the heart of a people.

by **Caelum** on October 22nd, 2013, 3:45 pm

PermissionsNPC usage granted by our own Magpie.

under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,

under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,

laughing that under his wrist is the pulse,

and that under his ribs is the heart of a people.

- c. sandburg.

Timestamp: 07 Fall 513 AV

Caelum did not know that it was the shadows who had convinced Ismail Bahram to take him on as a pupil. The exchange had occurred in muttered Makath when the ethaefal stepped out of the daylight and into the Tuvya Sasaran, a wily shadow snatching the Grand Master away from his consideration of the class presently going through the deft motions of their kata. Ismail's sober regard settled on Syna's son following his exchange with the shadow and after a long hesitation he rolled out of his slouch against the wall to pace toward the newest arrival.

Golden eyes turned up to the Grand Master, unaccustomed to having to climb so high until he had returned to Riverfall. Caelum was tall in his day form, but there were many Akalaks easily as tall or taller than he. He was not easily intimidated by sheer physicality. Perhaps he ought to have been. It was a sad sign that he was not. It was evidence of just exactly how far he had gone from the Ukalas, what depths of below he had walked, to come out the other side with the understanding that whatever was thrown at him next he could survive. It was not that he failed to fear, it was that he had experience even with great depths of terror. He knew that terror was just one more thing he could endure. It was at once his strongest feature, as well as his most telling when apparent. He kept a lot of secrets close to his chest, otherwise it might have been obvious already to those few who knew him; but that could also have been one of the reasons the shadows had tittered and snapped at Ismail until he relented.

“I am Ismail, Grand Master of the Tuvya Sasarin,” the imposing Akalak introduced himself. Dark eyes rested on Caelum with the weight of expectation. “I’ll teach you.”

It crooked Caelum’s mouth toward bemusement and he offered a head and shoulders bow, straightening with an easy roll of his shoulders. “Caelum,” he returned. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Grand Master.” He hesitated. “How did you know I’m here to learn?”

Ismail’s smile offered a glint of teeth. “Why else would you be here?” He gestured with one arm and turned to lead the way down the hall to one of the private practice rooms.

“Fair enough,” Caelum muttered, smiling a little. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, a thoughtful expression in his eyes, but he followed Ismail in the end. “Then to what do I owe the honor of your personal instruction?” He asked Ismail’s back. His words were formal for the sake of good manners, but his tone was relaxed in the manner of a man who was comfortable with formality.

“Thank Ovek if you like,” Ismail replied, the shrug more implied by his tone than actually offered in the broad expanse of his shoulders. “I am available and you are here.” He stopped in the middle of the practice room and performed an about face to look over his pupil. He squinted down. “Take off your shoes.”

Caelum blinked down at his well weathered riding boots, grimaced a little at his own error, and dropped to a crouch to remove them. He tucked his socks into them as well, leaving them out of the way by the door. Returning to his feet, the ethaefal padded barefoot toward the spot near the center of the otherwise empty room Ismail indicated.

“Have you received any formal instruction already?” Ismail asked.

Caelum shook his head, then paused. “Yes and no. I was shown some basics by men who were advanced in their leaning, but the setting was far from formal.” His smile quirked. “Or normal.”

The Grand Master nodded. “Show me your kata then,” he instructed, his expression stern. “And tell me why you wish to learn.”

Caelum inclined his head, a spark of sunlight igniting off the edge of his horns, and straightened his skeleton into the beginning stance he had been taught. He concentrated of aligning his bones and settling his feet in the proper distance apart, thereby balancing his physical body around its center while at once tempering his mind about its own. He had been taught mental techniques alongside physical ones due to the special nature of his combined gnosis marks, and years later the duality of his training in unarmed combat and the meditation like mental exercise came naturally. He intended to continue this dual training because, frankly, he could not do otherwise. The ranuri housed within him would rouse with physical contact and he must teach his muscles as well as his mind, his muscles to keep his bones from being broken and his mind to break itself into pieces to deal with the rest.

“I wish to achieve Kuvan status, Grand Master,” he informed Ismail while slowly bringing up his hands. He held his muscles tight while swiveling his palms outward and tracing the upward pattern of butterfly wings in the air. He echoed the pattern but in reverse, hands sweeping down and then out as his hips shifted and the rest of him turned, weight rolling to the balls of his feet.

“Why?” Ismail prompted.

by **Caelum** on October 31st, 2013, 11:19 pm

One arm extended outward while Caelum notched the other at the elbow, fingers flat in a position of deflecting defense of his face and throat. At the height of their reach, he turned both counter clockwise to perform the same angle of defense to his left side versus his right, visualizing his enemy as having moved around him. Or, perhaps, he having moved around the enemy.

