The Link Between [Lysander]

[Seodai]

Date: 91 Fall 511AV Seodai was living a nightmare. Oh, everything wasn't bad. Of course not. There was still Theo, always Theo. The farm, though it was much quieter now after the harvest. Syllke, a friend like Seodai had never known. And a whole handful of other acquaintances, more than he had ever dreamed of having, kept him busy too. He wasn't unhappy, even if the stress of living in Denval at the moment was enough to drive anyone to madness. But Bala was gone to him. Or, rather, so far removed and stifled by a blur of static that he couldn't feel her anymore. Even his mark, once so lovely, had shriveled and become something dead against his skin. For those who had never lived in the embrace of the divine, it might seem ridiculous, his silent mourning for his loss. But for one who had spent more of his life held within the glow of her love than without, well. It was startling, the difference. It made sleep difficult most nights, and when dreams did come, they had become repetitive. War, so much of it. Magic, and blood. He could make sense of little of it, but still the dreams plagued him, as if demanding something from him that he didn't know to give. Seodai was on edge. He was exhausted, and weary, and worried. He still found room to laugh at the antics of his Vantha playmate, to enjoy a good meal and quiet conversation. But the melancholy always returned, most often when he was alone. Tonight was one of those nights. It was more than a bit cool out, but the dreams had left him aflame. He had awoken with a scarcely stifled scream, and found himself almost feverish, and sweating. Without thinking of what he was doing, exactly, Seodai left the quiet house and wound his way through the sleeping city until he stood on the very same beach where, only weeks before, he and Syllke had scavenged ivory. Leth's light danced along waters that were black in the darkness, creating silvery shimmers along the waves. Seodai crafted a fire easily enough, in the same ring he and Syllke had used when they had returned some days after their find. The heat of it drove him away, though. Ever away, into darkness and chill, because it felt more numbing that way. It was, at first, enough to walk in the edge of the water with bare feet, which soon felt like ice. Still, the flames of divine torture, of a dangling past, of nightmares burned within him. Seodai shed his clothing on a whim, thankful for the isolation of the moment. When he dove into the waters, the arctic bite was cruel. Winter already had a grip on the sea, and it embraced his heated body with the cruel bite of daggers, tiny blades piercing his skin so that pain exploded in his brain. He scarcely had the strength to keep his mouth clamped shut until he could surface, and then release an agonized growl into the mist of his own breath. It hurt like hell. But oh, how the layers of hurt chased away that suffocating heat, those images. He had to focus, on moving limbs so cold they felt frozen, on staying afloat, staying alive. The pain quickly abated when literal numbness set in, and Seodai scarcely made it to the shore before he found himself unable to swim properly at all. If dropping his body temperature had been his aim, he had more than succeeded. His normally golden curls were dark with moisture, dropping beads of icy water along a shivering frame that was covered entirely in gooseflesh. He stumbled towards the fire he had built, and it took a short while before the sputtering flames warmed him enough that his fingers could curl, could at least tug on the pants and boots he had neglected for is ill-advised swim. He didn't bother with the shirt. Bala's voice was dancing in his head, from all those years ago. Her smile, the taste of her, the way she had felt inside of him, her power coursing through him, marking him as her own. He wanted to weep, but he was too cold to manage. He merely stared into the fire until, like another dream, Lysander materialized on the other side of it. There weren't many nights when Seodai didn't actively hope to see the child of Leth, and this had been one of the rare few. He was lost in his own jumbled mind, and so when that damnably perfect face appeared through the golden dance of firelight, Seodai half expected that he was a dream. The mere sight of him was enough, of course, to awaken in Seo all that that face always did. Though his lips threatened blue, and his normally golden skin held a ghostly pallor, the inside of him raged hot again in an instant. It was a lust that Seodai had long since come to terms with, tempered with a blind affection he couldn't explain. He had met other ethaefal, since Lysander, and realized he could not blame it merely on the unearthly beauty. Something inside of him felt inexorably connected to the beautiful fallen one, even if he took great care to handle every interaction with Lysander with as much resolved distance as he could manage. Tonight, however, he had numbed that resolve. He had frozen away the filter of logic in his mind, quieted his hesitance and worry. As if in a trance, Seodai shifted to hand and knee. He crawled the half circle between them, too cold to stand and walk it properly. When he paused, he knelt before the bent knees of Lysander, who had sat at his fire. "Lysander," Seo said, barely managing to keep his teeth from chattering around the name. His palms were sandy when he lifted them, too thoughtless to dust away the tiny white granules. It was this roughened touch that he settled on either side of Lysander's face, thumbs sweeping over the elegant arches of his cheekbones. He may have trespassed this far, before, pushed the envelope to here. But what came next, Seodai had never done, though he had dreamed of it so many times. The lovely farmer, Bala's beloved, shirked all sense of responsibility and the strangling grip of worry, and leaned in to kiss the ethaefal. His lips were cold, but soft, as he claimed that which he had longed so very much for. Touching Lysander was like holding a flame, those lips burning against his. And when ice and fire both parted, when the kiss became the consuming thing Seodai had ached for, he forgot entirely just how cold he really was.

