[Flashback] Roots in the Sea [Sable]

[Pash'nar]

If the girl's first response surprised him, it didn't register on his tanned, wind-swept face. His smirk didn't fade when she described what he was in her own indirect way. A long time, indeed. How many of her short lifetimes? He did open his mouth to object to her declaration of Laviku's opinion, to her using terms of possession he didn't quite believe or adhere to. Perhaps she was confused, and his words died in a grumble in his throat as she pressed fishing tools—too many—into his hands, struggling to gather them all against his chest with a look of surprise that belied his underlying discomfort with her implications. Fallen, twice in a way. He belonged to himself, as far as he was concerned. Leth had let him fall. Laviku had kept him from drowning. But did either want him, really? He doubted it. That was his burden, of course, or at least part of it. "Breakfast." He repeated instead of giving voice to the other words swirling like a tempest in his head. The word hardly seemed connected to it's meaning, but he forced it off a sandpaper tongue anyway, glaring at the springing creature that just keel-hauled a piece of his heart and left him standing in the baking sand alone. Salt-worn scowl creased into his un-aging face as he dropped everything but the net. That, at least, he knew. Slipping from his sandals, his belts, and his vest, he waded out into the warm, clear waters, welcoming the thoughtlessness of the activity sprung upon him without warning. The petching impetuousness of children. Like they knew everything when they could hardly hold a candle to his own existence. This one sure did think she knew better, and her words dug under his inked skin, crawling there uncomfortably even after he was no longer looking in her direction. She was a breath, it was true, but of all the things that dug deepest under his tanned flesh, it was her conviction, regardless of how correct or incorrect it may have been. Though, truthfully, it was what he wasn't supposed to hear that stung like salt water in an open wound. Standing there letting the shallow tide ebb and flow around his knees as he watched shadows of fish flit about the pale, sandy bottom, he heard the gangly young Sable declare that surely dragging him along with some petching pod would somehow make everything better. Why? So he could watch more people he'd come to care about grow old and die? So he could continue to pretend that playing at Svefra was all he was thrown back into the sea to do? Well, was it? He grit his teeth and refused to turn around, leaving the priest and the girl no hint as to whether he overheard her loud opinion or not. The dark-haired navigator sighed, exhaling his frustration as he slowly moved into more of a position to cast his net at a decent-sized school of fish that hovered in the shifting waters of the shallows. He hovered carefully, unable to completely clear his mind of the frustrations he'd let the Svefra girl bury in his thoughts. Just as he began to raise tattooed arms to make a toss, her voice pierced his concentration and his shoulders stiffened. He watched the lithe shadows within casting distance scatter at his sudden movement, and he cursed lengthily under his breath. Was she honestly implying he belonged to Laviku? Obviously, her understanding of his kind was incomplete, though he knew his own was far from thorough despite being an ethaefal himself. Before he fell, he belonged to Leth, and Leth alone. The Ukalas had been his home, not the sea. The moon had been his god, not Laviku. No, he didn't understand why he wore Svefra skin during the day, but he hardly felt like it was anything more than a mistake … a mistake he'd slowly grown comfortable with over the fistfuls of decades he'd been wearing it. If anyone was selfish, it was Leth. If Laviku wanted him back so badly, why was he an ethaefal at all? Neither conclusion made sense to Pash'nar and he only resented the child for assuming to know so much, to know him at all. His knuckles whitened on the net he clung to, but he still refused to cry out a response. He simply waded deeper, found a new spot, and waited for his moment to cast. It was difficult to concentrate, now, with his thoughts strewn haphazardly across decades, feeling exposed like an open clam in the summer sun. Feeling lost in these depths only made old wounds ache. He caught nothing his first cast. And his second. Nothing but sea weed and sand. He waded about, quietly but far from calmly, until finally settling into a spot that proved profitable, two handfuls of meal-sized fish and a dozen or so fingerlings yielding themselves to the surprise of his net and allowing him to drag them to shore without protest. He sorted them, tossing a few back, making use of the basket he'd discarded on the shore. For a while, he sat on the beach in silence, reluctant, letting Syna's rays sear across the intricate manta ray that spanned his shoulder blades in blue black ink from some life before this life. It held meaning to someone else. Someone he only remembered in fitful dreams and uninvited memories. If it was meant to mean something now, then petch it all, why was it such a mess? Finally, he stood, basket of still-wriggling fish in hand, snatching up his clothing in the other. He paused for the mostly salvageable basket of sea vegetables as well, overburdened in more ways than one. Now, he was left alone with breakfast. Wanly, he set his barefoot path to find the priest, toes curling in the sun-baked sand. He wasn't particularly sure he wanted to find Caspian. What other misunderstandings could he stumble into?