Ties That Bind [Caelum]

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

87th Summer, 511 A.V. The first faint chills of autumn winds came in the night anymore, and Sama'el shivered for the first time in a long while that had nothing to do with his strange sun-touched fever. Somehow he knew in his bones that Kasb'el, that Caelum, would leave sooner rather than later. He wasn't only Kasb'el anymore, and his concerns spread out farther than the endless-seeming Sea of Grass. Sama'el accepted this with good grace. So many people left, but Kasb'el was one of the few who returned on occasion. It would not be right to make demands that he stay. It was lucky to have his ancestor come back to help him from time to time, but clearly the burden was upon him to continue the family line, to teach his children to sing to the sun and earn their name. All the same, he wanted to cement the connection between them, one that had been severed by his assumption into the Ukalas and not returned to him upon his fall. Now Sama'el had the skill to give it back, and he would if only Kasb'el wanted it back. And so he was up before dawn, kicking the embers of the fire with his boot and feeding it bricks of dung and twists of dried grass to get it going again for tea. None of that medicinal crap Caelum still insisted he drink, "to help him get his strength back", but just a little something to invigorate his mind. He waited for the water to boil and his grandfather to wake. Perhaps they would decide for once and all what to call each other; Sam was beginning to like brothers.

[Caelum]

"You should be in bed," was Caelum's way of saying good morning. The flap of his tent slapped down behind the healer as he trudged out into the cool, cradle-dark of pre-dawn. Leth's dim light spilled over a rumpled vision. The heavy coil of braids had straggled partially undone, leaving dark knots littering his shoulders and twitching down the back of a wrinkled linen shirt. The frayed hems of riding leathers dragged through the grass as he had neglected to don boots when stumbling out of his bed roll. It left bare toes curling into the dirt as he rubbed at his arms and bundled himself toward Sam'ael and the fire. He stooped down, nose wrinkling as he sniffed at the steam rising to twist like sweet Rak'keli's winged snakes with smoke. "S'not your medicine," he grumbled and attempted a disapproving glower at his ancestor that fell far short of the mark. He had found over the course of his stay in Endrykas that it grew harder and harder to scowl at Sam'ael and he was further handicapped at the moment due to slow fading dreams. His dreams had been filled with wind, rushing and thundering with the hoof beats of a thousand desperate dead. They had charged with the blood in their wrists a frantic drum, the blood in their land a sharp spur and the blood in their future a flood that would bear them back to the Sea of Grass and the collection of cultural memory that would still be their's when Ivak's Grief was a tale told over campfires such as this one by far flung descendants. "Got some for me?" His need for a jolt awake over rode his need to grump like a mother hen at Sam'ael for the moment.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"My medicine tastes like horseshit," he noted calmly, then wiggled his fingers toward the fire. A guttering snake of flame coiled up around the teapot and twisted toward his hand, which suddenly glowed dully with fiery res. It was a sort of warning not to tell him what to do, but he was grinning because he didn't mind being told what to do so much. It was a sign of care. Also, he liked to show off those Sapphire mysteries for his Opal ancestor. You want something to heal? I'll give you something to heal. When he let his hand fall, the creeping coils of fire dissipated with a smoky poof! He reached down for the kettle and poured two cups of tea, handing the first to Kasb'el. As he served in silence, he let himself sense the Web around him, not concentrating too hard less the brilliance of Endrykas blind his burgeoning senses. The healer was notably unattached to that network, a spot of dark moving through the lines of light; that did make tracking foreigners easier, he had noticed. "How soon before we lose you to wandering?" he asked lightly, the we mostly rhetorical, though it implied all the ghosts that littered the bloodline between Kasb'el and Sama'el. If it were as soon as he feared, the question would have to be asked and the man worked back into the Web of the people he had left behind so long ago.

[Caelum]

Caelum could not help but grin -- and there no stranger expression for the ethaefal, brilliant and boyish on that ancient face frozen all the same in youth's cruel murder -- at his descendant's flare with fire power. Magic tended to spook him from any other source save, perhaps, that of Hadrian Aelius. Yet Sam and Hadrian were perhaps the only two in all the woken world whom he could call friend with truth on his tongue. "It's like a sun flare," he noted while sitting back on his heels, one hand wrapping securely about the mug of tea handed him. There was wonder, but not even so much as an ounce of envy. While there were certain types of magic Caelum sought, puzzling all the greater pieces of a broken heaven together in his fool's errand, if he had his way he have nothing to do with any of it. Magic had left scars thick upon him, though they faded to nothing in Syna's light, fleeing to hide beneath the skin. "Mm," and his eyebrows nettled with Sam's question. Unconsciously, he looked away and across the yawning grasses. "I've to go," he said it slowly and pointed north and west. "That way. It's gotten louder, Sam, so loud I can hardly sleep for it."

