Oly got lost on the way there, so twenty minutes turned into thirty instead. Bursting in, he found the initial chamber was a lounging room, the doors straight ahead and to the right were closed, and the open door to the left was the study. A bit more careful about his entry this time, he saw Hesiat's desk was in front of a window with hints of stained glass, casting shadows like vines across the room. It gave the king a halo of the setting sun from where he was bent over his papers with a bright red quill in hand, only pausing to stretch his arms high above his head and rub the back of his neck. Oly noticed that his braids were loose across his back, with absolutely none of his usual ornaments hung on them. The gold wires therein were the only things glittering in the molten sun.

Oly’s eyes trailed over his master’s arms. I never noticed how nice his tattoos look in sunlight.

“Good evening, sir.” He chirped, making Hesiat nearly jump out of his skin. He twisted around in his chair and sighed when he saw Oly.

“Please announce yourself when you enter the room.”

Oly opened his mouth to argue the point, then came to his senses. “Of course. You called me for something, Your Majesty?”

Hesiat looked Oly over and gestured for him to come closer. Once by the king’s side, Hesiat reached up and ran his fingers over Oly’s cheek. “I didn’t know you had freckles.”

Oly blushed despite himself and cleared his throat. “I washed off the makeup you met me in.” Trying to be as ‘pleasing’ as possible, he offered, “I can arrange to keep wearing it if you don’t like them.”

“No.” Hesiat replied a little too quickly. Oly raised a brow, but Hesiat turned back to his work. “You don’t have to. Sit down, I don’t have anything for you to do.”

Remembering the protocol in Kishalon, Oly looked around the room, pulled a cushion off the couch, and put it on the ground to sit by Hesiat’s side. Oly felt the man freeze when he leaned against Hesiat's legs, but after a moment his master relaxed.

The room feel into the silence of slow, steady breaths and the scratching of a quill. When the scratching stopped and a paper flipped, Oly felt a hand in his hair as Hesiat paused to read.

It was a little awkward to be pet, but much better than he’d come to expect. He wasn’t even properly sure why he thought Hesiat would want to lay with him, they were still strangers to each other.

So then, it was somewhat inevitable that Oly felt the urge to disturb the peace. He wanted to stay quiet, he really did, he just forgot both the desire and the motivation. Maybe it was that Hesiat made him feel something like safety, maybe the barely-comfortable silence was making his mind wander, but his train of thought was drifting from place to place until it surfaced like a great white whale through the silence of the room,

“Do you think barnacles have souls?” It was just below conversational volume, and the moment he said it he remembered himself and hoped Hesiat would ignore him. Instead Hesiat’s hand stilled and he put down the papers, staring ahead for a moment with a furrowed brow before looking down at Oly with a puzzled expression.

“What?” He breathed, his lips hinting at a smile as if he was amused, but didn’t realize it yet.

Oly swallowed hard. Now that it’d been acknowledged, there was no hiding from it. Might as well go all in.

“The little crustaceans that grow on the sides of ships and tide pools. Do you think they have souls?”

Hesiat tilted his head to the side.

“What… brought this up?”

“Well, a lot of things, actually. I know a few things about your religion, like you’re really into bees.”

Hesiat winced. “That’s certainly a way of putting it.”

“I know honey and gold are divine to you, and I know it’s a connection point between heaven, earth, and the underworld. Conduits for the soul, right? It made me think about what kinds animals have souls in your religion. Just humans?”

“Humans aren’t animals.”

“Of course we are. Anyway, it got me thinking about what kind of animals you have here, because, well, different country, different set of ecosystems.”

“You know what an ecosystem is?” Hesiat asked with much the same confused tone as when Oly proved to be literate.

Oly waved the king off. “I didn’t skip that class. Barnacles live in Aoskrali because we have such a big coastline, and I know they live in shallow salt water, but I don’t know if your people have barnacles too. Sundenta has so many rivers and marshes, but it’s all freshwater.”

