There’s a beauty to the fluidity of children’s daemons; the way they flow, effortlessly, from form to form as water does to mist, and back again. Those who saw the twins’ daemons in their childhood had to admit that their transformations were among the most graceful they had ever laid eyes on; there was something enchanting in the inherent symmetry to the pair of them- a mirroring rather than a shadowing.
The twins grew up to call themselves, and their daemons, semi-identical. Identical worked fine to begin with, to be sure- they share a face, after all, wouldn’t have it any other way, but when Vax was old enough to realise he was content to plait his sister’s hair and leave his own loose like the other boys in their village did, and Vex found the words “my brother,” rolled off her tongue like they had been the right ones all along, they happily invented new language for themselves.
“Semi-identical? Don’t you mean fraternal?” The question came often, from adults peering down at them, and always with a well-meaning smile, a condescending lilt.
“Do we?” Vex or Vax or both would answer, tilting their heads in unison.
Their daemons, too, always had a propensity for kindred shifts. When Arius stumbled his way into wolfishness, all silvery fur and spindly legs, Anatolia bounded beside him on oversized puppy paws, wagging black tail a blur. As Anatolia shrank into a rat to scurry up a drainpipe in a blur of brown, Arius melted into a squirrel to race her, scampering up a nearby tree trunk.
Semi-identical.
Complementary wholes, despite how often they suspected, fervently, that they must be two halves of the same soul. Arius, digging his claws into Vax’s arm as their father’s carriage juddered down the cobblestone road. Anatolia, having crept down the long, cold hallway with Vax, coiling her scaled flank against Vex’s neck as she burrows further into the tangle of blankets the four of them have chosen again to share for the night.
They wonder, later, how they would have settled if things had been different, if they hadn’t been windborne, aflight from town to town with no safe place to roost. As it is, the twins hardly notice when their spirits take permanently to wing. Vex twists Arius’s feathers into her hair, and soon the shock of iridescent blue and teal is as much a part of her as the hard look in her eyes, the quiver at her back. Vax, in reflection, dons Anatolia’s darker feathers in his turn, and both find they can fade into the shadows more easily with each passing sunset.
Vex grows accustomed to the the glances thrown at Arius when she haggles, the way a shopkeeper’s hand will tighten into a fist around his silver. Arius watches her barter through the glass of a finely wrought mirror as she leans to block their view of him, smiling her most disarming smile, the darling, already on the tip of her tongue.
“Perfect,” comments a member of the Clasp when Anatolia swoops out of the chasm of night above Vax to perch on his shoulder, ignoring the disapproving look she levels at him. “Her beak will be dripping with silver before you know it- now there’s a daemon fit for a thief.”
“Or a scavenger.” Anatolia whispers into Vax’s ear, but he holds the man’s gaze and says;
“When do I start?”
It is a shock to them all, then, when four creatures so accustomed to pairs find themselves part of a flock.
They’ve seen too much to look right past Scanlan, or the tiny scarlet frog who sits, enthroned on his royal purple gloves, but the two of them are still a bit of a contradiction.
“This is Kriti. Don’t touch her,” He says cheerfully, and before they can express their shock at the prospect- “She’s extremely poisonous.”
“You have to stop introducing me like that.” She complains, but her amusement is evident in her voice, in the glint in her charming dark eyes.
Aside from their vividity, it isn’t immediately clear how they fit together. Amphibian daemons, in the twins’ experience, correspond to the glassy-eyed or the slimy of character, those who retreat into solitude as a newt slips into a stream. But then they hear Kriti chirping, shrill and joyful and shockingly loud for a creature so small, in harmony with Scanlan’s singing, and it begins to make sense. Kriti is every bit as sociable as most frogs are withdrawn, hopping off down the length of the bar only to return with gossip, with intel- and her black eyes sparkle with the secrets she learns.
Next to anyone but Grog, Zera would look formidable; she’s all muscle and scar tissue, all spittle foaming around her sharp canines, torn ears pricked up like horns. Members of the Clasp would put dogs like her in a pit and bet on which would tear the other to shreds faster- but not until they were half-starved, half-dead from being kicked and belted and thrown into cages.
“Yeah, yeah.” Grog says affectionately, wrestling with her absent-mindedly as they talk. “She’s pretty small- for a goliath’s. Should see her next to my Uncle Kevdak’s fuckin’ rhinoceroes.” He grins. “But she’ll fuck you up and no mistake.”
