[Flashback] Wish on a falling star (Eridanus)

[Satevis]

The flames burned all around him.

Taras ignored them, unable to spare them a second thought as he ran out of the building. The smoke seared his lungs, his breathing coming in labored pants. Outside, the flames tinted the night an ugly shade of orange, the smoke from the fires obscuring the bright full moon and dimming its beauty. The attack had come out of nowhere, and all that occupied the Benshira man's thoughts at the moment was finding his friends and getting them to safety.

A scream echoed through the air and Taras turned towards the voice, his pale blue eyes widening slightly as he saw her. A girl, whose name he couldn't quite recall, one of his friends and companions, a fellow follower of Leth. She had fallen onto the ground, her arms raised up in front of her in a vain attempt to protect herself. He saw the sword rise up, the light from the flames gleaming off the edge of the blade.

For once in his life, Taras didn't think. He simply moved. He threw himself in front of the girl, arms spread wide. She might have shouted his name, he wasn't sure.

All he saw was the sword, continuing its deadly arc.

And above them all, the moon shone bright, ever watching, ever seeing...

My death...?

When was the last time I dreamed of that...?

32nd Day of Summer, 507 AV

Night had fallen over Zeltiva. The waves lapped gently against the coast, the seas being quite calm that night. It was summer, but the air close to the water was cool, a breeze blowing outwards towards the sea. The coastline on either sides of the pier was undisturbed. All the ships that would enter the city had already docked for the night. The moon hung low in the sky, the waters taking on a silver sheen from the moonlight.

A man lay on his stomach in the sand, the waves lapping against his body. His hair was a deep black color, falling to his neck, and his skin was pale, with a slight tint that was reminiscent of moonlight. He was tall--or he would have been, had he been standing--and his features were handsome, almost unnaturally so. A pair of emerald green horns began at his temples, sweeping around to the back of his head in a shape that was similar to half a circlet. He lay with his head turned to one side, his eyes closed.

His face contorted in discomfort and he moved, his eyes still shut as he pushed himself up with one arm and coughed up water. The man opened his eyes, revealing their color to be a deep violet. He stared at the beach in front of him, his eyes wide as he took in a sharp intake of breath.

Where was he? Why was he here? It seemed as though he couldn't think straight at the moment, his mind filled with memories of fire, and new memories of water...

[Eridanus]

A lone ethaefal walked along the Docks in the seafaring town. He had no intention of entering the rowdy domain of sailors, though, but instead he was on his way to gather grocery supplies. It was just like any normal evening, but this time his heart somehow felt a pang of anxiety.

It was like a different brand of lunar insanity, and he was being driven mad by the moon. Raising an eye up, the single luminous orb that reigned over the night sky seemed represent Leth's gaze, staring at him in an accusatory manner.

There is something I must do.

But what is that?

It felt like paranoia, and he wondered if he was beginning to step into the boundaries of overgiving. The memories from past lives that his celestial form could access much more easily that his vantha self began to be thrown around his head, giving him a sudden unexplainable throbbing headache.

Yet, he could not access the details of the memories. Just vague random trivia. Mass, boat-loads that were flying and flitting around his brain, wracking his skull with an overload of information.

What is wrong?

He gazed up again, and the moon seemed to tell him something.

Look. Look at Laviku. He has delivered something precious to me.

Paranoia, huh? He was really going insane, but this headache would not stop anyway, and out of curiosity to satisfy his possibly maddened subconscious he trudged grudgingly towards the beach.

Only to find a single figure lying slumped on the sand.

He gasped in surprise, for perhaps his premonitions had some meaning after all. Were they not simply premonitions, but perhaps even Leth trying to communicate with him? He shook his head to clear his mind of speculation, for this was not the time for that. Jogging forward, he neared the figure, only to find himself looking at a familiar figure.

A figure that reminded him fully of himself.

Horns from the temple, and the presence of the celestial glamour that he himself possessed. The man was beautiful even in his curled up and collapsed form, just as any ethaefal would be surreally beautiful in any form and appearance.

"Hey, hey! You alright?" Eridanus called out, stopping a few feet away from the man, trying to observe for any movements that signified life.

[Satevis]

There was someone...speaking to him. The man who had once been Taras vaguely registered the voice. It was speaking...a language. A language he knew...The language's name came to the forefront of his mind, piercing through his scattered thoughts.

Common.

I don't speak Common... he thought to himself, his mind too muddled for him to realize that if he understood the man, that meant he spoke the language. His own thoughts came in Shiber, his native tongue.

The logic error quickly presented itself, and the man pushed that thought away.

No, no...I do. I speak Common. But there was something...he had been thinking about it earlier...something he didn't know how to do. What was it? It had been important at the time...? Something he didn't know how to do...

Oh...that's right... he thought, the voice in his head surprisingly wry.

