Seeking Guidance [Veldrys]

[Lysander]

Summer 10, 511 The familiar small of the chapel filled Lysander's senses as he pulled the heavy door open just far enough to slip inside. Hours before as Syna set, Sitkanis had left him to his own devices and the boy-turned-Ethaefal had wandered off into the night in search of answers. Therein he stumbled upon the small place of worship where he had spent his first night in the mortal realm. It was quiet here: a perfect place to reflect, to think, and wrack his poor amnesic brain for answers. Passing priests dressed in lavish flowing robes, Lysander became conscious of his own garb. A pair of pants a size too large for his hips was held on by a leather belt and his collared shirt was folded to his elbows, showing off the masculine forearms he did not possess during the day. The canvas satchel he recovered from the fisherman's boat was always on his person now, a spare change of clothes tucked away with some mizas, rag cloth, and the blunt fishing knife. A habit he'd picked up from Sitkanis: you never knew where you could be when you changed, and if your body significantly changed in size as his most certainly did, you would need clothing that fit. Eleven days. Lysander wrinkled his nose, his left hand slapping against each wooden pew as he passed them row by row. Eleven days, and only one short, disturbing window into his past life. The flashback he had in the Labyrinth on the night of his fall had been the only peek he had been allowed - although he blamed no one but himself and his own shortcomings. Finding one wooden row sufficiently bathed by Leth's cool light, Lysander lowered himself onto the pew and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together in thought. He did not pray. Instead, his unblinking golden gaze was fixated on the candles at the altar at the head of the chapel. He followed the dancing points of flame and tried to extinguish the distractions of the outside world, calm his thoughts, and focus on remembering. Remembering what precisely, he wasn't sure. In fact, there was little he was sure of. Lysander was sure of one thing. Here, in his father's light, he felt at ease.

[Veldrys]

There was one other person in the chapel besides the Ethaefael, but he didn’t speak nor did he do anything else to reveal his presence to Lysander. Veldrys stood in the shadows, close to the wall and simply watched the ethereal creature that had just entered with a thoughtful expression. Lysander was the third of his kind that he had seen since his arrival in Denval in winter. He had met none of those that fell from the sky in the twenty-one years before that, and thus he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something special about Denval that inevitably drew them here and compelled them to fall here rather than all the other places in Kalea. Still, despite his near unsatiable curiosity the Symenestra didn’t approach Lysander immediately but quietly walked towards the altar. The Ethaefael could see him now, a tall man, almost too slender, with silver white hair that fell over his shoulders and arms that seemed a bit too long and ended in black nails. He wore sombre robes, and he knelt in front of the altar for a moment, whispering a prayer as he did so. Having that done, he produced a small knife that he had hidden in the folds of his robe and quickly sliced across his palm. Scarlet drops fell into the bowl that stood on the altar. Only after they had all disappeared, did he finally walk towards the Ethaefal. As he stood before the place where Lysander sat, his amethyst eyes widened for a moment. There was something about his kind that always made him speechless, a beauty that was not of this world. How could any man look like that? He hesitated for a moment, for the fraction of a second, wondering if he should interrupt the Ethaefal’s prayer, but then he raised his voice. „I’ve seen few Ethaefal in the Chapel ...“ Despite the fact that he had spent two seasons among humans now, the Symenestra still had an accent, but his voice was gentle and polite. „Who do you pray to? What do Ethaefal pray for?“

[Lysander]