"I wish to belong, grand master," the ethaefal said in a tone too quiet. His knees bent and his arms reached, stretching high before tumbling down in series of tumbled jabs during which he held every muscle tight as a garrote wire drawn between killing hands.

"You're too slow," Ismail's judgement echoed deep and bland through the practice room. "And your punches are weak. You have not enough strength in your arms to deflect a blow from a skilled opponent."

Caelum's mouth formed a grim line and, because he had not been told to stop, he continued with the arduous dance of the kata taught him, oddly enough, by another healer. He placed his left foot behind his right and dropped his leading shoulder while sweeping his left forearm up. "I was taught that strength is not the sole weapon of the defender," he offered respectfully. "But that speed and equilibrium, endurance and cunning are weapons of equal quality if well applied."

"Because you have tools that are honed and in peak condition does not mean you can neglect the one that is not," Ismail corrected. Caelum made a face that half a smile and half a grimace, focusing on the exact placement of his feet as well as the alignment of his hips and shoulders as he completed the turn that would bring him back to facing the Akalak.

The blow seemed to come out of nothing. It was as if in Ismail there was no pause between the intention to do a thing and the actual doing of it. He struck Caelum across the draw and even as pain blossomed and shock echoed through the ethaefal, so did the realization that the punch had been pulled.

It obviously was, as otherwise Caelum would have been on the floor.

"You want to belong," Ismail said as Caelum straightened, recovering with a thick drawn breath to straighten again. "Hands up. You will dodge better than that by the time we are through today. To what or to whom?"

"To what or to whom?" Caelum muttered, an unlikely echo, and brought up his fists.

by **Caelum** on October 31st, 2013, 11:52 pm

"To what or to whom do you want to belong?" Ismail raised his eyebrows. "Watch the line of my shoulders, the line of my hips. Follow where my eyes go." The Akalak slowed down his own motions so that Caelum could follow them, watch as the fist came toward him again. Caelum brought up his hand and swept to the side, intending to catch Ismail's writ and deflect his blow.

The result was that he was punched. Again.

Caelum grunted and Ismail sighed.

"You are not listening. You are too much in conversation with something else," the grand master insisted, frowning even as he stepped forward. He took hold of Caelum's shoulder and of his elbow, positioning his arm in the curvature required. "You listen to me. You watch me. You stop letting your mind wander and your hold your hands like this and you move them like this --" Ismail manipulated Caelum's fist out, then down. "And you do not forget to move your body at the same time. You do not deflect or dodge. You do both at the same time. Understood?"

"Yes, grand master," Caelum said quietly. He had set his teeth and narrowed his eyes, focusing on where and how the Akalak moved him, hanging onto every syllable like a lifeline as the complex spill not one but two personalities needs and desires flooded his senses.

He was probably imagining it, but he could have sworn he heard Nikali's throaty snicker.

Ismail stepped back and eyed Caelum for a few chimes before nodding to himself. "To what or to whom?" He inquired politely, as if he had not already been forced to ask his pupil this same question several times already.

"To Riverfall," Caelum answered and side stepped, right foot behind back, in line with his familiar kata. Ismail merely stalked him, undeterred as a setting sun. Caelum watched the line of his shoulders, his hips. "That is what it means, at least partially, to be Kuvan. Isn't it?"

"In part, yes," Ismail agreed. A foot struck out without warning, but he slowed the motion and Caelum managed to dance back in exact step with his choreographed motions. "But that is not all you meant."

by **Caelum** on November 1st, 2013, 12:13 am

This time when Ismail's fist sang toward Caelum, he managed to dodge. It was a clumsy dodge, and his attempt to deflect the blow by sweeping up his hand in the partially recollected pattern shown him was a complete failure; but it was, altogether, still a better reaction than his previous ones had been. The blow but grazed his cheek, leaving a thin smear of need behind like the struggle of lungs for oxygen when you are but holding your breath.

"You still aren't paying attention," Ismail declared. Caelum imagined he heard an element of irritation in the large Akalak's deep barreled voice.

Caelum caught his balance and brought his hands back up, settling his weight lightly on the balls of his feet while blinking through strands of carnelian hair at his teacher. "I am," he offered carefully. "I promise I am."

"You aren't," Ismail countered and drew his muscled limbs into the correct stance he wished Caelum to acquire. It was only a minor correct on the surface, but once Caelum had shifted his shoulders and angled his chin, he could feel the difference in his balance immediately.

