Oh Happy Day [Caelum]

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

37th Summer, 511. A.V. With Endrykas somewhere between Kenash and Syliras for most of the Summer, it was as close to the place from whence he had come as it was going to get, and Sama'el volunteered for a circuit even farther north toward the border with Sylira, the edges of Drykas territory. Toward the final resting place of his family. Toward his past. Before he had fallen asleep, he had run the Web for nearly one hundred miles all around, and figured he was relatively safe as far as these things went. Dohaina would smell trouble and wake him up if necessary, but they were also relatively comfortable among a small stand of rare, scrubby trees, and the night passed without a disturbance of any moment. He rose before dawn as he did when riding circuit, sleeping lightly lest anything encroach upon his rest. First thing was the care and feeding of Dohaina, and once that was done, he faced the east and began to sing an old song to Syna that he had been taught on the race to freedom years ago. It was far older than anything else he knew, and while he was no great singer, he felt the notes reaching into him to touch things that had happened since, those under the eye of Syna and those watched over by Leth, and those hidden from both Their views. Syna rose to spangle his private tears with Her light, his cheeks glittering with benediction. After his song, he wiped them away and settled easily into a meditative trance. He climbed out of himself, his astral body freeing itself of the physical shell, swimming into the flow of energy headed northeast to observe his path for the day. Everything began to show its colors to the Goddess, and Sama'el watched too, traveling even faster than a full-tilt Strider until he saw something that stopped him short. He almost mourned, thinking he was seeing a ghost come home to rejoin the Web, but it was a horned man, beautiful in a way men were not, astride a Zavian of good pedigree and the etheric Sama'el stopped to caper and wave, little more than a will o' the wisp to one who could see power unless that one had eyes open to the Web. Returning as quickly as he could, he slammed back into his body, stumbling up despite the numbness and tingling in his extremities, quickly quitting his camp and leaping with an acrobatic flourish onto Dohaina's back. The golden mare was quite attuned to his moods, and raced with joyful abandon toward that place in their past where they had come together for yet another reunion. Her speed would have been frightening to anyone not bonded to a Strider, but they covered the ground in a mercurial flash. "Caelum!" he shouted when he caught sight of the ethaefal, but only Zulrav heard him over the wind of his passage and the thunder of Dohain's hooves. If Syna brought the ethaefal, then Leth would reveal Kasb'el, his ultimate grandfather, though he was more like an older brother or uncle, all told.

[Caelum]

It was as it had been the last time he had plunged into the endless grasslands of Cyphrus. Questions pounced despite the wind's best efforts to keep them at bay and the determined, liberated thunder of Vega's hooves pounding against the summer's fertile earth. Did the earth remember his footsteps? Did it recall the stretch of his shadow over it? And if it did, if this earth here was sentient, nudged towards an amniotic awareness by centuries of blood saturating it's soil, did it remember him better than he himself did? Leth's pallid light restored him to the form best fitted to this area of the world, limning a Drykas in tarnish that blended into the dark of the night surrounding. It was not a dark of which he was afraid, however, having learned of a living pitch and felt its fingers drag through the wounds on his soul. This dark was clean, the ghosts that lived here familiar, stalking him with known steps. He had freed himself of tormenting questions and thought of blessedly nothing but the sky and the stars, maintaining balance upon Vega's back until a figure formed in the distance, gaining greater ground with every passing moment. Eventually, Caelum eased his horse to a walk and then to a halt, a hand clad in a fingerless glove rising to shake a heavy braid torn loose of the knots back from his brow. His mouth settled into a grim line and he reached down, checking within the folds of his worn, riding jacket for his daggers. Since last he had set foot within Cyphrus, the very idea of offering intentional harm to someone soured his stomach. It had not been pleasant previous, but the year had changed him, shifting the lay of his soul against the very skeleton of him, and he could only heed it. Maybe he had just seen enough blood, witnessed enough deaths, lost enough lives beneath his desperate hands. Relief and surprise shocked byre eyes wide, however, when the rider took the form of a Watchman and the starlight revealed his face to Caelum. "Ghosts indeed," he muttered under his breath before raising a hand in greeting.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Syna's song had led him to the sight of Caelum on the Web, but she blessedly set and left him Kasb'el when he found the man in fact. His concentration upon the Web lit up the world around him with an eldritch light that sparkled defiance back at the distant stars, and it was the first time he had seen Kasb'el's face lit by Weblight. It seemed right, the old legend lit by an entirely Drykas light. Dohaina wheeled neatly near Kasb'el and his mount, quitting a lot of velocity and shouldering into them without enough force to bruise their legs between walls of horseflesh. Sama'el's arms went around Kasb'el as hard and sure as the hungry tentacles of some sea-kraken, as if he could crush him with whipcord muscle and love. After attempting to crack ribs, he pulled back enough to reveal a toothy grin and the faint spangle of happy tears upon his face. "You're home!" he said gleefully. Then, "I saw you on the Web this morning, and I would have been here sooner, but there was trouble along the way. Slowed us down... You're home!"

