[Flashback] You Mean We Can Do That? (Pash)

[Lilium]

Lilium looked up at the creature before her, pale eyes regarding the youngster with pity. He glared down at her, and the disbelief all but radiated from his celestial flesh. As he snarled at her about being wrong and living forever and death, the night-bound konti narrowed her gaze, a look of anger flashing across her face. Fake? He thought she was..fake? Why in all the Gods of the Pantheon would she pretend to be something so disgraced and dejected. Standing in a fluid movement, the ethaefal nodded curtly and left the inn, ignoring the keep as he gave her a questioning glance. She would be back, eventually, and he would welcome her. As they exited the building, Lilium turned on her heel and frowned at the petulant man. Her hands twisted against the soft white fabric of her gown and her crystalline eyes regarded him carefully. "I will stay with you, all through till the dawn. Then we shall see whom is telling stories." Raising an eyebrow, she tilted her head. "Come, there is something I want to show you." Moving away, she began to lead the man from the inn, knowing she didn't have to check he would follow. It was not her desire to see living if there were lies between them, and if he wanted to see her change he would need to stay with her. Walking with purpose, the pale skinned creature led him to a small gated lot, far down the street where the city began to drift into wilderness. As they entered it would become apparent from the tilted mossy stones and slightly humped overgrowth that this was not just a vacant lot. Some of the stones were readable, others were worn and the grass around them high and unkempt. Moving slowly, the blonde passed between the stones her hand trailed gently over some. A small one, a taller one. One carved with a likeness of one Goddess or another, one very small and clearly designed for a tiny being. Pausing by a medium one, Lilium touched the top of the rounded stone. There was writing on the front, slightly worn by the elements and overgrown with moss. She looked at it for a long while, silence growing heavy between them, before finally her voice broke the darkness. "This was a woman, in the later stages of life when we first met. She lived to see fifty four years. My first song was for her ears." Moving slightly along, the woman touched another stone beside the first. Shorter, but decorated with the insignia of a knight. "This was a soldier, a son. He sang me a song, about going home, when he was barely a man. Before he went to fight, protecting a cause some Lord or Lady believed in. He lived to see seventy. A long and prosperous life." Lifting her eyes, the ageless creature nodded to another, and another. "A maiden working in a kitchen, and a barkeep. They were my friends. And they had a child. I knew that one too. And then that child has it seems, had a child. Who judging by the keep in the bar is now more a man than a child." Facing the man, Lilium's brow creased. "I watched them wither, and wilt, and the life seep from their eyes. I watched as son's buried mothers, and mothers buried children. And all the while, I remained unchanged. I never wilted with them, I never shared their ages. Every time I turn around, someone I tried to care about turns to dust, and I remain..."

[Pash'nar]