Caelum briefly closed his eyes. It was little more than a slow blink, but it was enough to focus on the piece of his mind he had broken off to store the elements of ranuri in so that they would not crowd his observations. That, at least, was his intention. He was not nearly skilled enough in any of it yet for it work very well, but he would not give up. He couldn't give up.

"There is a balm of chamomile and orange root that when applied in turns with aloe will help the blisters on your heels heal fast," Caelum opened his eyes and informed Ismail evenly. "And your new boots can be broken in faster if you saturate the leather at the pressure points with raw spirits such as whiskey or degtine and wear the boots until those areas dry. It won't stain."

He took a deep breath and stepped, side-stepped, performed a half turn not unlike a dance to maneuver himself out of the projected path of Ismail's next blow. The grand master's face was blank, expressionless as tree bark.

Caelum continued. "The hinges on the exterior doors need oiling and you receive too many of the touches in your life through violence, even though much of that violence is performed with the intention to instruct and therefore to ultimately protect and prepare."

The ethaefal managed, just barely, to stop himself before he informed the Grand Master of the Tuvya Sasaran that what he really needed, other than his boots being broken in and to leave his doors open more often to welcome in this lovely autumn air, was a hug.

He threw a punch at the man's face instead.

by **Caelum** on November 5th, 2013, 12:26 am

Caelum's punch never landed. Instead it was caught in a large, blue fist and Ismail's other hand closed over his shoulder, thereby manipulating the whole of the ethaefal's momentum against itself. The end result was Caelum hitting the floor where he was summarily thrown. He slapped his palms hard against the floor in an attempt to absorb some of the impact and rolled onto his back, stunned and staring up at the towering Akalak.

"That is what you will learn to do," Ismail declared. His deep voice and the certainty all his words seemed crouch in caused nearly everything he said to seem definitive and occasionally ominous. "You will today how to throw and be thrown. It is better than standing there and take blows. Especially for a healer." He inclined his head toward the starkly apparent gnosis mark from the goddess Rak'keli emblazoned on the back of Caelum's right hand.

"Yes, grand master," Caelum managed, sitting up and gulping some of his breath back.

"You are very observant," Ismail continued. He thrust a hand down to Caelum with the ethaefal accepted, propelling himself back to his feet. "And make swift deductions."

Golden eyes glinted, catching Ismail's, and Caelum's smile was embarrassed. "My apologies, Ismail. I didn't intend to be snarky with you. I only meant to show you that I am paying attention even if it may seem as though I am not."

Ismail considered Caelum for a long while of silence. The ethaefal caught his breath, shoring himself up beneath the intensity of his teacher's regard. He met it steadily and with honesty even if he did not feel able to deliver the whole truth. It was observation and deduction that had he had done, but it had all begun with Nikali's strangled hold of a gnosis mark. Caelum imagined that there were those marked by Nikali who moved to the currents of her power without question or consideration. That was not the sort of person Caelum was. The divine power of ranuri had been offering up needs to him since he had set foot in the Tuvya Sasarin. It had not told him that the door squeaked. He had noticed that himself. It had whispered to him songs of sun and sky until he understood that some of the men within fought harder, fought longer, and were ultimately better grounded out of doors and with the scent of the sea in their throats. Ranuri had tapped at the pulse in his feet, telling him that Ismail needed to take his shoes off. Caelum had deduced blisters himself, and his brain had immediately begun the full revolution toward the treatment of both the blisters as well as how to more swiftly break in the grand master's boots.

To say that Caelum was solution driven was putting it mildly. After all, he only wanted to solve everything. He could not help but pay attention to the vast collection of minor needs and desires because it was out of such that the great gaping wounds in the fabric of the Ukalas had ultimately been made.

Ismail finally smiled. It was a stone expression, hard enough to break your knuckles in. Caelum relaxed and smiled back.

"Punch me again," Ismail said, still smiling.

Caelum hesitated, but then he stepped forward with his right foot and turned his body into the blow. Ismail moved in graceful slow motion, catching Caelum's right wrist with his left hand. "Like this," the Akalak muttered, then closed his left hand about Caelum's elbow. The complaint of muscles and nerves twisted Caelum around where a well placed foot by Ismail sent him right back to the floor.

It was a gentler denouement this time.

Caelum unraveled to his feet and began to shift back into a defensive position, but Ismail chuckled and waved him off. "No, we're going to save that for tomorrow. I expect you to practice your kata tonight and think on how you will answer my question. Tomorrow, we throw."

"Which question?" Caelum hesitated, half turning for his shoes and the door.

The Akalak smiled. "To what do you wish to belong."

by **Taylani** on November 13th, 2013, 3:15 pm

Caelum

Skills :

Lores :

Notes :

Solo the heart of a people.