"Come on! You call that a deke? Have you ever even played hockey before?"

There's a new kid on the hockey team. Rio doesn't want to be an ass, but the guy has no idea what he's doing, and they're in the middle of the first game of the season. No one ever practices over summer, even though they all claim they do, and they're all a mess by the time games start up again.

Rio doesn't know the new kid's name. He's terrible with names. Maybe he just doesn't care to learn it. Either way, he grumbles a response, but he won't look up. Rio has always been annoyed by people who won't look at him when they talk. "Watch!" He never played hockey as a kid, but athletic abilities make most sports easy, and ice hockey is popular in Alaska. "Try doing the toe drag, like this." Rio demonstrates, flicking the puck on his stick easily and swiftly.

The player just stands and stares. "Yeah, Rio, we get it. You're a pro. We're not all professional athletes. I'm doing my best, alright?"

Maybe Rio is being a dick. He does tend to get heated when it comes to sports. He's competitive, and maybe sometimes he takes it a bit too far. "Sorry. Continue."

In Norse mythology, Loki is the son of a goddess and a n: a member of a giant race, possessing supernatural powers. He's a shapeshifter, whose relationship with other gods hovers between helpful and mischievous. He's cunning, neither good nor evil, and rather hard to work with sometimes. Rio has been working with Him for four years - many don't believe it's possible to have a relationship with a mythological deity, or even that deities exist at all. Life is unpredictable, and you'll never get through it if you take it too seriously. This is something Rio learned quite a while ago. He's twenty years old, beginning his second year in university, where he studies nursing. It doesn't really matter what Rio studies, anyway; he'll end up a famous athlete, like everyone expects him to. His father was a college athlete, too.

Rio always keeps a crystal in his pocket. They're good luck, and bring him peace during sports games and times of stress. Today, he carries an emerald, and touches it once in a while. Rio's parents' house is filled with crystals, candles, athames, statues. His dorm room is filled with so much more. Getting rid of things is difficult. It's easier to pour yourself into material goods than to think about past failures. He refuses to be alone, and spends most of his free time at parties or making friends. He lives quite far from his parents, who moved him to Alaska when he was eleven. It's too cold here. He doesn't live near the ocean anymore.

Mabon is coming. It's the time of the autumn equinox, when Pagans honor the changing seasons and the harvest. Rio prefers spending holidays with his family, but this proves challenging with the distance between them and other responsibilities. He can fly home in an hour, and drive home in ten. Sometimes, when he has a lot of time and motivation, he drives across the state to his parents' house. Their family is quite multicultural. Since childhood, Rio's grandfather has lived with his parents.

Enki sits in the stands with her friends, brown and curvy, but not very kinky. Though he's polyamorous, Rio has one current partner, and one metamour. He's been monogamous in the past. Maybe he will be again, someday. When he scores a goal, cheers erupt from the stands, and his teammates flock to celebrate with him.

Apple magic is perfect for Mabon due to its association with the harvest. In Norse mythology, apples are connected to a spring goddess named Idunn, who fed apples to young deities to help them remain immortal. For the ancient Greeks, apples were to blame for most of the Trojan War. Eris, displeased by not receiving an invitation to a banquet, crashed the event and brought with her a golden apple. It was decreed that the apple would go to which of three goddesses was judged prettiest by Paris, prince of Troy. Hera, angry by Paris' choice of Aphrodite over her, became bitter and vowed to have Troy destroyed in war. Rio performed his first spell at the age of five with his father, Amani, who comes from a very religious and conservative country. He was never forced to follow in his parents' religion, even though he was always influenced by it.

Rio misses Florida. He was born in Miami, and spent almost all of his childhood at the beach. It was his fault they left, but nobody ever talks about this. Rio's parents are private, stoic men, who deal with pain calmly, never losing their tempers or putting the blame onto others. Rio always wanted to be like them.

There's a boy standing across from him outside the gymnasium. He's albino, dressed in a thick feather parka, a magnifying glass hanging from a string around his neck – that's the only reason Rio notices him. Well: that, and the fact that he's standing right in front of the classroom he needs to go inside. With Enki on his arm, he approaches. "Hey! Hate to be a dick, but you're standing in the way of my class." The hallway isn't busy at this time of day, and Rio doesn't want to go to class.