Swim.

With that thought, consciousness returned to him fully. He turned his head, launching into another coughing fit as he spat up the water that had entered his lungs. The newborn Ethaefal gasped for breath, choking and continuing to cough up water until there was none left. When it was done, he was on his hands and knees, staring at the sand in front of him. He took deep breaths, sitting up and staring at the man who had approached him.

He looked familiar--similar in appearance to people he remembered, but diminished somehow, not the same. It was then that he remembered that he had also diminished, that he was not the same as he had been either. He stared down at his hands, and then back up at the man. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he quickly revised them.

Common.

He had to speak Common.

Knowledge of the language took longer to draw forth than he would have liked.

"...Who are you?" he asked, speaking the language with a slight, but noticeable Shiber accent. "What happened to me?"

[Eridanus]

The fallen child coughed out water, and Eridanus patiently gave him time to reorient himself. It seemed that from his questioning gaze and confused demeanour it was quite possible that this ethaefal was a fresh one. Freshly plucked from the joys of the Ukalas.

Is that what you wanted to tell me, Leth?

Eridanus glanced up at the moon, shooting a questioning gaze. He was not responded to in any way, and he shrugged, returning his attention to the figure before him. The man spoke in a foreign accent that he could not quite place. West perhaps, somewhere in Ekytol perhaps. He could not really tell.

"I am Eridanus, son of Leth. Just like you, from what I can see," He remarked. "You are currently a mortal on the realm of Mizahar. How are you feeling?"

It was a ridiculously brief summary he gave, but he had to ascertain the man's health after all. If consent was given, he would proceed to check for the man's pulse and to closely observe his breathing. He was no doctor, but he could at least diagnose for any painfully obvious symptoms.

[Satevis]

"I'm feeling..." He frowned, as he tried to come up with the words to describe the way his body currently felt. They came easily to him in Shiber, but a suitable Common phrase wasn't coming to mind. His mind was still racing, fragments of memories from his past lives crowding his thoughts and making him unable to think clearly. He had always been a scholar, though, used to crowded thoughts, and he reined the other voices in, focusing on the one that really mattered, the one life that resonated the most with him right now.

Taras the Benshira.

"...slightly drowned." He smiled faintly. It didn't reach his eyes. The man placed his hand on the sand in front of him to support himself, slowly getting to his feet. His legs were a little shaky, but they held him, and he managed to stand upright, facing Eridanus.

The smile disappeared, as he considered the man's words. A mortal on the face of Mizahar... "You mean that I've fallen through the tear in the Ukalas..." he said softly. The thought pained him. He had known of the tear, of course, had feared it, but it had been slowly healing. He never thought he personally would fall through it. He knew that for those that fell, there was no return.

He turned his head, looking out over the moon that hung low over the ocean, its bright light entrancing and reminding him of what he had just lost.

...For him, there was no return.

He cleared his throat, attempting to loosen the knot that had formed in it. There was grief in his eyes, although he kept his expression neutral as he turned towards Eridanus, hiding it. "...My name is Va--" He froze. No, that wasn't right. "Vel--" He shook his head. The syllables of his name sounded clearly in his mind, but he couldn't speak them. Every attempt sounded wrong. Was this because he had fallen?

"My apologies," he said. "...It appears I can no longer pronounce the name that was given to me. In my most recent life, I was known as Taras, from the tents of Aren, of the sons of Malech." The name sounded hollow, but it was the best introduction he could give, even though he knew that he wasn't that person anymore, just like he was no longer any of the other people he had been.

[Eridanus]

Eridanus nodded in understanding. This man was far more accepting of his fate than he was. Unlike him, he had no idea about the tear in the Ukalas until it was too late when he was actually falling through. Or at least, he believed that he would not one of those unlucky folks that got pulled down. Turned out that he ended up as one of them.

"Yes, it is so. The celestial language that once graced our tongues have been forgotten due to our mortal being," The ethaefal remarked quietly, extending a hand to pull his fellow brother to his feet. "Here, see if you can stand."

Upon pulling the freshly fallen up, he observed the man's breathing and pulse as through the previous physical contact. Tapping into the djed in his eyes, he brought the ethaefal's aura into view, activating all his senses at once.

There was moderately more trace energy than usual, even more so than wizards. That was a result of residual djed from the Ukalas, and would dissipate in no time. The excess amount in the leth-born's body reflected how new he was to the mortal world of Mizahar.

His smelled and tasted sea-water from the man's aura, but then again he did not need Auristics to deduce that he came from the sea.

He heard Laviku's waves, but also a faint tinkling of a familiar melody. That beautiful chord, that made his very heart tremble and ache in longing. The bells of the Ukalas - a sound that he had not heard of in centuries that his mind had all but forgotten in.

