat in the grass, fiddling with a cup of tea. She was having a nice little picnic with her daughter Yisini, but something was bothering her. A sudden interruption to her thoughts. To solve that interruption, she snapped her fingers, causing three coloured clouds of smoke to appear. The first two clouds, a blue cloud and a red cloud, stayed where they are, taking the shape of a dragon and a sea serpent. The third, yellow cloud disappeared. Kinisis snapped her fingers again, and the yellow cloud returned.
“You do realise I don’t want to be here right now, yes?” the yellow cloud hissed as it changed into its normal Thantophor-shaped form. “I don’t want to speak to any of you.”
“You know we need to talk, my dear…” Kinisis sighed, offering Arkadin a plate of food. The Thantophor inspected the dish then pushed it to one side. He wasn’t hungry.
“No, there’s nothing we need to talk about.”
“There IS!” Yisini interrupted. “You-”
“We already discussed everything we need to. I am not talking to you further. Leave me alone.”
Arkadin crossed his arms, then disappeared again. Kinisis was tempted to bring the Thantophor back, but changed her mind. She turned her attention to her other children, who were all sitting quite calmly.
“What’s wrong with him?” Kinisis asked, directing her question at Yisini.
“I don’t kno-”
“Don’t lie.”
“He got angry that I wanted to find out where he was.”
“Aaaand?”
Kairos and Epani both glanced at each other. They both knew that Yisini wasn’t being completely truthful. But rather than say anything, they let Yisini dig herself deeper.
“And… I kinda hurt some of the things he liked… And killed a few beings… and broke some stuff… But he broke my fingers!”
“Your fingers look fine…” Epani muttered.
“Well, I got better!”
Kinisis tutted. “So you made your brother angry and wondered why he got angry?”
“No… That’s…”
Suddenly, the yellow cloud came back. Arkadin flashed back into existence, holding a blade and pointing it at Yisini.
“You know what? I was going to just leave, but you’re just going to sit here and badmouth me and say how horrible I am!” Arkadin shouted, stamping his foot. “I’m fucking sick and tired of it! You instigated the issue, I ended the issue, you ran off and cried to mum like the pathetic baby you are!”
Kinisis eyed Yisini and sighed. Arkadin grunted, not allowing either of them to continue.
“And now you are making me look like the bad guy AGAIN. I made it clear what I wanted, I made it clear that I don’t want to hurt you, I made it all clear and you just drag me back in! Over and over and OVER AGAIN!”
“So what do you want?” Kinisis asked. With a flick of her finger, Arkadin’s sword turned into a small vertex of pink petals. The petals blew away, taken by a sudden harsh wind.
“You all know what I want. To be left alone to do my work. To be left alone in general. The same things I have wanted for millennia. Is that really such a bad thing to ask for?”
Kairos and Epani both nodded quietly in agreement. Yisini just sat there in silence.
“Is that all?” Kinisis finally tutted.
“It is.”
“Very well. You can have it. But you can’t ask for anything else. For a while.”
Arkadin took a deep breath. He leaned back, spawning a pair of dark wings, which he used to fly into the air, away from Kinisis and her other children. “Fine. I don’t want anything else anyway.”