Pash'nar smirked at the Konti's anger, not as distrusting as his show put on. It was a defense, though it masked a much deeper, aching need to actually discover others of his kind, others who understood, others who felt just as lost. He just didn't realize others would be just as hopeless, that nothing got better, that being trapped here was something to actually get used to. Even if her words carried the weight of truth, their implications left him feeling heavier than the alcohol un-metabolised in his stomach. Of course he followed, but said nothing. He watched the pale, lithe woman with his cerulean gaze, curious about just how much the dawn would change her—if she changed at all. He knew the changes of his own flesh, and he found himself deeply curious about what another would look like. Her promise didn't comfort him as he hoped it would. It only made him more afraid. If she wasn't lying, then most likely all her words to him were just as true. He let her lead him through the city to the small grave yard; he knew what it was before he entered, washing his eyes away from the slight form of the Konti and onto the worn graves as his thin, opalescent lips faded into near-expressionless petulance. He hovered barely within the gate, crossing bare arms over his chest and watching as she traced her memories in the stones of the dead. He listened to her trace time back slowly by describing the dust and bones underneath the headstones. The ethaefal thought of those who'd adopted him as she spoke, barely listening. He understood her point, and her voice slowly sank the proud ship of his hopes. Dead in the water. The statuesque shard of moonlight considered the woman's words, but his mind wandered to the elderly man who still headed the family who'd taken him in. The various uncles and brothers. Their wives. The children. How many generations would he watch, then, if what the Konti said was true? Would he bury them all and never age? Pash was left incredulous. Speechless. As if his earthbound form was not a petching curse enough, what kind of added cruelty was un-aging immortality? He didn't know what to say, but the city was suddenly stifling, oppressive, terrifying … full of the dying … even here on the edges of town. His longing for the solace of sand and stars was only made stronger by what she was showing him. What was the point of holding onto anything, then, if it was all going to slip through his fingers? Why have friends? Why consider those nice seafolk his family? Tide pool gaze pulled away from the headstones to travel over the scaled, small-framed woman. He studied her features, still standing in pained silence. He sighed. "So, you're sure y'ain't jus' petchin' crazy? I've heard th'White Isle women don't grow old neither." He said these things, but he no longer believed his own words. The ethaefal turned away from her then, unable to continue to look at her. His hands found the gate, running his fingers over the rusted metal before tossing it open, speaking without looking back at the Konti, "If you're tellin' me the truth, why bother?" His words were almost a groan, his hand that lingered on the gate waving angrily in the air as he continued to walk away from her, helplessness turning into something much more fleshly, much less celestial. A fire burned in his chest as his alcohol-clouded mind pieced things together, stalking his way through familiar cobblestoned streets toward the docks, the beach, the ocean, the clearest views of the stars. "If I'm the first you've seen, you could petchin' start with somethin' cheerful. Not come cryin' about how petchin' awful it is t'be trapped in our skins an' how there ain't nothin' redeemin' 'bout bein' here. I ain't believin' all that shyke. Nottabit." His voice was angry now, uninhibited by his afternoon spent drinking with the swarthy fishmongering mortals he called friends, friends he would apparently watch age and whither away, "If there ain't nothin' good to say, maybe you shouldn't be lookin' for others. Maybe the rest o'us don't petchin' wanna know." He didn't want to know. Now he felt like he knew too much. Too much for so little time here to process. Two full turns of the seasons and now this woman wanted to lay decades of her burden on his chest? He'd hardly managed to grip his own reality. Hers was far more slippery. Pash'nar didn't know what to say to her. He didn't have a defense. An answer. An inkling. He couldn't process her implications. He couldn't process his own existence. He just walked, stumbled somewhat, trapped in unchanging lack of sobriety until sunrise. All he wanted was the sea. Something familiar, something painfully familiar to even the memories his earhtbound form haunted him with. He didn't try to escape the Konti. He simply waited for her to say something else terrible, something else empty, something else devoid of comfort. He led her down his familiar trails, past the docks, across the moonlit beach, just out of the reach of Zeltiva's lights.

[Lilium]

Following the horned creature as he led her out of the cemetery, Lilium allowed him to speak and held her tongue. She knew the sound of his voice, the anger and bitterness and inability to accept the reality of the situation. It was a sound she heard in her own more often then not. As they reached the beach, the pale skinned creature stood beside her dusky brother-in-arms, breathing deeply of the rich salty air. The woman enjoyed the ocean, it gave her some small measure of peace and it allowed her to see the stars. Looking up at the sky, listening to the crash of the waves, Lilium counted off the constellations in her head and found her own formation. "It's true, Konti don't age like other human races. I don't know how old I was when I ascended to begin with. I remember a stormy faced man and a beautiful white woman. I think...Mother and Father. But of our people, not of myself." It was hard to think of her first life, a jumble yet to decipher fully. "Lilium, is my name. After that constellation there. I was drawn to those stars the first time I crawled out of the ocean and into the arms of my once sisters. And I'm not looking for others, I mean, until tonight I thought..." Frowning slightly, the woman looked down at the glittering ocean waves. "I thought I was the only one." Standing quietly, Lilium gathered her thoughts, trying to settle herself back away from the insanity threatening to spill forth. Faintly she could feel more than see that the night was slowly shifting. It was technically morning now, regardless of how far away the sunrise was. A shudder ran through her spine. Gods be damned. "These words, they aren't made to offend or anger you...they are to warn you. Maybe your Father is truly waiting to bring you back home. Maybe Syna just doesn't care. But, I can only tell you what truths I have lived. And perhaps give you a chance to...prepare." Her smile came then, a soft and far away thing. As though she hoped things would be better for her fallen sibling than they had been for her.

