Before A Trip

Arkay grunted as his alarm went off, buzzing and making horrible noises. It was 7am local time, and Arkay really didn’t want to get up.

Somehow, he had fallen asleep on the sofa watching a topical news quiz from a couple of years ago. It was quite funny, and the host was always someone amusing like a comedian or something. Although he didn’t really recognize every person on the show. That didn’t really matter though, and it only improved the show’s funniness.

Arkay though didn’t have time to mess around. He needed to be up, ready and dressed before 9am. He had a baptism to go to. Arkay originally had no idea what a baptism was, but he needed to go because Kallis’s extended family had invited him. It was nice that Kallis’s girlfriend’s family were so open and caring, but it did mean he had no choice but to go when it came to these events.

The event in question, a baptism, involved blessing a baby. Under what god or religion? Arkay wasn’t sure. He used to be a death god, but even then, blessings just… weren’t a thing back in his old universe. The closest thing was a Temthan tradition of covering a youngling in watered down honey as a thank you for the youngling being alive and strong. In this case though, Kallis’s extended family believed in some kind of ritual, as well as a ‘higher’ god. Often Arkay forgot that not everyone in Deathven was a powerful deity themselves.

Climbing out of bed, Arkay wandered around, trying to decide what to wear. He was originally going to wear a red dress. He owned three, but the zip broke on the nicest one and Arkay didn’t have the energy to properly fix it. The second nicest one was too big and billowy. The last dress was simple. But when Arkay put it on, he hated how his armor plated showed through, making him look lumpy. So he needed another dress.

Most of Arkay’s clothes were still in a massive suit case which he mainly lived out of. It was mostly a collection of wraps, scarfs and shawls, a lot of one-piece clothing. Rummaging around a little, Arkay found a black and blue dress. It was a bit short, but Arkay didn’t really care, it looked nice. However, Arkay did need to dull his armour plating. Yellow and blue, at least in this case, didn’t look great. With a bit of concentration though, Arkay made his more obvious armour plating black. He didn’t normally bother with this, but he wanted to both look nice and not be judged by everyone, mostly Kallis’s family.

With what he was wearing all sorted out, Arkay turned his attention to what he needed. He didn’t want to use his purple backpack, his standard one. It was a nice backpack but was starting to get a little shabby. But since he moved, his other bags kinda went missing. This meant rummaging through his single wardrobe, which was filled with bags of unsorted clothes and bits and pieces. Luckily, Arkay had a vague idea where some of his bags were, and quickly found a small, red bag. It would have matched the red dresses better than his current blue and black dress, but as Arkay glanced at his watch, he realized he didn’t have much time left to find a better-matching bag. He quickly stuffed his basic essentials into the bag, then started getting changed.

Realizing he needed to close all the windows, Arkay took a chance to glance at a mirror as he entered the bathroom. He looked alright. That was good enough.

Suddenly, Arkay’s wristband vibrated.

“Hi Kallis.”

“Heya Arkay. We’re outside now.”

“Alright, I’ll be down in a second.”

Arkay gathered up his final things, grabbed his keys, then went to the front door.

“I’m sure it won’t be too bad…” Arkay muttered as he headed out, locking everything up. “It’ll be fine…”