[Caelum]

An astonishing grin caught the face rightfully owned by the long dead Sunsinger. It flared like the first gasp of sunrise on an embattled horizon, culling hope out of the ashes of him as his arms snaked around Sama'el in a return of the fierce embrace. Caelum could not count the hours since he had last been hugged, since anyone had been so pleased to see him or at least so physically demonstrative of their joy. Until his grandson, a hundred thousand greats most likely littering the generations between them, grabbed him in the clean dark, he had not realized how much he had needed it. Home, Sama'el said. The word welled up in his throat, threatening his eyes with tears that he blinked roughly back as Sama'el's grip on him eased. "Home," he muttered, thinking of his home amidst the heavens long lost, wondering after his home in the heart of a Konti equally as beleaguered. He swallowed the word down, however, all the same and it warmed when it settled in his stomach like a navigating star. "You came back," he heard himself say, pride fletching his Pavi, far more fluent by night. "You're a what? A Watchman?" The grin had dimmed, but it lingered in a smile as he soaked in the sight before him.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"Home," he agreed, still grinning fit to break his jaw. Though he could guess that the word was even more loaded for his grandfather than for him, and though he had met Lillis since last he saw Kasb'el without putting two and two together, right now they were two men of the horseclans, and their blood had wet this earth, and their souls had been tied to its Web. No longer pounding on Kasb'el's back, Sama'el blushed though Leth bleached the color out of his face. He nodded once. "I came back. Eventually. Couldn't bear to think my family, living and dead, might think I was afraid. I learned to weave soul-energy, joined the Watch. I'm starting from practically nothing, and there's prestige there. I wanted to build up a reputation and some goods so I can say my name again out loud." There was so much to say, so much to hear, but they were standing out in the middle of the Sea of Grass and he suspected the ways might have changed since last Kasb'el blessed the land with his presence. So his smile flashed reflected celestial light as Dohaina turned and began to walk slowly toward Endrykas. She was all but spent after the adventure getting there. "There's a place to camp about an hour's ride from here," he said. "Shall we?"

[Caelum]

"There are those who believe that to name a thing is to give it power," Caelum murmured, his voice as heavily accented in Pavi as it was in common and still by nowhere that could be found upon physical earth. "If that is true, then like all power, that of a name can be diminished and fortified." He hesitated while his Windrunner followed Dohaina about with a dash of spirit, an eager bounce amidst her weariness that was an echo of her rider's. It was not the same Vega whom Sama'el had met all those years ago amongst the Wildlands of Syliras, running for freedom and Zeltiva. That noble mount was vanished, disappeared like the rest of his life. This horse had been a gift -- after a fashion. "Sama'el Sunsinger," he said, raising his voice so that it compelled the reflected light of the sun off the moon glow surrounding to heed. He wanted to imagine it did, at least, that trapped somewhere between his syllables was all of the resonating divinity of the celestial language for which he had bled and fought in the unforgiving dark of Ravok. "You're a fool if you aren't afraid. Your efforts make you wise." A long look was made from ancient eyes that held even more shadows than they had when last gazing upon his descendant. The corners of his mouth turned back up. "And courageous," he said softer. "If its the permission of the fresher dead you're waiting for, I can tell you that it's already granted. I have walked with the dead through these grasses. I admit -" He settled deeper in his seat, appearing to be hardly older than Sama'el in silhouette. Then Kasb'el Sunsinger had died before his rightful hour. That little, of so much, he knew. It mingled in with handfuls and fragments of countless other lives, each more out dated than the last. "It's good to be riding with the living."