Lysander had noticed the man long before he had approached him. The flowing robes and unnatural length of limb had caught his attention when the priest had given his blood at the altar at the head of the chapel. To his surprise, the man had in fact approached him and no one around him – there was no one else around to concern one’s attention with, anyway. He looked ... shocked. Lysander candidly wrinkled his nose as he cocked his head sideways. What is he looking at, looking the way he does? Am I the oddity here? When the man’s mouth opened, Lysander caught a flash of something predatory and sharp beneath his lips that caused him to narrow gold-flecked irises curiously. Leaning forward, Lysander had half a mind to reach out and push back those colorless lips to explore the intriguing features inside, but, he kept his hands to himself. “I’m not praying.” Lysander admitted, chin tilting upwards and eyes leaving the priest to eye the waxing gibbous that lit his unearthly features in his father’s glory. How am I supposed to know what Ethaefal pray for? The petty thought never found his lips, though his brow raised as he turned his head back to leer at the awkwardly proportioned priest. This discretion was not often practiced by the Ethaefal, but being that the man looked like a devout religious figure, he was owed some level of respect in Lysander’s mind. “I’m just thinking.” There was a pause between them and a pale hand wandered upwards to his head, fingers twirling around black tresses and flicking against the cool jade marble that extended back around his ears from the base at his temples. A smirk painted his lips and a finger slid down the length of his left horn, pressed against the sharp tip for but a second, and fell back into his lap, the golden gaze never leaving Veldrys’ wide violet stare. He was just a curious man. Lysander liked that. He was curious, too. And with that thought, the same hand boldly reached out to graze the flowing robes along the man’s hip. Lysander had noticed the claws that ended Veldrys’ fingertips and his touch almost dared him to grab his hand so that he could see them up close. “If I were praying, I’d be praying to Leth. He is my father, but I fell from his company to this world and now I am stuck here. It was an accident though. I do not blame him.” A pause, and the digits lingered on Veldrys’ hip. “My name is Lysander. Now that you know my name, and you already know what I am, who and what are you?”

[Veldrys]

As Lysander wrinkled his nose, the Symenestra wrinkled his nose in turn, looking confused and slightly irritated. Why was the Ethaefal looking at him like that? Had he never seen a Symenestra before? Was anything wrong with him? For a moment Veldrys felt the need to check if there was something on his face, a bit of blood, dried leftovers from a previous ritual maybe that might have caught Lysander’s attention. He raised his hand a fraction, but then he lowered it again, deciding that this was probably not the case and the Ethaefal was just generall being weird and slightly rude. Had he faced any other race, Veldrys would likely have asked why he was staring at him, but there was a part of him that was strangely hesitant to criticize such a beautiful, otherworldly creature. He simply made a step back as Lysander leaned forward and repeated, „Not praying? What were you thinking about then?“ While he waited for the Ethaefal’s answer, he watched the creature a little more closely. There was something strange about him. He was different from the other Ethaefal, Sitkanis, that he had met a while ago. It almost seemed to him as if he weren’t used to the horns growing out of his head. Why else would he have touched them like that? „An accident?“ Veldrys wanted to know. „What kind of accident makes one fall from the sky?“ He made another step back as the Ethaefal reached out to touch them, finding the gesture slightly inappropriate. Rather than letting Lysander examine his hands from up close, the Symenestra clasped them behind his back so that they were hidden from his view. Veldrys didn’t like it if people studied him as if he were some kind of exotic animal – even though that was exactly what he was doing with Lysander. He couldn’t stop staring. Would Lysander, despite his strange behaviour, be able to answer the questions that were on his mind, the questions that Sitkanis had been unable to answer? Did he remember the past? Or did he suffer from amnesia, just like the other one? „My name is Veldrys“, he introduced himself. „I am a Symenestra, once of Kalinor, but now of Denval and a servant of Viratas. Have you never seen one of my kind before? Sitkanis, the one other Ethaefal that I met, claimed that he didn’t know what I was either and seemed to think I was merely an unusual kind of human.“ Maybe, he concluded, the Ethaefal had both died before the time of the Symenestra, before stories of Harvesters that stole young women and raped them had begun to circulate in the rest of the world. Or maybe their brains were being damaged when they fell from the sky, their memories at least in part destroyed.

[Lysander]