[Pash'nar]

The son of Leth seemed relieved to find the sea, to stand on the beach, to watch the tide roll out in anticipation of the dawn. He listened to her name and knew the stars before she pointed to them, having spent so much of his time drawing them, lest he forget. He sighed and nodded his ornamented head in the direction of the brightening horizon, "Pash'nar." He offered quietly, figuring his namesake was obvious and bright enough of a cluster of stars that he didn't feel the need to point them out. He looked at her then, studying her expression in her smaller, equally pale form. Her quiet admission hurt with a familiar pain. He had wondered the same thing, too. Had he been the only one? Only, she'd had to wait much longer than himself to find the answer. He'd hardly been here and she'd been trapped for ages it seemed. Now, at least, they both knew. Perhaps that meant there were even more of them … or were they really the only two? He considered their utter oppositeness—Syna and Leth, male and female—and wondered which was therefore true. It seemed appropriate enough, which led him to more curious thoughts that were, thankfully, quickly interrupted by the rest of her words of warning. "Well, sometimes I think, if Leth wanted me back, he wouldn'ta let me fall in th'first place, eh? I mean, it ain't like I should be too far away for him to fix this. So, I don't understand." The shard of moonlight stepped closer, for while he was still cautious of her honesty, the longing to find others of his kind, to find someone who truly knew what he knew and felt what he felt, was too strong to keep him away, "I don't like the sounds o'things as you're sayin', but I can only hope that there's a diff'rent explanation for's both." He returned her smile, though the wound had been made. The ethaefal resisted the urge to touch the Konti, fidgeting with his hands until they found themselves folded across his opalescent chest. He glanced once more at the horizon, expectant, anticipating, curious, before turning to face Lilium and wait to see what Syna's light truly did to her, knowing already what her rays would do to him. He loathed his own earthbound form. Distrusted and strange as it was. He didn't change on the inside and yet so many made assumptions based on being Svefra alone. It was annoying at best and hurtful at worst. The glorious form of evening was never treated that way, though plenty still feared him at first … he was at least treated with more respect than dislike. "I'd say that somethin' happened to our gods, but then, well, time wouldn't work the same, prob'ly." He added quietly, attempting comfort of his own. He did believe Leth knew, he just couldn't wrap his mind around why nothing had changed. The pale woman's experiences made it sound as though it would never change, and that stung. How could he prepare for that? He opened his mouth to say something else, to attempt at lighter humor, only to be interrupted by the dawn.

[Lilium]

At the mention of his chosen name, Lilium's eyes automatically flicked to the constellation he had adopted, surprised to find she wasn't alone in choosing a new name from the stars. Is that what they would all do...was it because it was the closest thing they would ever get to home? As the younger ethaefal spoke, moving closer to her, the shimmering konti smiled softly and nodded. "I understand. If Syna wanted to, she could appear before me right now and take my hand and raise me back into the arms of our brothers and sisters. But she doesn't, she hasn't. And I suspect..she won't." Turning to look at Pash'nar, she met his gaze as he spoke about their respective Gods. Indeed, if something had happened, they wouldn't have just fallen. The world would have been destroyed over again. There was something in the man's gaze, a sort of expectancy. Lilium knew he was watching her, waiting to see if she shifted like she had implied. And she could see, part of him was hoping she was a liar. The scaled creature's thoughts were interrupted by the breaking of the dawn, Syna's scathing rays rolling across the surface of the ocean and bathing Lilium in their fiery glow. Turning her face to the sun, the ethaefal closed her eyes even as the transformation took place. Like the falling of autumn leaves, her hair shifted from platinum blonde to a rich red. Twisting slowly, two horns grew down and back from her face, golden in the sunlight. Her pale scaley skin darkened to a ruddy tan that shimmered like rose gold and she gained a little height. Her features became sharper, more defined and beneath closed eyes - her gaze turned from icy crystals to rich molten gold. When the cycle was completed, Lilium opened her eyes and looked at Pash'nar. Her smile was gone. "And so here we are, the vile reminder of what has been snatched away from us both. A horned costume designed only to mock us whilst on this plane." Looking at her hand, the ethaefal saw a flash, a gushing of thick red and the smell of copper and burning. Closing her eyes tightly, the godling willed her past away desperately. Gods and Goddesses, she hated the beast.

[Pash'nar]