“Only if you deserve it!” She clarifies, nipping at Grog’s fingers playfully, her wagging tail thud-thudding against the table leg.
The other tavern-goers shoot fearful glances over their drinks in the direction of the goliath and his hound as her claws scrabble noisily on the hardwood floors. The twins exchange their crooked, semi-identical grins and lean in closer.
“I like these two.” Kriti chirrups to nobody in particular, hopping from Scanlan’s sleeve onto the table, and he nods, his own lips quirking up into a smile.
Keyleth and Rasvan are a little more difficult for them to figure out- but then, the sentiment is entirely mutual.
The pair of them are clearly more at home in the woods than they were in a tavern- Keyleth is curled up on a mossy log. Rasvan stands sentry beside her, silhouetted in the setting sunlight. Dust motes sparkle in the air about them both like Dancing Lights.
“So what you’re saying, darling…” Vex says, as gently as she can muster. “Is that Ashari daemons don’t settle at all?”
“Yeah,” Keyleth mumbles, trailing her hands nervously through the moss- daisies unfurl into existence in the wake of her fingertips. “Is that weird? You’re saying that like it’s weird. Come to think of it, people have been looking at us kinda strange, haven’t they, Rasvan?”
Rasvan nods his- conspicuously temporary- crown of antlers.
“Change,” he says, very slowly, scuffing his hooves against the grass. “Is natural. Settling sounds… unsettling.”
Kriti makes an offended noise- Arius chatters with laughter. Grog turns raised eyebrows to Zera, who huffs fondly at his expression, and licks him roughly on the cheek.
Keyleth drags her fingers through her wild red hair with a groan, and buries her head between her knees. Vex lays a hesitant hand on her arm and shoots Vax an urgent, bewildered look. He shrugs at her, responding with a ‘fuck if I know,’ expression, and Anatolia spreads her wings to keep balance on his shoulder and glares at him.
“So back home, daemons teach us to change, and out here, you teach them to stay the same?” Keyleth’s voice is somewhat muffled.
“What do you mean, daemons teach you to change?” Scanlan asks, and Keyleth resurfaces, tucking her hair behind her ears.
“You don’t know?” She asks, genuinely confused, and when she sees their blank stares she continues, “Like this-” and reshapes herself into a mountain lion, to a chorus of shouts, squawks and barks of surprise.
Sent for Grog’s sister, the tiny gnomish girl who answers their knock at the door isn’t quite who they expected- and neither is the gargantuan serpent looming behind her, all glistening scales and then, in an unfolding movement, plumage in all the hues of flame- blazing orange and deep red and glimmering gold. His spiralling, snaking body seems to entirely fill the hallway leading into the little house. When they have recovered from their awe, she wraps her arms about his head affectionately- or what little of it she can encircle.
“This is Sotirios. He’s a couatl.” She pats him affectionately. “Sorry if he scared you!” Her expression twists into a grin that’s not entirely un-serpentine itself. “He’s a bit of a monstah, y’know?” He nuzzles against her cheek. “But-”
“I wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He says, in a voice that reverberates as if spoken through a Thaumaturgy. And then he hisses in her ear in Celestial, fangs glistening the purest, sharpest white, as blindingly bright as the language sounds.
“Sotirios,” she says, with a fond laugh, shoving at him playfully. “Don’t be rude!”
And when they get to know Pike, the twins agree it seems right that her soul should be that big and bright and, well- monstrous. They love the pair of them almost instantly.
Vasilissa comes, to Vax at least, as the greater shock.
“He’s alive.” They hear her before they see her, her squawk brittle and desperate. “We’re alive, please help him-” She limps out into the flickering torchlight, dragging one wing. All eyes go to Anatolia, who dives from Vax’s shoulder to stalk towards the shadow on the other side of the bars.
For a moment, Vax feels the world has gone impossibly still as he looks upon the scene; his soul made twofold before his eyes. But then, like double vision shaken away, the moment passes; the daemon in the cell does not have the purple sheen to her feathers that Anatolia does- she is smaller, her dark eyes have a subtly different glister to them.
He picks the lock all the same.
Pike presses hands ablaze with radiant magic to the strangers’ wounds, and his daemon shudders with him as his veins pulsate with golden light for a moment and then, with a rattling of the manacles, his eyes flutter open.