Hungrily, he latched onto that sound, focusing the rest of his auristics on his ears, further focusing on the man's aura through his ears, amplifying that faint tinkling sound. He wanted more, he wanted to reminisce more, and this was the only other chance he had of gaining some indirect contact with the home that he missed.

If Taras had been observing Eridanus, he would notice a semi-blank look on the ethaefal's face as he focused internally on his auristics to indulge himself, his eyes vacantly staring at Taras, staring through Taras. For he was observing the ethaefal's aura, and not his physical shell.

[Satevis]

On the outside, he seemed accepting of his fate. On the inside, he was anything but. His emotions tossed and turned inside him, like the sea he had just come from. He wanted to rage, to lash out, to scream at Leth to take him back, but in the end it was Taras that stopped him. Because in his past life, he had been Benshira. And the Benshira did not scream, did not rage, did not cry out against the gods. The Benshira went where they were told, and went quietly, because there was a purpose to everything, and everything had its time.

It was that faith he clung to, like a piece of driftwood in the ocean, and it was that faith that saved him.

Because surely this had been an act of the gods, and not simply coincidence. Otherwise, how else would he have encountered another fallen Ethaefal, when they were so few in number?

He turned himself out of his own thoughts, focusing on Eridanus. His own thoughts were dark, and they were best saved for when he was alone. Right now, he was in the company of another. A son of Leth, like himself. In that sense, his brother. But it appeared that Eridanus was lost in thought as well. His fellow Ethaefal was staring blankly at him, through him. He didn't possess enough magical training to know that Eridanus was reading his aura, but it was clear to him that something was wrong. There was hunger in Eridanus's eyes.

He waited for a moment, and when Eridanus did not react, he spoke. "Eridanus...?" he asked, his tone questioning. "Is something wrong?"

If he focused on this, he could turn his thoughts away from home for a time.

[Eridanus]

The single invocation of his own name shook the dreamy ethaefal out of his reverie, and he was ruthlessly slammed back into the cold reality of life. The tinkling melody of divinity, the wistful aroma of heaven, and the sweet, sweet taste of the Ukalas.

All gone.

He blinked, finding himself looking at a larger-than-life version of Taras. Each word spoken seemed to be magnified many times, and his own name reverberated, echoing countless iterations at a retarding volume and speed.

Eridanus shook his head again. That was enough to fully distract him from his disorientation, and the flow of djed streaming into his mental faculties was cut short, bringing him back to the mortal world. The various layers of Taras' aura gently faded away, replacing the illusion with the simple, mundane truth.

"I-I''m... Nothing's wrong, Taras," The ethaefal stammered, gaining back his hold on reality bit by bit. "I think we should check you out at the University's Infirmary. Sometimes fallen children like us may drop with certain complications."

[Satevis]

Taras.

The name seemed to echo in his mind as Eridanus spoke it, each echo getting fainter and fainter as the memories of his past lives swallowed it whole. His frown deepened. The name rang hollow. He had once been Taras, yes, but he had once been others. He wasn't any of them anymore. He had become something different--something more--all of them and none of them at the same time.

He was...

The name rang true within him, but he couldn't bring it to the surface, couldn't give it a voice. He could no longer use that name, because what good was a name that he couldn't even speak? He wouldn't want to try either. The name only reminded him of everything else he had just lost, of a closeness he had felt just a moment ago that had been ripped cruelly from him.

He needed a new name.

But he could worry about that later. For now, 'Taras' would have to do. He listened as Eridanus explained that they should go to the infirmary at the university, his mind immediately latching onto that word. University. Sea. Images flashed through his mind suddenly, pulled from the memories of his past lives--the sea tossing and turning in the wind, long hallways and high arches, the smell of books and ink. A single word rose out of the fog, telling him exactly where he was.

Zeltiva.

He had been here before. Not as Taras, but as another. Perhaps more than one. The memories of his other lives were fragmented, though. He couldn't pick out any details, nor could he say how long ago it had been. He nodded at Eridanus's suggestion. "That sounds like a good idea," he said. "However..."

The idea of going into a city presented him with another problem, one that would become immediately pressing the moment he left the relative seclusion on the beach. He coughed softly into his hand, lowering his eyes to the sand. "...Perhaps it would be best if I found something to wear."

[Eridanus]

Eridanus looked for a stunned moment at his fellow ethaefal, before barking in laughter. He had been so focused on the situation and the man's aura that he did not realize that he was naked. Just like he was when he first dropped onto Mizahar.

"Good point," He admitted, removing his outer cloak. Helping the man up fully, he fastened the thin cloak over the leth-born, preserving his modesty somewhat. It was not that either of them were bothered with nudity, but civilized society tended to frown upon exhibitionism, and Zeltiva was sufficiently enlightened to have a high code of ethical conduct in its community.

"Shall we?" He said, gesturing towards the direction of the University.