Clouds had gathered slowly throughout the day, starting with a cloudless sky in the morning and ending in thunder and a raging storm by evening. Oguna hated it. He didn’t mind rain when it was in smaller amounts, but his body just wasn’t made for water. Izumo however didn’t seem to mind it much. They were holed up in a cave on the mainland, wringing water out of their clothes. It was thankfully warm in the cave, and it seemed to be one that people stopped by often, judging by the piles of sticks and wood inside. It helped to have a fire to warm yourself up with. According to Izumo he had stayed there a few times before, which is why he found it so easily.

 

He watched the other men as they took off most of their clothes and put them on the other side of the fire to dry, Kumaso asking about the tattoos across Izumo’s back and chest. The blond man only gave a teasing comment about showing him how far down his waistband they went, making Kumaso flustered and Oguna roll his eyes. His crow perched on his shoulder, sleeping with its beak buried in its feathers.

 

Oguna flinched as thunder struck close enough to feel it in his chest.

 

He could see Izumo come over to him, sitting down next to him by the fire. “Not a fan of thunder, huh?”

 

While Oguna had cut his hair short, Izumo’s had been growing. It now reached down his shoulder blades, and he had to wring it out to get it to stop dripping. Oguna focused on how the light from the fire reflected in the pearls in the blond curls, trying not to think about the weather outside. Which turned out not to be working, considering his reaction when another flash and rumble made his insides squeeze tight.

 

“We didn’t have thunderstorms that often on Oyashima.” Barely at all.

 

Kumaso sat down on Izumo’s other side, the closeness between the two not as subtle as the redhead thought it was. “I don’t like them either.”

 

Izumo hummed in thought, “I’m used to it. They’re not as dangerous as you might think, unless you’re in the middle of nowhere since the lightning wants the shortest way to the ground. I’ve seen some places build really high towers specifically to make the lightning go there.”

 

“What if it catches fire?” Oguna looks to the opening of the cave, where the storm is still raging.

 

“It probably happens, I haven’t thought much about it. I guess it’d be worrisome if it happened where there’s no water.”

 

Kumaso gave him a look of slight confusion. “Like where? There’s rivers in forests too.”

 

“The desert, for one.” Izumo’s smile was fond when he looked at Kumaso. Oguna rolled his eyes. How Kumaso had yet to realise that Izumo liked him back was a mystery, even when you considered how dense the tall man could be.

 

“I’ve never been to a desert before.”

 

Izumo rubbed his upper arms to heat himself up faster than the fire alone could manage, looking at his two friends. “I guess there aren’t many on Oyashima.” He looked thoughtful for a second before continuing. “I grew up in the deserts. We didn’t have that many thunderstorms, but enough to get me used to it. Now snow on the other hand, I didn’t see that til I was about Oguna’s age.”

 

Oguna had caught on to the fact that Izumo didn’t share that much about his past, so him willingly telling them about something like this was a surprise. “Really?” The region of Oyashima where he and Kumaso had met Izumo could get a lot of snow in the winter. “Yep. It could get extremely cold there in the winter, but snow’s extremely rare. Mostly there’d be sand and dust storms.”

 

“What’s that like?” Kumaso leaned a tiny bit toward Izumo, frame radiating heat that made Izumo lean against him for a moment.

 

“The desert or seeing snow?”

 

Oguna listened to the two talk, the thunder bothering him less now that he had something else to focus on. Propped up against the wall of the cave, next to his friends in a new land that only one of them knew anything about, he felt surprisingly at ease.

 

To the sound of talking mixing with the sound of rain falling and thunder roaring outside, Oguna slowly fell asleep.

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