Pash’nar had watched himself change, once or twice, in the dingy mirrors of the full house he shared with those who had rescued him, always alone. He’d seen how evening brought the return of the celestial form he remembered vaguely in visions and dreams and he’d seen how dawn clothed him in the mistrusted, tanned skin. He’d experienced the reactions of others—shock from some, awe from others, fear from still more—both in public and in private. Those who knew him no longer seemed to react, however, having accepted him for who he was, regardless of the time of day, but he those who didn’t know him always found the change worthy of some response, though not all were positive in nature. Their changes stood in drastic contrast. He found himself captivated in the handful of heartbeats it took to watch the Konti become an ethaefal even as his own luminescent, celestial form faded into someone tanned and ordinary. While his cerulean eyes never changed from one skin to the next, they also never strayed from Lilum, widening as her Syna-kissed ethaefal form supplanted the delicate woman of Mura. His own stature diminished, hair darkening, and a handful of inked lines and sea-worn scars (from some life he didn’t remember living) appeared on his tanned skin. He finally willed himself to blink, exhaling the breath he didn’t know he’d held. He’d been proven wrong, and he felt his heart sink in his chest at the realization of the truth, his revitalized metabolism making him dizzy from the alcohol left lingering in his system. Staring at the woman’s celestial form made him feel light-headed as well—the reminder of their far-away beauty stirred a variety of strange feelings he didn’t quite know how to process. Without thinking, he raised a hand, calloused, earthbound fingers reaching to touch bronzed, shimmering skin, brushing red hair from the woman’s face. Pash’nar’s movement was barely felt, almost afraid, as if daring to touch the other ethaefal would somehow completely cancel out their mutual existence, as if somehow a second Valterran would rend the world because of their proximity. When nothing happened, his hand lingered briefly against her cheek, reminding himself of her reality with a resigned, sorrowful sigh escaping his lips unbidden as he hovered so close, “I wish I could say th’same,” the false Svefra sighed, holding Lilium’s gaze as best he could, “Yet I feel ‘s though it’s this body ‘f someone else that’s the real burden, the real curse. It ain’t the body we’re meant t’ave, though it’s some body I used to be. I hate not knowin’, though I think I hate it not matterin’ more’n’anythin’ else.” Tanned shoulders sagged and he let his hands indicate his shorter, leanly sea-muscled self, failing to see the humor in how opposite they appeared to be in nature, if not in seemings. Perhaps it was simply the stereotype his earthbound form had been shoved into that made him feel more acceptable, more himself in the moonlight, or perhaps it was simply his still-fresh longing to be back in the Ukalas instead of stuck here. He certainly had no concept of just how capable his views were of changing through the decades. “This just ain’t ever felt like me, even if’t was some other lifetime long ago. ‘Least I’m someone I know under Leth’s gaze, even if I’m def’nately not where I’m s’posed to be. If’n I gotta live’n ‘em both for s’long as you say, I guess I’d better petchin’ get used to it, eh?”

[Lilium]

As the now tan skinned man reached out to touch her, Lilium shied away at first with disgust at her form, revolved he would want to touch the vile rotting shell that surrounded her. With effort, the red haired woman stilled herself and allowed Pash'nar to stroke her cheek and move her locks away from her shoulder. Why he would even think this form worthy of such reverence was beyond her. As he spoke of his current form with the same sort of vehemence she herself used in this horned deformity, Lilium felt her brow draw slightly. How could he say those things about himself, about the truth that the light of day revealed for him? "This isn't the body we are meant to have, this vile demonic carcass that your Father and my Mother swathe us in. Every second of everyday I feel this form rotting and dying and aging. Endlessly. I feel nothing. I taste nothing. I see nothing. Nothing but the pain and the death and the vile corrupted things I have done, she has done." Her well spoken voice was laced with self loathing and disgust. Although she looked at him her eyes were far away, and her hands shook slightly. "These hands...I see broken bodies and twisted limbs. Faces, bloodied faces..." Refocusing on the face of her kin, Lilium tilted her head slightly. "We will live on and on, ever shifting ever changing. You will never get used to it, never. Every day you will hate yourself a little bit more, hate Leth and his cruel laughing luminous face...everyday..." Reaching up suddenly, the autumn creature took his hand from her cheek, holding it with a gentle grasp and moving it so his open palm faced up to the morning sky. "This is real. Who you are, and who you were. Leth stole this from you, so long ago. Embrace it, cherish it. Gods all be damned and defiled...you can walk in the light of the wretched day and breathe the heat of the sun, embrace its warmth on your skin. You can smell the waking of the day, the growth of the crops, the creation of life. You live it, everyday. Be thankful for those moments..." Releasing his hand, the ethaefal looked out across the ocean again. "Be thankful, because when you have lived forever...you will miss those moments the most." Melancholy, tired and overflowing with hatred for this form, Lilium felt herself loosing her grip on the now. In the rolling waves of the ocean, she could see the torn bodies of those creatures she had ripped tentacled limbs from soft torsos. Faces with dead staring eyes. They bobbed and floated in the swells, ghosts from a past she would never escape. Closing her eyes, she willed them away. Away from her, to the past. Gods..would they never let her rest?