[Lysander]

The night was dark and cold and his feather mattress called out to him with every slap of frigid wind across his face and arms. He wore the clothing befitting of a frowning Drykas that prowled the short streets of Denval during the day; they were ill-fitted and threadbare pieces of dyed linen but they were better than the clothing he left behind, the clothing for a boy.

Lysander couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he would see that boy, those brown eyes he hated, that cursed him in the daylight. Every time sleep’s cottoned tendrils would reach for him, he would remember the slave child with the dreadful scars that died in a pool of his own blood and broken bones; but more recently, he saw the ghost of another. A stranger, but a man grown; he had no name, as Reese Llaenight had a name, but he was a man, and Lysander knew it was another life lived. It was cruel. Leth had come from the Heavens and spoke to him; His voice still rang between Lysander’s ears as clear as the Winter’s crisp sky. Grow up.

He was grown. Somewhere, in some time, he had been grown. It could not be any fault of his that fate’s wheel had thrown him the broken body of Rees Llaenight. He flexed his hands, ushering cold’s stiffness from them before they dove into the body-warm confines of loose pockets.

Something cold stung Lysander’s cheek. He lifted a finger to dab wetness from porcelain skin, and he trudged on in the darkness through a bleary film of his own frustration.

Before long, he found himself descending a steep incline towards the ocean. Leather boots sank into what sand was scattered between a larger populous of rocks, jagged and tide-worn alike. He had been born here. Cast here, fallen here, whatever term most dignified his separation from the Ulakas—it happened on this shore. Sitkanis had saved him, cared for him, and just as quickly cast him aside and grew distant when his seed was planted in the belly of Denval’s Light. He had something that was his now, something that would grow and age and die in his likeness, unlike Lysander, who was doomed to never grow, and age, and die, all for Sitkanis. The thought roiled in his stomach and brought a wrinkled scowl to his face and he booted a loose stone into the calm water.

The splash was reciprocated, somewhere in the distance.

No. It was close. Lysander’s head swiveled towards the source of the noise, and for a split-second, before his eyes fell on a crackling fire, he wondered if he had happened upon another’s ill-fated tumble from the Heavens. He hastened his approach, dodging jagged rocks and washed up reeds from a churning ocean and scrabbled to a stop at the fire’s edge. The face in the water had turned familiar, and Lysander’s voice caught in his throat.

What are you doing?! Get out of there, he wanted to yell, it’s cold, and you’re broken—broken, like him. They were both broken, in a way. Lysander had brought attention to it only once, and the profound disappointment that wrought the human’s eyes had forced him never to speak of it again. But it lingered in his stubborn mind as an endearing quality. Again, he tried to speak, to address the man, as he emerged as naked as Lysander’s own birth night from the breathing, foaming tide, but his throat closed and he only managed to drop to his knees, perching his bottom on a smooth rock so could it could have been made of ice.

“Lysander.”

Their meetings had become brief, since the night God and Goddess walked the earth, and magic had gone askew. Lysander had offered to explanation for the boy Seodai laid eyes on that night, he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, to admit the profound shame he felt when Syna’s dawn lashed him to his mortal frame.

“Seodai.” His jaw was cold and stupid and his voice emerged in a ragged whisper, unused for bells, perhaps even an entire day. He thought to clear his throat when the space between them was filled with wet curls and clammy lips. Lysander’s first thought was to balk, and he flinched, his musty breath hot daggers against a half-frozen farmer’s face. Honeyed eyes pored over blues, trying to draw some sliver of understanding from Seodai’s bleached and desperate mien. He mouthed something wordless and unintelligible, and grasped at the hands that clawed with grimy ardor down his cheeks, before offering a second embrace to that trembling mouth, as brief as the first.

There would be time for confusion and regret, Lysander decided; in the moment, he only felt a deep, heart-wrenching concern.

When he broke away, scratched sand from his temples, he was unable to look the farmer in the eyes. Instead, he stared into the fire, watching flames lap hungrily around a blackened piece of driftwood. He sucked his lips into his mouth and tasted salt and cold and a friend. When the silence became too long, his hand wrapped searing hot tendrils about Seodai’s goose-prickled forearm, and he spoke a few halting syllables. “What are you doing out here?” It was half an accusation, half a whimpering inquiry doused in concern. Winter’s white had taken hold of Lysander’s former blonde, as it had turned golden, curling horns the deepest, purest shade of violet; he craned his neck to stare sidelong at Seodai beneath a curtain of alabaster bangs. “Are you alright?”