Fingers detached from robe forcibly as Veldrys made distance between them. Lysander could only read it as discomfort, though he was not sure why. Brows raised and arm suspended in the air he had half a mind to haul the spindly man back, but instead let his fingers go limp and arm drop to his lap. The Ethaefal felt little guilt for overstepping boundaries – he rarely did and Sitkanis would have no patience with it – and when the man asked what he had been thinking, how falling from the sky could possibly have been an accident, Lysander simply smiled. “A painful one,” was murmured behind a plaintive sigh and that was that. Deep golden eyes rivaled the silvery light of the moon and he leaned forward again in an attempt to further inspect his company. That arm had a mind to reach out again when Veldrys began to explain his heritage. The word rang a bell although in the swirling void that was Lysander’s fragmented memory he knew not why it would and the word ‘Symenestra’ held little meaning to him, positive or negative. And then a light went on in Lysander’s mind and his lips pulled back into a jovial grin as Veldrys said the magic word. “You know Sitka?” It was as if a switch had gone on – or off – in Lysander’s brain. The unwanted touching was forgotten and the wrinkled brow and odd looks melted away in favor of a bout of laughter that rang through the eerily vacant chapel. “Sitka is my brother,” he explained. “Well. Not exactly, not how brothers are born of the same mother and grow up together under the same roof. Sitka found me when I fell, and he helped me, and we are both sons of Leth … so really, it does make us brothers, in a way!” A finger lifted to Lysander’s mouth and his round gaze fixed on Veldrys’ face. He was decidedly masculine with his high cheek bones and strong jaw, despite his long and womanly figure, Lysander thought. He looked to Veldrys now with the smooth face of calm recognition; this man was a friend of Sitkanis, and by extension, should be a friend of his, not some novelty to gawk at. Although that didn’t seem to stop Lysander from staring; he stood to approach Veldrys, cocking his head to one side to let a cascade of black fall across his forehead. “Your eyes,” Lysander grinned, reaching up again with that hand; that unwanted touch to push silvery strands of hair from Veldrys’ temple. “They look like Sitka’s when Leth blesses him.” It seemed that despite Veldrys’ obvious aversion to contact Lysander remained either ignorant to it, or simply didn’t care. And the way he spoke, as if invasive prodding was commonplace would be infuriating to anyone with a respect for personal space. Though it, he gave off little intention that this contact, flirtatious as it was, was anything remotely intimate. He was more like a curious child than anything. The hand would fall to his side again, limp and satisfied with its conquest. And then, his voice turned from mirthful curiosity to utter vexation, accompanied by a twisting expression. “I came to think about my past life, to try to remember.”

[Veldrys]

„I can imagine that your accident was painful“, the Symenestra remarked in a somewhat dry tone of voice. As far as he was concerned, Lysander was just stating the obvious. The Ethaefael didn’t seem to be particularly bright, despite his otherworldly beauty. No, „bright“ was not the right word for it. He rather seemed to be a bit immature, as if his experience was still limited. He reminded him of Lucette, the Kelvic he had met in the Temple of Nikali only a short while ago. She had been just like Lysander, ignorant of most of the things in this world. She’d possessed a childlike curiosity and felt the need to constantly touch things. Had this Lysander been a Kelvic as well in a previous life? „I know Sitka“, he confirmed. As Lysander leaned forward to inspect him more closely, he moved back, still finding the Ethaefal’s behaviour inappropriate. „I met him in the Stranger’s Welcome, not too long after my arrival in Denval. It was enlightening, for both of us. Is he really your brother?“ He furrowed his brows, and his eyes widened a little in surprise. He wasn’t sure if he was willing to believe that. As far as he was concerned, Sitkanis and Lysander weren’t particularly alike. „Ah, I see“, he murmurred and nodded after Lysander had deigned to explain why he called the other Ethaefal his brother. „I suppose it does make you brothers. Were you a Drykas as wel or did you belong to a different race?“ For a moment he had been convinced that Lysander would finally stop, but of course that was not the case. As the strange Ethaefal reached out to touch his hair, the eyes that supposedly looked so much like Sitkanis’ darkened a little. He raised a hand. Long, pale fingers touched the Ethaefal’s for a moment as he pushed them away. He was not some kind of animal in a zoo that could be touched and gawked at! „Your past life?“ he asked. He couldn’t help but notice the change in the tone of Lysander’s voice. It caught his attention, and it was the reason why he didn’t tell him to stop, why he didn’t act as offended as he had initially planned. „Is there anything at all that you remember? I could help you find out what your old life was like. Sitkanis only remembered that he had been a Drykas at first. When I told him that his people had a unique kind of magic, he suddenly remembered more. It could be the same way for you ...“

[Lysander]