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The boy slurps an iced coffee. "That sucks for you." He doesn't move, but drinks from his cup loudly, ignoring Rio. He has very thick glasses, and pure white hair. He's a first-year student, who seems to have no friends, and who treats everyone around him badly for seemingly no reason. There's always a reason.

Rio shoves his way past, dragging Enki by the arm. He's not very studious. He'd rather hang out with friends than sit in a classroom, but he got a full athletic scholarship to college, so he kind of thought he should make the most of it.

No one has ever seen a black person with green eyes. For a long time, Rio was conflicted to calling himself Black - and colorism within the community certainly doesn't help. He's asked regularly if he wears contact lenses, or if he's gotten eye surgery. Genetics work in strange ways. Sage has green eyes, too. If you asked, Rio would say he's Indian, too. His parents are from Cameroon and Kerala. He's lost track of the number of times he's been asked where he's from, especially living in Alaska, where he looks like nobody else. Growing up, he didn't really fit into either category: too light to be black, but too dark to be anything else.

Something all white people seem to have in common is their insistence on knowing the entire background of every minority they come across. As a man of color with two fathers, Rio's been the center of attention for most of his life - and he's come to prefer this. His parents married in 2005, after already having two children and sharing a home together. Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, and this was within Rio's lifetime.

The campus party is at the most popular sorority. They have so many parties, it has Rio wondering how any of those girls have any time at all for studying. His friend Devon is in charge of bringing the booze, a task he doesn't take lightly. Rio doesn't even know where he gets it all, because they're underaged, but he has his ways. "Hey, Rio, my dude!" Devon's loud. He's probably the loudest of them all. "Check out all the goods I got for the party!" He proceeds to hold out multiple bottles of multiple kinds of whisky and beer. "What do you think? I did good, eh? This party's going to be awesome. What are you drinking?"

Rio enjoys cooking, and he was always good at it. In university, he has little time to prepare homemade meals. When he visits home, there's always enough food to feed the whole city, and it leaves the cabin smelling delicious.

"It's called jal-jeera. My dad taught me how to make it. Want a taste?"

Some people are strange about sharing drinks. Sage was always this way. Surya would make himself a drink and offer the children a taste, and Sage always insisted on their own glass with a straw.

"What's it made out of? It looks weird."

Rio is adventurous, in every aspect of the word. He likes trying new things, meeting new people, exploring new places. If you're not exposed to something regularly, it might not make sense to you. "I don't know. Bunch of different spices. It's probably too spicy for you, anyway."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you're a pussy."

Devon frowns. "What are those little balls floating in it?"

Some people take themselves way too seriously. Devon is one of these people. Rio sips loudly, grinning at a group of girls passing him. "Boondi. Chickpea flour balls. Try some." It's noisy. Busy environments make Rio feel energized, and distract him from the past.

Sage hates when Rio messes around with them. He used to say they were too sensitive and should loosen up a little. His parents would remind him that not everyone enjoys practical jokes. It's always in good fun. Some people wouldn't know fun if it slapped them across the face.

"I don't want to."

"Pussy."

Rio's friends appreciate a good joke. Devon elbows him, making a face. "At least I'm not a fuckboy."

In a way, the term describes Rio. He wouldn't call himself a fuckboy, but he's not a nice guy. He's dating Enki, but it won't last long. His longest relationship was three months, and even that seemed long. Anyway, all Rio's friends know he was never meant to be monogamous. Rio usually dates the boisterous, talkative people – but he's getting tired of that, and he doesn't quite know where to go from here. "Anyway, are we ready to go?"

University parties always get out of control. As a student athlete, he's supposed to be responsible. Rio is drawn to the dangerous and the unpredictable, which in a way, he supposes, makes him dangerous and unpredictable. Maybe that's why everybody is so taken by him. It's easy to get attention when you're attractive and popular. Rio is both of these things. Enki follows him around. A few hours into the party, she disappears to find her girlfriend, leaving Rio in the middle of a game of strip tease. He'll be twenty one years old next year. He's old enough to vote, to drive, to fuck, to own a gun - but not to have a beer. Rio always gets drunk at parties. As a teenager, he was often allowed to have a drink at home.

His younger sibling, Sage, is sixteen years old and agender. They live with their parents, in a log cabin in a small, impersonal city. Rio lived there for five years before moving to Fairbanks for university. He thinks a lot about Florida, and what came afterwards. Personal growth takes time, and some people never quite accomplish it.