Many-Grasping-Young-Of-Harsh-Lands-Reaching is familiar with the idea of prayer. When one is born to a god, it is one of the first acts a person learns.

While most people call her Many-Grasping, that’s not actually her name. Not her given name, anyways. Her given name comes at the end of the descriptor-sentence of her being- Reaching. The Many-Grasping-Young-Of-Harsh-Lands are a multitude, a descriptor of place and form, born in a litter that numbered in the thousands. Half of them made it to childhood, and half again made it to pubescence, and a tenth of those made it to adulthood, and she was the only one (of that litter, anyways) who was always reaching for new things. She used her long limbs to stretch as far as she could as a little pup, and as an adult, the nickname defined her, especially as she turned to reach out into the wider world and explore on her own.

Many-Grasping-Young-Of-Harsh-Lands-Reaching is not to blame that most people see her long limbs and assume that it is the “many grasping” part of her name that defines her. And to be fair, it does, in part. Her parent, the one that sired her litter, is in fact possessed of many hands, and many young, and spends much of its time grabbing and pulling things to itself. She doesn’t know if her original parent had a name the way she does- not every Divine Beast grows their mind as much as their body or their powers. The all-language speaks without words, but it does still require a grasp of greater ideas to express those ideas. Whoever seeded her parent, whatever their relationship with said parent may have been, gifted her with a more complex mind, and for that, she is grateful. With that mind, she learned what it is to pray.

Of her hundred-thousand siblings, those that pray are the ones that live longest. The ones that paid proper obeisance to the Divinity which birthed them.

To pray, especially in the all-tongue, requires a deep and abiding Intent, an awareness of the divinity being prayed to. Otherwise, it is not prayer- simple as that.

So it is that she learned to pray. So it is that she enacts what she knows now, in service to a new being worthy of prayer.

In a room made of holy flesh, she bows her head. Her chin is pressed to the ground, her snout facing towards where the walls feel warmest. Her limbs, long and awkward with her multiple joints, are folded into a prayer-pose, two sets of elbows making a sort of inverted pyramid with her hands grasping each other at its top. Three times, she taps the claws of her hands together, clicking her heels against the floor of chitin and bone as she does.

In the all-tongue, she speaks the truth of what she knows and feels and sees.

Lord.

She taps her claws together again, clicks against the floor, and exhales softly.

Great One.

Three taps of her claws.

Beloved Divine.

The holy one that calls herself Raika has blessed her at every moment. Has protected her, offered her safe haven through lands she could not find her way through for decades yet with her speed of growth, and even allowed her to watch those places go by, to visit them in a way. She has fed Many-Grasping-Young-Of-Harsh-Lands-Reaching of her own flesh, growing fruits and cuts blessed with Qi and enriched with blood divine.

She has asked, in return, only that her blessed passenger learn, grow, and protect those that Raika, her Lord, already protects. Nothing more, even when she has asked how she might be of use, and offered herself entire.

What could this be, if not a Divine worthy of worship?

She clicks her claws together and-

Her god answers.

The wall she is facing transforms, the meat behind it shimmering and shifting as muscle, tendon and bone all form and become united by the great beast. The skin of the wall splits open, smoothly and into a slit, opening wide enough to admit a humanoid avatar into the room.

“What are you doing?” Raika asks.

She tilts her head, confused. Isn’t it obvious?

Prayer.

Slowly, her god squats down onto the ground, and then sits. Her form is wrapped in a toga-like robe, skin and silk interwoven to preserve modesty, but Reaching reminds herself that she is always bare, that they reside now within her very Body.

“Why are you praying to me?” she asks.

Reaching tilts her head in confusion. You = Divine. You = Kind / Generous / Powerful. This And More. I Choose To Worship.

She is proud of her grasp on the complexities of the all-tongue, glad to be able to communicate so much, but still, there are… limits. Words for things that don’t quite translate to a direct meaning. Internally, she feels herself grumble at her lack of vocal cords. It might not help, per se, but it surely couldn’t hurt the matter.

She wants to share this. She wants her protector and patron to understand.

You Are… Worthy.

The Divine before her lets out a long, shaky breath.

“I’m not.”

Reaching almost feels like she should laugh.

Worthy, she says, and she makes the all-tongue convey as much weight as she can.

She wants her to know. She wants her to understand.

“I’m not a god,” her patron whispers.”I haven’t done anything worthy of divinity. I don’t mean to downplay myself here, Many-Grasping, I know I’ve done a lot. The fact I can exist as I do is brought about by me and by equally impressive powers, like Li Shu and… well, others, ones you haven’t met. By rights, I should be dead a dozen times over, but I am here and I am powerful. But that doesn’t make me good, and it doesn’t mean you should worship me.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Don’t Have To. Want To.

“I- why? I accepted you as a guest. Feeding and protecting you is just… par for the course. My- I mean do you know what I’m doing? I’m currently trying to fight a fucking war. I’m doing my best to prepare for and understand a conflict a thousand times bigger than me, and I’m doing it because I want to hurt bad people. Because I think the world is bad, and I can’t fix it, but I can hurt bad people. You understand? I’m not magic. I’m not some greater being.”

Reaching stares at her, eyes wide.

She doesn’t know.

She doesn’t feel it. How can she not know?

Does she walk with that knowledge, even now? A casual dismissal of herself, of all she is doing, of all she has done? Of who she is?

A sense of weight, of anticipation, of responsibility falls upon Reaching’s shoulders. She had asked, begged, to have more to do, some way to contribute, and now, as if in answer to a prayer, here it is.

The divine before her doesn’t know what she is. What she has made herself. The worth and weight of what she has done.