The man spoke with an pleasing accent; he liked the way certain words rolled out of those too-pale lips and he wanted to prod the voice to continue speaking. When Veldrys snatched Lysander’s fingers between his own, he got what he wanted – a closer look at the strange claws that adorned the willowy man’s fingertips. While it was a only a peek, a taste of the exotic nature of the man, he got it, and that was in itself enough to warrant a victorious grin. “A Drykas? Me? No, no, no.” Lysander nearly laughed as he shook his head, strands of wispy black hair falling over his cheeks and along the base of those glass-like horns that almost glittered in the low light of his father’s silver face. Gold found lavender again and his intense glare poured into Veldrys’ eyes. “You will help me, then.” It was less a question and more a statement in response to the anecdote the Symenestra recounted of Sitkanis’ memories. Lysander stepped backward and found the pew again, sitting down cross-legged on it with his hands in his lap. “I’m human. Or, was human?” The Ethaefal seemed to shrink from his usual grace as he stumbled over words and fragmented memories, shoulders slumping and head dipping from Veldrys’ figure to the floor at the priest’s feet. “Sitka told me I would have flashbacks. Plural.” The voice was agitated now, and one palm was left open and facing upwards as his other fingers danced within it. “I have only had one. I was in a small room, it smelled of rotting flesh and there was blood and broken bones and a man screaming in pain and another screaming at me. I am positive I was not the one that inflicted the injury, no-,” he shook his head, “I was supposed to heal him, and I did not do it properly. So, I was struck down, on the back …” Lysander trailed off; a hand lifted to slide across a shoulder and his vacant stare beneath heavy lids rose to look at Veldrys again. There was a long pause, where Lysander would open and close his mouth a few times after the childish grin had long since faded from his face. The words that finally tumbled out from between his loosened lips seemed to surprise him, “I was a slave.” Then the tears came – but they weren’t alone. Lysander’s teeth grit and he narrowed his eyes in frustration. He was unable to process the revelation in his juvenile mind, and his eyes flashed a wild shade of gold-yellow as they held Veldrys within them. “Why do you look so calm?!” he nearly shouted the question, fingers balling into fists as tears rolled down his cheeks. Lysander’s head was throbbing in pain and it took all he had not to bear down on the innocent Symenestra for daring to suggest diving into the abysmal depths of his memories. The bout of rage faded as quickly as it had come on, fizzling out in nothing more than a temper tantrum as his head hung and his shoulders shook and his voice turned thin and aqueous. The harsh question was repeated again, in the form of a request. Laughter, rage, desperation – within a matter of a chime; it seemed not even the carefree and childish Lysander was immune to an Ethaefal mood swing. “Stop … looking so stunned.”

[Veldrys]

„Not a Drykas?“ Veldrys asked, a little confused – and disappointed that he was not facing a Kelvic turned Ethaefal. Lysander had so many Kelvic characteristics. He couldn’t really imagine a human that acted like him. „What kind of human were you then? A Vantha? One of the Svefra that live on the Suvan Sea? An Inarta?“ He tried to remember what other human subraces there were and if there were any that resembled the strange man before him, but he couldn’t come up with any more. As a Symenestra who had only lived among humans for two seasons his knowledge of them and their ways was still somewhat limited. „I will help you“, he promised. While he was a little annoyed that every Ethaefal he had encountered so far seemed to suffer from some form of memory loss, he pitied Lysander a little at the same time. It had to be hard, not knowing who you had been before, unable to remember the details of your past life. He couldn’t imagine existing in such a state. He would probably despair. „I can help you if you have another flashback.“ He noticed how agitated the Ethaefal suddenly seemed. As Lysander started talking about rotting flesh and blood, he involuntarily made a step back. It didn’t sound as if the Ethaefal’s life had been particularly pleasant. „You were a healer?“ he asked, surprised. „I am a healer as well.“ Did Lysander still remember? Did he still know how to heal? Did he know anything that he, Veldrys, didn’t know? He was as far as possible from the healers he had met, the complete opposite of Hellebore and his colleagues at the Purging, but he had just become even more interesting nevertheless. It had been a long time since the Symenestra had had the opportunity to talk to another healer. And he had never met an Ethaefal who shared his profession. „A slave ...“ he repeated and shook his head. As he looked at Lysander again, he seemed sad. „Nobody should be owned by another person“, he murmurred. Slavery was one of the things that the Symenestra hated the most, even though his people regularly captured and imprisoned human women only to condemn them to a painful death. In his opinion everybody deserved to be free. He wanted to ask Lysander if he had died a slave or eventually regained his freedom, but something about the look on the Ethaefal’s face made him stop. He made another step back. „I am not calm“, he disagreed. „I am not stunned.“ He raised his hands as if to signal Lysander to stop and dared to approach him again. „Do you wish you hadn’t remembered? Do you wish you didn’t know who you had been? No matter what happened in the past, you are free now, aren’t you? You aren’t a slave anymore. You have received a second chance.“

[Lysander]