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

His smile didn't die, but it diminished slightly. Leave it to Kasb'el, formerly the favored of a goddess, to take things to an uncomfortably close place within minutes of reuniting after years. Perhaps he felt he didn't have time to waste. Surely he thought he was doing the right thing. He had been right about returning to Endrykas, after all. He even winced when the name he had no right to reclaim yet was spoken aloud, the first time in over a decade. It felt like a shadow passed over the moon, but whether cloud, Zith, or curse, he could not say. "It's good to ride with you again," he admitted, a little stiffly. "Without quite the urgency of the last time." He managed a tight smile, trying manfully to regain his composure and his joy. "Just because I sing to Syna doesn't mean I can claim the name yet. The pavilion is dead until I raise it or..." He paused, looking carefully at his blood kin. "Unless you raise it. I would swear myself to you should you choose to do it." In the intervening silence, he wondered what it would be like to be the favored of Syna, to see wherever Her rays hit the earth. Such a blessing might have saved his family from death, though the bandits had come at night. "But either way, I will see you to Endrykas and I hope you mean to stay. If not for good, than for a good while. And perhaps... in the morning, we can sing together again. It's been so long."

[Caelum]

Caelum fell silent while his words woke an unwanted shadow upon them. It trapped his tongue behind his teeth and he grimaced in regret of his unfiltered advice. Communication was not a thing he had ever had much skill at, seeming ever at odds with the rightful walkers of this world, those here not by accident but by the established cycle of life and death. A lost breeze trickled around them, causing Vega’s ears to twitch and his head to fall back so that he might peer at the distant stars. The weight of past lives felt heavy, grasping with fingers sliding down the back of his skull for a purchase on memories it could never fully obtain. He breathed deep and tried again. “Surely of the pair of us you are by far the more worthy to raise the pavilion, Sama’el,” he admitted. “I’ll consider it an honor if you’ll see fit to welcome me within it. I will stay for a while this time, but I can’t linger over long. I have to find someone…” He trailed off, a smile finding his face again and this time vaguely apologetic. “I’ll return,” he promised. “If I can. If you’ll have me. As for singing,” he hesitated, but the call of his blood was stronger amongst the grasses. “Yes. I see you’ve been found by another strider.”

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"Dohaina," he supplied immediately, already beaming and proud again. This one lived close to joy even when tragedy came knocking. Someday his smiling face was likely to irk someone to the point of fisticuffs, but for the time being, it seemed to charm those around him. "She found me not far from here last Summer. I was holed up in a cave with some fellow travelers, a wolf with her cubs, and some glassbeaks. Dohaina called me back out into the storm that was raging outside, which is why we had such strange bedfellows, and she chose me. We've been together ever since. Which is good, because I wouldn't be able to keep up with my duties on the Watch without a Strider. Horse is getting ready to stud, so he doesn't mind the break from carrying me everywhere." There was more, always more: loves found and lost, friends made, skills learned, experiences. But too much to commune in a few spare minutes. All the same, he was smiling. Kasb'el would stay for some time, then go and come back again. "I'll try to make friends with some mindhealers... someone who might help with your memories. And who knows? The shamans might know something about your Fall that they would tell you but not the rest of us. Who is it you're looking for?" There were few secrets among family, surely something to do with the thin walls of a pavilion.

[Caelum]

They had gone somewhat further through the visually endless yawn of land surrounding -- he having shifted his weight to relieve the burden upon it on his weary Windrunner -- before he dared speak the words that had risen buoyant in his mouth. "Haserian would approve," he murmured the name of Sama'el's lost Strider softly, careful but not dammed by his previous blunder into treacherous topics. "Lillis," he said at length, while the depths of those dangerous subject matters still consumed. "My," he sought the correct wording, hands lifting until they tugged down the collar of his jacket in revelation of the swirling mark scrawled in what had the look of gold ink but was in fact divine from back of ear down his throat. "Wife," he decided at length. "We were separated shortly after you and I met in the deadlands of Sunberth. Chevas kissed us one noontide, and as the mark of that remains, I know Lillis does too in this life. I just don't know where." A ripple of frustration, but it felt old and sounded overly familiar with his voice. He had already lived with it for too long.