Many-Grasping-Young-Of-Harsh-Lands-Reaching reaches an understanding within herself. Here is something worthy, which does not know its own worth, and here she is, intimately familiar with what it means to pray to the divine.

Slowly, making sure to radiate her Intent in every movement, she bows back into the prayer pose.

Let Me Show You.

There is silence in the house of god.

And then… a laugh. Low and quiet, incredulous.

“Alright. I accept your offer.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raika sits back, staring at her passenger and… apparently, her first true worshiper.

That’s the thing about Intent, about the all-tongue that is the process of comprehending it- it doesn’t lie. It can’t lie, by its very nature- and right now, it is telling her, screaming at her, deeply and truly, that the beastkin before her believes with all her little heart that she is worthy.

And her first instinct, again and again, is to say that she’s lying.

Raika has no self illusions. She is a monster, and she is content with that. She can partially protect a few people, and she can destroy big and terrible things, and hopefully bigger and more terrible ones soon. She is proud of herself- hard not to be, sculpted as she is.

…no. Jokes aside, she is proud of who she is. She’s survived things that most people never even experience, let alone comprehend. She’s grown faster and higher than she had any right to expect of herself, but she still demands more. There’s room to improve- she’s still only starting to figure out the possibilities of her current state, she still needs to make her friends actually safe, still needs to be strong enough to truly affect things-

She feels a touch on her skin, more sensitive than the half-numbed room they’re in. No need for full sensitivity in a place that asks for privacy and protection, but in her avatar, just sort of by default, she always evens out her sensoria.

A hand touches her shin, tracing a pattern across velvety skin and higher onto her leg.

It’s been…

Mmh. A few months. Not her longest dry spell, not by a long shot, but, well.

Hisheng was a fling. A burst of passion and the joy of connection, after so long. Before that, Maen, and that… well. That didn’t end like she wanted it to, but it didn’t end poorly.

Many-Grasping touches her, and it feels… intense. It’s rich with Intent, flush with a whole new sort of communication.

Raika can literally feel the attraction that the beastkin has for her. She can hear the smell emitted by hormones, literally see the taste of how she shapes herself towards attraction, but it’s not just carnal.

Many-Grasping touches her, and it feels kind. Awed. More than just physical heat.

Another hand grasps her by the waist, pulling the beastkin woman up towards Raika’s face, and then there is contact.

Not a kiss, at first. Many-Grasping nuzzles her, gently, rubbing cheek to cheek, soft, intimate. She has a layer of fur over her body, close and soft, and as she crawls closer, more and more of it comes into contact with her skin.

Raika dissolves her clothes away. It’s a simple shift, linked to her body in a few places, grown out of silk and skin, and it’s gone with a brush of will. She’s not entirely sure what else to do, at least for now- Many-Grasping exudes a desire, deep and true, but also a need to show… something.

She reaches back to her own body, quickly removing her clothes. Her robes spill open, modified to hold her unique biology, and somehow she has the sense of propriety to do a quick fold rather than tossing them aside. Even as she does, she keeps her body pressed close to Raika’s, skin-to-skin, heat to heat.

When they’re both bare, only then does Many-Grasping pull away.

Are You Comfortable?

Raika blinks. “As… yeah. I’m comfortable. And this is nice. I-”

A hand, four-fingered and clawed, presses against her torso, between her breasts.

This Is Only Part.

Are You Comfortable?

“I can be anything, Many-Grasping. I can transform into any body I can imagine. This one is just-”

For Others. Not For You.

She scoffs, going to laugh. But…

It’s not for her. Not really. It’s just the body she uses when she’s talking to people. Just like she has a body for fighting. They’re different every time, ever-so-slightly distinct with each transformation, but…

Is this what she’s comfortable in?

Many-Grasping waits, exuding patience. When Raika hesitates, she expressed herself again through Intent.

I Choose To Worship You.

Spoken out loud, it would be an incredibly cheesy thing to say. Too intense, or too sincere, or too something. But there are no words to the communication, only the deeper truth behind them.

Raika sighs, and finds the sound deep and intense enough that it brings forth a shudder. Her avatar trembles against her worshiper, reacting in a way she didn’t expect. A release of tension. She looks deep into inhuman eyes, and wonders why she’s kept herself so human all this time, knowing she is anything but.

She breathes. In… out.

On the exhale, she relaxes a sort of mental muscle she didn’t know she was holding.

The room exhales with her. The walls close in, losing some of the artificial edge to them, the right-angles and even flooring. Ridges and folds of flesh form, rising until she’s aware of every breath held in the room, of the body heat exuded within it, of every touch and drop of feeling that fills the space.

And she changes.

Not a combat form, or a form that other people would be comfortable with. A form that’s just for her.

Her skin gets tougher, shifting from human into something like thick-woven fibers. Russet pigment becomes tinged like the night sky, glittering along fractal patterns and sinuous curves. She feels her eyes open- all five of them, the normal two, two lower and to the side, and one atop her forehead. Her arms lengthen, a long and sinuous tail blooming from the back of her spine, twin antlers of white-gold bone growing out and back like something between horn and halo. Her long, sunset-colored dreadlocks shift and writhe, slowly consuming the hair and replacing it with glowing neural material, silver, gold and dawn-colors overwriting the sunset of before.

Tall. Strong. Flickering like flame at night, rainbow-radiant on black. Crowned and strange.

Not entirely alien. Not entirely human. Humanoid, still, but teetering close to the edge of it.

It’s not perfect. Not quite right. Maybe it never will be. Maybe it can’t be.

But she turns her eyes back, to face her priest and worshiper, and feels a moment of…

Mmmh. Not fear. Not shame. Not far from them, either.

Many-Grasping faces her, as she has chosen, and there is only one thought between them.

Divine.