Unbearable desert heat beat at an impatient crowd with all the cold-blooded cruelty of a slavemaster. They watched, with a steady chorus of grumbles, as a mouse waded into the shallows of a lake.

"I left him right here!" Wilder assured, uncomfortably aware of the eyeballs glued to his back.

"I hope you didn't drag us all the way here for nothin'," an aged armadillo spoke for all assembled.

"I assure you Grandmaster, this will be worth your time. I have tamed a beast the likes of which you have never seen before!" He flashed the gathered beasts a grin. "A monster of legend! A force of nature!" Wilder gestured at the water, chuckling nervously. "He's just a little shy."

"Stop wastin' our time!" An elderly raccoon threw down his walking stick in rage, turned away, turned back to pick up the stick, spat, and stormed off. The rest of the crowd followed suite.

"Nonono!" Wilder's paws scrambled at thin air to keep their attention. "Wait! I swear this isn't a joke! I'm serious! Grandmaster, please-"

"Whatever you say, Wapaw, whatever you say," the armadillo sighed, joining the exodus back home.

"This isn't like all those other times!" the mouse insisted. "Those were accidents! Y-you're not still mad about that time with the dreamcatcher, r-right? O-or the skunk incident? Or is it about-"

By the time he was done listing his accidents, the crowd had faded into the horizon.

Wilder sighed. Behind him, a monstrous reptile, easily as large as a small hill, floated to the surface.

Scowling, the mouse turned to face it. "What took you so-"

He was silenced by a sudden gust of wind; the beast's snort; and found to his horror that his expression was mirrored on a much larger face.

"'Force of nature?' 'Monster of legend?' De 'beast ya tamed?' Tamed!?" The alligator's tail beat a tidal wave out of the water; nearly drowning the mouse. "Ya told me ah was a GOD! Not sum obedient pet!"

Dripping wet and sputtering for breath, Wilder scrambled onto dry land. "Okay, okay, okay! That was bad! Terrible! Sorry! I'm sorry Kwetzacoatel, OhLordofWhateverabayouis! I-I was just trying to, to er- introduce you in a way that the, the-er puny mortal minds of my clanbeasts could fathom!"

"Oh." The alligator's burning rage turned to smoke. "Dats okay den."

The mouse breathed out a hurricane of relief. Life with his newfound 'God' was full of these little moments of panic.

Kwetzacoatel shook his giant head. "Ya make noooo sense by de way."

Wilder frowned, wringing water out of his ears. "How so?"

"Should ah speak de language of de Deides or 'phrase id in a way yore padetic mortal mind would understand?'" he grinned impishly, flaunting his impressive collection of pearly white teeth.

"I'd prefer the latter. And you've been spending too much time around me."

"Ah 'ave!" The alligator's eyes bulged in realization. "You is a baaaaad influence!"

Wilder shrugged.

"Anyways, while ah was watchin' ya make an idiot of yourself, ah saw dat yore padetic mortal pals were… how do ah put dis gentille-like?"

"Uninterested, irritated, downright hostile?" the mouse offered.

The alligator nodded sympathetically. "While it's true dat ya talk too much and deliver too liddle, ah can't understand why ya- moi Chosen One!- would want to impress cridders dat don't even like ya."

"But that is exactly why I want to impress them!" Wilder huffed. "Look, you have always looked down upon those beneath you- asyoushouldOhHeavenlyBeing- but I spend every moment of my life being looked down upon. And after so much time at the bottom, I'd like to be on top."

"An' ya need me for dis," Kwetzacoatel summarised, nodding to himself. "Coz yore noffin' alone."

"Yes, I do." Wilder clasped his paws as if in prayer. "Please?"

"...Fiiiiiiiiine." The reptile lowered his head.

"Just don't say a word, let me do the talking." Slipping on wet scales, the mouse clambered on. "Rest assured that you chose wisely."

"Ah 'ope so," the alligator crawled out of the water, and drew himself up to his full height. "Ah would hate to 'ave to eatcha."

The mouse paused. "You know… that may be the nicest thing anybeast has ever said to me."

"It's coz ya got no meat on ya," the God grumbled. "Yore jussda bundle of fluff an' lies! Lies!"

Wilder shrugged, reclining against a ridge and folding his arms behind his head. "Still the nicest thing anyone has said to me."

It wasn't quite as nice, however, as the looks of horror, awe and shock that met him when he caught up to the crowd on their way home.

"This is Kwetzacoatel!" Wilder, comically small and shouting to be heard, wore the same grin as his mount. "You could say he's my partner-in-crime."

Footnote:

I will one day write more of these two. Probably not in an exactly Redwall kind of setting- I'm thinking more along the lines of something like Digger- because I do really like the imagery of big alligator God and his tiny high priest mouse. The comedy and the dynamic worked, and they were a lot of fun to write.

I don't actually have too much to say here because, well, they're story is something I'm not realistically gonna get to work on in the near future and I don't really want to spoil things or divulge ideas that currently only exist in the form of concepts and mindstorms. #

Minor note but I think it's interesting that Wilder and Kwetz is to some extent a more extreme version of Rolf and Kew-Kew's (and by extension Smog and Falshed's) dynamic. Both parties have a mouse (or stoat in Falshed's case) dragged along by the whims of a more er- physically imposing but less mentally agile creature who thinks they are something they're not (in Kew-Kew's case an eagle, in Smog's a dragon, and in Kwetzacoatel's a God). I'm not sure if this kind of duo is a trope per say but I think it's interesting enough to point out. Each of those duos have their own dynamics obviously but I think there's a lot of fun similarities there.