“A healer,” Lysander repeated in a teary mumble, lurching forward to rest his elbows on his knees and hands brushing across his cheeks. The body he’d been given was still foreign to him, and at times he stunned himself when the face he touched was the square jaw line and high cheekbones of a man, rather than the rounded features of an awkward boy. The hands jerked from his face and he regarded the tear-stained fingers with bleary golden eyes. “I guess I must have been.” As Veldrys approached Lysander, the Ethaefal would have reached into his deep pocket in a startling, jerking motion to produce a rolled up piece of linen. Fingers unraveled the fabric and he held it over open palms as if to show it off. “I wish I could remember everything or nothing, none of this in-between shit.” He flipped the fabric over to the back of his palm and gripped one end between his thumb and finger to steady it as the fabric was wrapped neatly and quickly around his forearm. “Why do I know how to bandage and stitch skin back together and set broken limbs? It’s apparent that I must be a healer. But I’m only –,” Lysander stopped himself. The tears, for the most part, had stopped flowing and the bandage was expertly unwrapped from his arm again. Dare he tell this man that he was little more than a child during the day? It seemed to unnerve Sitkanis; he had commented on it before, a knock to the young Ethaefal’s self-esteem. “A slave. Or, I was.” Lysander straightened and stood again. Despite the discomfort of a new body, he enjoyed how tall he was when Leth reigned. Shoulders back, spine straight, he looked the willowy man over with a new found smile. “A second chance indeed,” he repeated thoughtfully, before passing the Symenestra in billowing robes to stretch his legs in the aisle of the Chapel. “Vel.” Lysander stopped short at the first syllable, the smile on his face twitching ever wider. Sitkanis had been docked to Sitka, and now he shortened the Symenestra’s title into an equally as satisfying nickname. “Thank you for your offer to help me. I …” he furrowed his brow, a hand reaching up to scratch the back of his head while the linen still hung between his fingers. “I was out of line in yelling at you.” He would not apologize for the abrupt contact that had so obviously caused the man discomfort – instead, he approached Veldrys a second time to grasp and squeeze his pale forearm and gave it a tug. “You can leave this place, right? It smells like rotten wood and candle wax in here, let’s walk!” The cheerful retort was almost more of a demand than a request. Before Veldrys could jerk away from the Ethaefal’s touch he had released the fragile-looking arm and leaned in close, eyes bright and glittering with the innocence of childhood. If Veldrys obliged in his request, there would be a pause in thought before Lysander’s voice rose between them again. “What is an Inarta?”

[Veldrys]

Again Veldrys had the distinct impression that Lysander wasn’t used to his body yet. He found that strange. The Symenestra was utterly familiar with every aspect of his own form. He knew every little square inch of his skin and couldn’t imagine it being any different. But then again, Lysander had only fallen a short while ago. The very act of breathing probably still seemed strange to him. He couldn’t imagine that people that lived in the sky needed to breathe. For a moment the urge to inspect that celestial creature, to drink his blood and find out more about him was almost overbearing. But it would be inappropriate to do so now that the Ethaefal was so obviously shaken. Lysander might have a problem with the ways of a follower of Viratas. And thus the Symenestra merely arched an eyebrow as Lysander produced that piece of linen. „Maybe you were a special kind of slave“, he suggested. „There probably are slaves that can heal. Do you know more than how to bandage wounds and set broken limbs?“ He wanted to know the extent of the Ethaefal’s skills. „A second chance“, he quietly confirmed and looked into the Etheaefal’s eyes. „A chance to experience the life you never had when you were a slave, a chance to right whatever things went wrong in your past life.“ He knew that he would be grateful if he were in Lysander’s place, even if he wasn’t in his god’s company anymore. There was so much that this world had to offer! Despite all the things that were wrong, the world was beautiful in the end. As Lysander shortened his name, the Symenestra furrowed his brow a little, but then he accepted the new nickname. „You were out of line“, he agreed. „But it was understandable.“ As Lysander proceeded to tug at his arm, the Symenestra found himself strangely reminded of a child. His little sister in Kalinor had always tugged at his arm like that when she had wanted something from him, but he didn’t want to think of her now. She was one of the only people that he really missed. „You know“, he murmurred before he obliged. „I could do more for you than just talk ...“ That was all he said. He’d leave it up to Lysander to ask about it – or not. He was still a little worried that Lysander would be disgusted by the things he sometimes did. „Yes, I can leave this place, although I like it here. We can take a walk through the city.“ He turned towards the door, but as Lysander asked his question, he faced him once more. „An Inarta? Inarta are red haired people that ride gigantic eagles. They live in a city called Wind Reach, I think. Did you have red hair when you were human?“