“We don’t have them.”

Oly sat up straight and twisted to fully face Hesiat. “Really? That’s interesting. Why not?”

Hesiat blinked, opened his mouth to answer, and then just shrugged. Oly mirrored the gesture.

“They’re such a tiny creature anyway,” he continued, “In my religion, nothing’s said one way or another, but they’re such simple things. Looking at them when they aren’t open, you’d hardly think they were alive. When I was a kid, I thought they were just rocks, or mineral build-up, like the stuff that forms on the inside of a sink faucet-”

Hesiat held up a hand to keep the tangent from going on any further. “No, I don’t think barnacles have souls.”

“Ah,” Oly sang with a grin, knowing that all people had to do was step one foot into his little world in order for him to suck them in all the way. “What religion do you think would though?”

Just as planned, Hesiat looked away to give actual thought to it.

He looked Oly in the eye again when he decided. “Gilaria’s.”

Oly clapped his hands together beneath his chin. “You’re thinking of the Wild magic, right?”

“Yes, they seem the type to think everything has a soul.” Hesiat pondered.

Oly beamed as if Hesiat were an impressive student. “That’s correct. Gilarians believe rocks and plants have a soul too.”

Hesiat narrowed his eyes playfully. “I thought you skipped your religions class?”

“I skipped the class on your country, but I had a Gilarian family friend to teach me.” That ‘family friend’ was the captain of the royal guard, but Hesiat didn’t need to know that. “I remember on hunts, he shared his stag with me when I was too young to ride on my own-”

“One topic at a time, please.” Hesiat interrupted. After a moment of silence to confirm Oly wouldn’t go on, he turned back to his paperwork. Another thought occurred to Oly just then, but he waited until the focused edge was just about to come back into the king’s eyes before he gave voice to it.

“Of course, Gilarians don’t have a concept of a punitive afterlife. Where do you think barnacles can go to hell?”

Hesiat cleared his throat—perhaps covering up a laugh—as he put down the papers. “Olymarté.” He warned, a treacherous smile creeping into his voice. Oly could recognize that ‘I can’t afford to encourage him’ expression anywhere. He got to his feet and leaned on the desk, running his finger along the soft edge of his rust-red quill.

“I think Kishalon.”

Hesiat put his head in his hand, sighing, “Why’s that.”

“Kishalon has such discomfort with the sexual!” Oly scoffed, dismayed. He gestured out the window as if addressing the prudes themselves. “Their priests and philosophers posit that excessive lust can send one to hell, and if I recall correctly, some of their literature—especially of the erotic variety—describes their villains, idiots, and characters of ill intentions as being excessively well-endowed, and barnacles have the largest ratio of  genitalia-to-body-size of any animal. So since-“

“Do they?” Hesiat burst, intrigued and disgusted at once. Oly nodded solemnly, spacing his hands quite a length apart.

“Longer than yours or mine, Your Majesty.” He informed in quiet tones.

“Bold of you to assume that-- No.” Hesiat caught himself and wrinkled his nose. He slashed his hand through the air and leaned away from Oly. “I could have gone my entire life happier for not knowing that. Please never bring up barnacles again.”

“Are you sure, my king? I’m an absolute fountain of truant’s knowledge.” Oly laughed.

“Look,” Hesiat opened a box on his desk and plucked a bag out from inside, handing it off to Oly. “You can have this if you stop talking. Do you accept bribes?”

Oly cocked his head to the side and plucked the bag out of Hesiat’s hand, pulling it open. It looked like a bag of gems, but he sniffed the contents and got hit with caramel, honey, and fruit. Candy. He bit his lip with glee.  

“Well, that’s one way to keep my mouth occupied.” He chirped, popping a ruby in his mouth. “You have a deal.” Oly held out his hand to shake, which Hesiat took with an exasperated, fond expression. 

“You’re disgusting. May I work in peace now?”

Oly wordlessly gestured to the papers, ever a man of his word.