[Pash'nar]

Truly, the younger ethaefal couldn't have felt more opposite than the daughter of Syna before him. He struggled to keep his objections contained, quiet fear and confused horror and obstinate refusal creasing their way into his tanned features, features already worn by the sea he'd hardly sailed in this life. It was all he could do not to snatch his hand away and glare at the sun-kissed creature of dizzying, ethereal beauty before him. Instead, he managed to find some kind of middle ground between despondent anger and abject depravity. "No." He exhaled in innocent and unanchored defiance, unblinking in the face of her self-loathing. There was a fire in his chest, a deeply planted need to declare Lillium's words untrue. However much he had begun to question the motivations of the divine, the awareness of his own wounded god, he felt compelled to stand his ground on the dim hope he wanted to never lose sight of. He had no concept of the ravages of time. Not yet. No ability to peer into the decades of his own future and see just how well, or how terribly, he'd eventually come to deal with the forever this bright woman spoke of with such hatred and pain. "This body lived a life without me an' died. Or so I dream." Pash'nar hated those dreams. "Whatever happened up there'n th'Ukalas, I ain't able t'even seem to guess at anymore, but I ain't sure I can blame Leth—" He wanted to. "—not yet." One day, soon enough, he would. "If I ain't gonna age an' I ain't gonna die without some kinda help, then what th'petch am I 'ere for? You make it sound like it's only to be sad an' angry. Issat how you really wanna keep livin' like?" He'd been washed ashore into good hands. Whether that had been the will of Leth or Laviku or pure chance alone, he would never know this side of his own breathing. He'd been taken care of, even loved perhaps, by those fishing folks. Sure, they didn't understand him and he didn't always understand them, but, in the end, when washed in their kindness, their differences became a moot point. Lillium seemed so angry, so bitter, so hurt. It was, perhaps, the most horrifying thing Pash'nar could have imagined for himself to become. When, decades later, he could look back, his naiveté would one day mock him like some faraway star. He knew nothing of this woman's unfathomably long past, but it didn't stop him from dismissing how disturbed she was in favor of clinging to some kind of hope she was lying or confused. "I can't believe what you're sayin's all there is. You sure y'ain't jus' missin' somethin'?" The false Svefra's words were just as accusatory as they were desperate. He stepped closer to the daughter of Syna, rescuing his hand from her grasp to reach for both of hers. It was a motion of kindness as much as it was one of need. He needed to cling to something. Surely, hopelessness wasn't all Lillium carried inside, was it?

[Lilium]

"No?" Lilium repeated the word as though it were a foreign language, her amber eyes scanning the morning horizon with a frown. As Pash'nar continued to speak, the golden ethaefal chuckled wryly followed by an out of place laugh as her gaze met his finally. "I don't want to keep living at all, but I can't die. The Gods protect this vile form, parting the bodies like the bow parts the water. I threw myself at them, and I broke them..and they fought back but they didn't fight enough. Look at them! They stare at me with the blood still on their faces. Taunting and taunting and...how much longer must they taunt me?" Her voice wavered and her golden eyes looked at him desperately, hand tightening on his wrist as though there was some sort of answer that he held for her. But there wasn't, there never was. As the younger godling moved to clasp both her hands in his, Lilium felt the edge of her fear and panic shift away like the ebb of the tide, and with his words the ageless woman shook her head. Her amber gaze dropped from his own and focused on their joined hands. "If there is something else, some secret reason why I'm here alone with my silence...then I haven't found it yet. And Gods know, they know I have looked. Mizahar is so small, you can walk the whole of the world in a few mere years. I've been across the whole of it, and back again. And again. And again." There were tears on her cheeks now, as the tormented creature drew upon all the time she had spent searching for a way home, or a reason to why she was thrown from Syna's embrace. "I couldn't find you...any of you. I was the only one, but then there is you. And you aren't here to take me home. Your just as alone as I am." The last of her words were more of an accusation then a statement, her brow furrowed and her eyes lifted to him. There had been a warm welcome for Lilium when she fell. Her sisters embraced her konti form, they fed her and they clothed her. But the change had frightened them, as much as it had frightened her. And for the fallen creature, it wasn't enough. Not after what she had lost. Something so wonderful, so glorious that it was too much for her mind to register. The harder she tried to piece together her time beside Syna, the more distant it became. "Did you know, I sang for Her?" The words were out of place, as though the horned godling was trying to remember a dream. Blinking, she smiled, her eyes looking past him. "I sat by her feet, and I sang. And there was...there were...others. I think. Sometimes I think its Syna I see, but then other times its...someone else. A woman, a konti. But she is the most beautiful woman I've seen. She was the one who taught me...or...I listened enough to learn." Focusing on him again, Lilium smiled still. "Maybe I sang badly for Her."