dark side of the sun. (ifran)

[Caelum]

"He thinks we're here for him," Rahel informed the other half of her dubious partnership. A smile caught her mouth unaware and a man might have a difficult time not struggling to visualize the shape and hue of her eyes, laughing at him. "Ifran of the Northwinds. I've never met a noble before. Not one of the desert, that is. Funny that I should find you in a maze." "Poor joke," Caelum muttered while shifting his position. It realigned his posture so that he knelt on one knee a few feet farther back from where his patient sat. Careful hands proceeded to lift Ifran's injured foot to rest on his own updrawn knee. "I want to move the blood away," he explained and rolled his eyes up. "It's only a sprain. The muscle is stretched and you should stay off it for a few days. Put a cloth with cold water on it and keep it ele--" "A farce," Rahel interrupted and paced behind Ifran's seat. Heat lightning cobwebbed across the horizon and she did not lift her head. "You'd think Caelum would call it a tragedy." Caelum suppressed a sigh and rose an eyebrow at the Eypharian. "Forgive me," he said. "She's only grown ruder with the loss of her sight." Did his mouth twitch? Was his tone too pitiable? Pitiable enough to be purposefully biting, perhaps, snapping at the shadow Rahel kept leaving behind. The sunlight seemed to dislike her. "He knows we're not here for him," he went on to inform the silenced woman. "Otherwise he'd not have tried to find out what we are here for, wandering like children in the dark through this damned place."

[Ifran]

"Unless one or the other of you wished me into being," he offered quietly. They were like rival siblings in their squabbling, and he supposed it was lucky they were not Eypharians or the squabbling might have involved poison rather than envenomed words, and blades rather than cutting looks. But they were entertaining enough to distract from the throb of his ankle, and he had a healer looking at it so it was likely there would be no adverse effects to his sword-dancing and flexibility. It seemed likely, if the gods were playing dice or chess with them, that there was a reason they were all thrown together, wishes or no wishes. A solar ethaefal, a woman cursed by the sun, and a prince of the desert. Strange bedfellows, indeed. The dramatis personae of this farce was certainly varied, but what did it mean? "You have established your relationship well enough for the opening scene," he said. "Now perhaps for some exposition before the audience loses interest." Then he glanced at his ankle and Caelum. "Can you not just..." He waved his hand, indicating with the stylized gesture of a Semhu performer, magic.