[Seodai]

His own desperate press of lip to lip was nothing compared to the moment when Lysander, his obsession, his fallen angel, the focus of his incredible want, kissed back. The tangle of heat between their lips became confusing, so that he could not tell where he ended and Lysander began. A warmth began at his lips and spread like fire through him, until it gripped his heart and Seodai uttered a choked moan into the unexpected embrace. And then the beach was ripped away from him. Rough sand on frozen fingers, the bitter breeze, his beloved ethaefal, his aching body, the dancing firelight. All of it was gone, as Seodai fell into a swell of dreaming that became more relevant, suddenly, real. It became history, instead of night visions. "You've done it," she said, bright eyes dancing. It was only ever those eyes that betrayed her, as gentle Kova had long since become skilled at maintaining a smooth mask of appropriate decorum. One didn't become Queen at the age of seven and learn nothing from it. "Melchior," she said, and when his name fell from those lips it resonated through Seodai like a peal of thunder. It was who he was. "Let me see it." He was unable to deny her, as he ever had been. He unfurled his fingers around the stone so many had died for, and her dainty hand lifted to his own. When her fingers brushed so warm and soft against his palm, it all came back. In a rush, a gulping breath, he remembered. Every moment he had spent watching her grow, watching her change. The protective affection he had felt for Kova, the child Queen. The blossom of something deeper, something more intense when that child had become a woman. He felt so very deeply the weight of his emotion for her, like chains binding his soul. Kova owned him, whether she knew it or not. He had done this for her. Risked all, sacrificed his own family, allowed nothing to stand in his way. Because she had asked it of him, and he was not capable of denying her. "Ooh," she sighed as the weight of it fell into her warm palm. She turned her face upwards to him again, and smiled. It gripped him at the very core, and the reality he had fallen into began to soften, blurring into itself. "Thank you," she said, pressing an inappropriate kiss to his stubbled jaw. With a voice that scarcely functioned, Melchior lifted a hand to touch her curls, and answered dully. "Yes, my Queen." Lysander had pulled away, taking with him the face of the beautiful Queen of Alahea. Lovely enough to end a war with the promise of marriage, beautiful enough to warrant the affections of Ivak himself. Kova crumbled, leaving Lysander staring at him in concern instead. Seodai blinked dumbly, unable to fathom the sudden difference. And then there wasn't so much of a difference. They looked nothing alike, and yet at the same time, they were exactly the same. Beautiful in a fragile way, breath taking. Fine boning, lips that begged to be kissed. Absolutely unattainable. Seodai recognized the cause of his torture for what, a full season, in that instant. It was Kova. And Lysander. Somehow parallel in these distant lives, the beloved he couldn't have. It was a cruel similarity, and Seodai suddenly felt as if his shoulders were not strong enough to balance the sudden influx of information. Who he had been, so very long ago, was not at all congruous with who he was now. He had been strong, and a skilled mage, who had fought wars in the name of love. Now he only felt weak, and flawed, and had for too long been a coward in the face of that which he cared so much for. "Oh, gods," he croaked, "Forgive me, Lysander." He stumbled away from the beautiful, stunned ethaefal, until the heel of his hand brushed too close to an ember. He hissed, the pain of it stirring his numbed limbs enough that he clamored to his feet. He couldn't look at Lysander without seeing Kova, and doing so made him ache in a way he had never known. War, death, worry, fear, love he could never admit. If this was what the gods had meant for him to remember, they were cruel in their intent. "I've ... got to go." And with that, the farmer left Lysander to consider what had just happened all alone, with only the waning flames. A season of significant looks and adoring eyes would, perhaps, make more sense to the beautiful child of Leth as Seodai stumbled over his own feet but, eventually, made it beyond the horizon.

[Lysander]

“Wait—”

The words came too quiet, too little, too late. He thought to run after the blond, but his knees refused to straighten and his shoulders slumped. Two fingers lifted to his lips where Winter’s bite had cooled them; he exhaled in a cloud of white. I forgive you, he thought to shout, come back, but the night would only get that one stammered word from Leth’s child.

Fire danced in golden orbs as they drank its dying warmth. He leaned forward, pressing the end of one thoroughly burnt log further into an orange embrace. It crumbled under his touch and left his fingertips black with soot, and the fire sputtered and crackled as if to scold him. He recoiled, his toes curled, and he hugged his knees to his chest. One arm freed itself from his fetal embrace and reached to his temple to toy at the apex of a glass-slick indigo horn. Grow up, the voice called from the fire, though it rang not in the encompassing tenor of his father God, but in the whisper of another, long dead and forgotten.

“It whispered to me at night,” Lysander croaked, to no one in particular, “I could hear it.”