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Sam's smile broke like dawning in answer to Kasb'el's. At least his excuse for not taking his medicine anymore had been accepted for the moment. "Since my fever," he admitted quietly in the dark threat of dawn, "I have been thinking a lot of things... in the light of the sun." He glanced toward the east, esoteric feelings quivering just under his skin, stomach knotting, body reacting to the numinous all around, but whatever he was thinking deliquesced and he looked back at Kasb'el. Syna was rising. "Speak of the devil." He watched, still curious to see the goddess damascene Her fallen hero. Despite rumor and knowing look, he had spoken little of the experience of his sun-fever, but he had begun to hope that, perhaps, once his name was spoken again and carried by strong men and women, children, grandchildren, perhaps Syna would carry him up into the Ukalas as well, making him doubly a descendant of Kasb'el.

[Caelum]

A long, hard look was delivered the eastern horizon where the world blurred in view to stretch into sky. Shadows grew as the sun rose, sprouting in direct proportion to the swell of sunlight dousing out the stars. His and Sama'el's own were not unchanged, spilling tall through the grasses to thin and stab at the west where weary Leth yielded to his heart. He closed his eyes as Syna's light swallowed him. It erased his shadow, blurring it until wiping it entirely away from moments out out time. The elegant twist of horns like iodized copper slid back through hair that seemed to be have set on fire, settling at last into embers that dripped into blasted eyes. The change caused his clothes to fit him better, tailored for a taller frame. Broad cheekbones grew sharp and daylight seemed to spread through the inside of his skin, trying to trespass back into the dawn and leaving a dull glow behind. With hands still wrapped securely about his steaming mug, he bowed his head and breathed deep of the coiling steam. When he exhaled, he opened his eyes, ones that possessed a greater distance and a graver wisdom than the darker regard of his night form. "North," he said again, "And west. It's screaming in my ears. I'm leery to leave you so soon."

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

He nodded, a little sadly, a little grimly, but mostly with a new maturity, an understanding of the way the world worked. Putting a hand on Caelum's shoulder, for Kasb'el had once again been subsumed by something more, he smiled through it. "I will be fine," he assured him. "You did good work. Now I just need rest and your tea. But you have a call to answer..." North and west, perhaps to Lhavit where the Ethaefal apparently gathered, or wherever the gods dragged him. He looked in those directions. "I wanted to bind you back into the Web," he began, still looking away, "or at least offer that to you. But when I petitioned to the powers that be... they said no. If you came back, became more Kasb'el than Caelum, or Caelum became..." He shook his head. Looked tired. "If you return to us, I might convince them. But perhaps they are wiser than I thought. After all, you might travel so far that your thread would snap. I'm not a true shaman. "I'm sorry," he said. Perhaps Caelum would have declined in any case, but Sama'el would have liked to be able to make him the offer. "I will always consider you Drykas. My kin."

[Caelum]

"Ah," he heard himself say, tongue thick and air fleeing his chest. Sama'el's words had hit him, gone right through him like a fist punched through glass. He had been caught off guard, the blow coming from an unexpected direction and leaving his heart in desperate need of beats. "Alright," his mouth formed the words, then twitched toward something resembling a smile. It was not Sam's intention to hurt him. How could he have known how it would bowl his ancestor over, whether he was wearing the skin of a gods blessed ancient or the face of the Drykas cut down too young, fallen too short of some unremembered mark? Tea mug was tilted back and gulped down like better flavored medicine and he turned his head, twisting back to his feet as the last trailing rays of the rising sun spread their flaming tongues over Cyphrus.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

There was a long silence as Syna bid them Her good morning, the pale, thin light growing ever bolder, the fire growing steadily dimmer all the while. He could not help but glance toward the rising sun, craving its heat, its eye upon him, humming the old songs. These were strange thoughts, but he had been having strange thoughts since he fell out of his saddle, an action unconscionable for any grown Drykas. When She was cresting the horizon, he turned back to find Caelum, a more perfect, less difficult man with whom to relate. He smiled wearily. "You could return, you know," he reiterated wistfully, "when you've finished seeing to your business." It was a standing offer and would remain so, but he did not know how much of Kasb'el actually remained and how much was Caelum, the avatar of the sun. Kasb'el himself was not sure how fragmented his identity was, but Sam was of the mind that if he made the choice, more of Kasb'el would return. If that was even what he wanted. "My pavilion is your pavilion," he said, gesturing at his tent. "For what it's worth."

[Caelum]

“I’ll return,” Syna’s lost son promised. A smile flared across his face, that more perfect, less difficult face that some had found to be too beautiful for the day. It was at once harder and easier to look upon when he smiled in truth as he did now, forcibly vanquishing all of those demons that had near come crawling out of the fallow earth of his soul. For Sama’el, the last living of his blood, he could smile and meant it no matter what songs the Grasslands sharpened his senses with. The empty mug cart wheeled about a surgeon’s finger before being dunked into the water bucket to rinse clean. “When I find Lillis,” he amended while plunking the borrowed mug down amid Sama’el’s other belongings. A hand scraped back through copper strewn hair and ended up sliding along the curve of an iodized horn in an unconscious gesture. “We’ll come here together. Yeah?” He shaded his eyes against the day, spine stretching while he squinted past the scattered sea of tent homes and into the swallowing vast of Cyphrus. “Don’t fall off of your horse again,” he half chided, half poked fun at, revealing that unexpected brighter side to his ancestor that few others ever had an opportunity to relish. “I’ll be too far away to catch you.”