[flashback] hands (caelum & hadrian)

[Hadrian]

"Then what's with the horns?" he asked. "You were transformed. Now that you're stuck here again, you revert to a Drykas body, your previous one, I suppose. But... well... I wonder if it's not apotheosis because it's not, or just because the Valterrian made the celestial realms start pooping you out. So no apotheosis just because you're no longer up there..."

He licked his lips, then bit them against a spike of pain rearing up through the general hum of damaged nerves.

"Sorry, never mind. I know it's a painful subject. It's just easier to ignore the pain when my mind's otherwise occupied, and that's the magnum opus of problems right there. Ow, shyke. What's in that? It smells like toothpaste.

"Oh, d'you think it'd hurt to make Res now? I mean, my hands are already in water, so..."

[Caelum]

"It's the body I occupied in my last life before ascension," Caelum replied evenly. A thin glance was given Hadrian, but he was not shutting the young scholar out, closing him down as he would have likely to with most anyone else.

The truth was that Caelum was not so distant and cold to keep people out, but to keep himself in. Contained. Encapsulated. There were too many hours in which he felt as though his soul was spinning so terribly fast that eventually his centrifugal force was going to cause him to implode.

"You're theorizing, then, that I was a god prior to the Valterrian?"

That amused him. It was plain.

"Goldenseal, garlic, aloe and mint," he continued, easily transitioning. "And, no, don't be a fool, Hadrian. Wait until you're fully healed."

[Hadrian]

Hadrian sniffed at the accusation of foolishness, or the mention of foolishness in possible association with his name. But, really, he didn't pay too much heed to that. They had developed a comfortable enough rapport that an insult from Caelum was more likely to make him laugh than plan his downfall. Perhaps it was a bit of compassion; after all, how much lower might Caelum fall? He already had skid marks from his last landing.

"Well, I suppose we would have to go about defining the gods in order to define what you were at any given point. You were no longer quite what most people would call a human or an ethaefal. A goddess's avatar until her queendom was ruptured... Now teetering back toward your previous life. I wonder if you could be stabilized into your daytime shape. If perhaps next year, I could sling an amulet around your neck at high noon on the solstice and freeze you at the crest of your oscillation between forms. From that higher vantage point, stretched out rather than momentary, perhaps you could see more... remember more... accomplish more."

His stomach growled. It was the garlic. But he hardly paid his body any attention. Well, that was obvious.

[Caelum]

The last tuck of bandage was made, neatly and with an element of OCD perfection, before Caelum gathered up the bowl of water and the scattered vials and jars of various herbal ingredients in order to sanitize and dispose of everything properly.

"Come over for dinner. My shift was over ten minutes ago, somewhere around shambling hordes and trebuchets. Lillis will be glad to see you."

Cabinet doors slammed, the clean, plain room tidied up with efficient ease. He said nothing while completing this standard task and, finally, reaching for his jacket and shrugging into the plain leather, addressed Hadrian's further statements.

"I want to see a successful, major spell before I allow you to drop an amulet around my neck; but it's not, Hadrian," he frowned, groping around for the right words. "The higher vantage point, the noon hour, the day form, allows for a great deal. There is no doubting that; but I don't want to disregard the idea that maybe the rest is equally as necessary."

It was hard for him to utter that, considering the emotional pain the change bore down upon him and the loss of celestial, mental capacity, the shifting of memories, the endless grappling for what had just been within reach. Yet he could not discount his Drykas mind anymore than he could his ethaefal heart.

[Hadrian]

"So you think I might be right? That there might be a purpose to all this?"

He slid off his seat, holding his bandaged hands up slightly so that they wouldn't brush against anything and make him scream and weep like a little girl. But once standing, he felt a little wobbly -- the tea, of course. Not so bad now that he was aware of it.

Disregarding the lack of faith in his magecrafting, which really was turning out to be his forte, he focused on this new revelation: that he might have been right about the advent of the ethaefal and their purposes back within the mortal coil. It was always gratifying to be right, though they likely would not be able to prove it without an audience with Syna and Leth, which wasn't likely to happen.

[Caelum]

"Yeah," Caelum said, tugging up the collar of his jacket and peering, not without irony, at his friend cum patient. "I think you might be right. Come on, Had," and he jerked his chin, swinging around on a heel for the door. There he would wait, not wanting Hadrian to stumble dizzily around; and, no doubt, the scholar would end up sleeping on his couch tonight.

Caelum was done, apparently, dregging up the dead in his soul for the time being.

[Hadrian]

END

[Kelpie]

Hadrian: +1 Reimancy, +1 Medicine, +1 Rhetoric, +1 Philosophy Lore: Reckless Use of Magic Caelum: +3 Medicine, +1 Herbalism, +1 Philosophy Lore: Tending to Burns Note: Really fun read. Hadrian your posts made me laugh, hehe. Good job, guys!