“Is no-one-” Grog bursts out that night, when they are gathered around the campfire. “Gonna mention that you two have the same daemon?” Zera lays a paw on his leg, and begins to chew pointedly on the trailing cord of his bracer.
Vax leans back onto his heels from tending the fire, and watches the embers drift away into void and die there.
“We don’t.” He says, without turning around.
Grog’s ensuing confusion is almost tangible. Vax is content to leave him to stew in it, but-
“Vasilissa is a crow,” The man from the cell- Percy’s- voice, is rough with disuse. “Whilst-” He looks to Anatolia, who has tucked herself close to Arius, his wings encircling her protectively. “I- beg your pardon…” He croaks.
“Anatolia.” She says, not unkindly.
“Anatolia is a raven.”
“Both look the same to me.” Grog tilts his head, squinting. “ There a difference?” Zera tosses her muzzle at his expression and butts at him with her head.
“Yes.” The two daemons and their people all answer in unison.
“Ravens are strange.” Anatolia lifts her beak proudly, and Arius nods his own. “They’re thieves. They’re tricksters.”
“Crows are stranger.” Percy says, dully. His pale eyes are fixed on the flickering campfire. “They hold grudges.”
“And funerals.” Vasilissa’s voice is quiet. She looks up at him, over her shoulder- her moulting feathers stir in the silent breeze.
“Crows are good luck back in Zephra!” Keyleth says, with forced brightness, twisting her fingers nervously in Rasvan’s mane. He wickers in agreement, tail swishing from side to side. “Dad would always say it meant it was gonna be a good day if we saw one.”
Scanlan raises an eyebrow.
“They’re bad luck most everywhere else.” He says, and Kriti shushes him, flicking her leg against his arm scoldingly. “Ow. What? It’s true.”
“True, they’re considered bad luck.” Kriti corrects, turning up her nose pedantically. Sotirios nods his great head while Pike nods her smaller one in unison.
“So are half-elves, in places.” Vex’ahlia adds sharply, throwing Scanlan a pointed look.
“And magpies.” Anatolia reminds him.
“And ravens.” Arius’ reedy voice cuts in- he stirs his wings, restless.
“And poisonous frogs!” Scanlan says, putting up his hands. Kriti scoffs at him, but he continues. “We basically all have shitty daemons.”
“Hey!” Grog says defensively, wrapping his arms around Zera’s head as if to block her ears. “Speak for yourself!” Zera looks out from the gaps between Grog’s fingers, bemused.
“Alright, Grog.” Pike leans over to punch him comfortingly in the arm. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”
“No, I’m right, aren’t I?” Scanlan says insistently, ignoring Grog’s ensuing glare. “Poisonous,” he points at Kriti, dodging expertly when she flicks out her tongue to smack him with it, “Thieving, thieving,” he jabs his finger twice in the direction of Arius and Anatolia, “Too small or too scary, take your pick-” Grog growls, pulling Zera closer, “An identity crisis,” Keyleth laughs hesitantly, “A giant, holy, fuck-off snake-”
“With wings.” Sotirios intones, unfolding them partly. Pike rolls her eyes at him and tries to tug them closed.
“You’ll knock somebody over!”
“-With wings,” Scanlan amends, with an acknowledging nod. “And what, we can’t handle a crow? What’s a little more bad luck? We can hardly look any weirder at this point.”
Vex folds her arms and sighs.
“Not the most delicate way to put it, but I do think you have a point.” She turns her eyes to Percy. “We’re not going to turn you away just because your daemon’s a bad omen, is what I think he’s trying to say, darling.” To Vax’s chagrin, she throws him a wink. “Worst you can expect is we’ll kind of be assholes about it?”
Percy smiles then- a tight-lipped, grimly amused sort of expression. Vasilissa caws with shuddering laughter.
“We’ll fit right in.” She says.
So, that's them; a poisonous frog, a mangy mutt, a living, breathing, identity crisis, a giant, holy, fuck-off snake with wings, and bad luck incarnate- three times over. Wherever they go they are an explosion of fur, scale, feathers, talons, fangs, claws- the strangest, noisiest and messiest “flock,” the twins have ever seen, and they are better than any nest.
Vox Machina is the only place the twins will ever call home.