season of passage. (kavala)

[Caelum]

Silence shrouded the veranda for a yawn of minutes. The exile sat slumped in his chair, watching Tavisal with his little snores. He had an elbow propped on the table and reached for the pitcher of wine, letting it pool and fill first Kavala's glass and then his own. This time no herbs were sprinkled across the rippling surface, their effects beginning to burgeon in his bloodstream. It tapped the tension from his muscles and ease the line of his mouth until, at long last, he began to speak. "My grandson saw her Syliras a year gone. He did not know her for Lillis, not for my Lillis and he himself had yet to work up both the courage and commitment to return to the Grasslands, to his home. He told me of her when I came to Endrykas -- a mistake, Kavala," a sigh caught the end of those words, but he did not elaborate on what it was in the whispering winds at the borders of Riverfall that hounded him. "Sama'el told me she was healthy, broke, but not unwell. They did not exchange much information. He did not know her well, but last I was there I found my face --" here he rose his hands, wine sloshing against the edge of the glass, in gesture to the flat cheeked, stranger features he wore by night. "Not this one, the other, drawn in chalk on a castle wall. It was half hidden by a new growth of ivy in the Stone Garden, but it was there and it was mine and I swear it was drawn, had to have been drawn, by her hand. She would paint the windowsills of our house in Zeltiva a shimmering gold, just to.. Just to make me smile when the sun set. "Last I saw her was the summer of five oh eight. It was the summer Delucia found us, or rather Captain Bruin. He had no idea what he was in for, that man, but Delucia always did pay well. Dead now. Bruin, I mean, but that's a different tale." He had no talent at storytelling. Hell, he hardly had any talent for talking at all outside of lessons and philosophies, arguments and prayers. Yes, prayers. His eyebrows nettled and with out warning he shoved up to his feet, knocking his chair a few inches back so he could pace on a loose hipped, cagey stride the length of the veranda. "They burned it," he went on with words that plundered this place, but were at once far, far away. "The shop, our house. She was screaming, fierce, and reaching for me. Then it went black and when I woke, by the time I woke.. It was too late. There were three ships originally, and we were on different ones. MaeClair woke me on the Crack of Noon, but that went to shit and back too. I do not know if even she made it out." He swung around toward the table, strides earth eating, gaze restless. the herbs did not appear to be doing their finest work, or maybe his was just a mangled mess and the herbs were doing all they could. "I had turned toward Zeltiva when I got out of Ravok," he confessed. "But Caiyha had other ideas and by the time it was all through." He shook his head and drew to a halt at the edge of the table, fingertips steepling upon the end. "She is not in Zeltiva. I know as much from old acquaintances there. Or, if she is, I am the last person with whom she wishes to reconnect."

[Kavala]

Kavala listened quietly, nodding occasionally and finally reaching forward to brush his hand with her own for a few moments. Touch was important and made a connection. She wanted his attention, all of it, not only part with the rest of it lingering in the past on a possible ship wreck or a figure drawn on the walls of Syliras.

“Caelum, there is a way to know for sure. I swear to you.” Kavala said, still touching his hand, half of her longing to slip into the Chavena, longing to seek the knowledge that she was given for a reason – maybe for this reason. “Each person has a chavi, Caelum. It is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. It is somehow tied to the soul, but it is not the soul. It is a written record of their history… of lives they’ve lived in the past and ones they’ve lived in the now. “ She released his hand and stood back, standing up. “The chavi exist all in one place, the Chavena, and yet they are attached to us still and wholly a part of us. The Chavena looks like a place of perpetual rain fall except the rain isn’t drops but ribbons of twisted color intricately stretching from the sky to the Ukalas. We dwell in the realms of mortals, the gods dwell in the Ukalas… the Chavena is the lands between. It is a beautiful wonderous place full of possibility and incredible knowledge. It is Nysel’s land and the land that wise men say all Dreams come from, Caelum. " The Konti explained carefully, not sure how receptive he'd be to her words.


Kavala went on. "People marked by Nysel can go to the Chavena. They can trail the Chavi through their hands and link into them, reading the history of people as its laid down on the Chavi, not from a different person’s perspective but from the person’s perspective that the Chavi was laid for. I bear Nysel’s mark. I can go there, Caelum, and find her Chavi and walk it. That’s what Dreamwalkers do. We walk the chavi and learn the truth. I can tell you if shes alive, dead, if she loves you… and if she’s died I can tell you when and where she was born again if she was already… or keep watching it until it happens. I know you Eth. I know you have time to wait. But most importantly I can tell you what happened to her… what she was thinking, feeling, why it all went so wrong. There’s not many people I would do this for, Caelum. But I would do it for you.” She said softly.

“I just need something of hers or to walk your Chavi backwards until I find the place it tangles with hers so I can then switch to hers and follow it where you want me to see… and what you want to know. I will help you, Caelum, if you really want me to.” Kavala said, breathing deeply, and settling into her seat once more.

[Caelum]

"Why?" His question cut at the night, a flash of sound rather than steel to shred the silence that had lapped between them in the wake of her words. A riddle held his eyebrows and he had not intended to come across so sharp, but there were still times when his tongue kept trying to untangle the knots of an unspeakable language he refused to go at with his teeth. He had seethed a pair of years troubling over the syllables of the celestial language to no ends of his own and time had not quite paired up another for him since. "Why would you do that for me?" Gentler now for he had caught himself, raising the same hand she had touched in kindness in an apology that might not be well served with words. The line of his shoulders and the curve of his spine followed in further communication of it with a head and shoulders bow before he step closer in to sink back to his chair. This time he perched on it's edge, elbows sliding to the table top and a newborn energy shaking free or just shoving down the shroud of fatigue surrounding him. It might have been the herbal medicine she had dosed him with, but the lay of his next words revealed it was more than that. It was almost always more than that. "Nysel is the god of dreams," he stated, but questions prodded at his tone to turn it up when he gave a shake of his head. "I know little of Him, Kavala, and less of His realm and works. The Chavena exists as the Ukalas exist? Here, but not here?" His hands -- surgeon's hands, long fingered and well weathered, folded open like the wings of a storm worn bird. "But instead of our gods, it holds our history? The history of all of us?" A tangent split abruptly through his spoken thoughts. "Does it hold the memories of the gods? "And so it is not just our dreams, but all our knowledge? A collective library of sorts? Something like that," his seeker's hunger, his questing thirst built the Chavena in his mind like a longed for oasis. The carrot had been dangled before the horse. "Something like that," he repeated, "Would be a masterpiece to behold. An ultimate epitome of a.. Of a cultural memory? Sweet Syna, Kavala. I never knew. Could it.. Could you then find Lillis within it? Tell me if she lives, as you say, and if so where she is and how she is doing? I do have something of her's. A necklace she gifted me years ago. Would that potentially suffice? If not, yes. Yes, you can follow mine. If you're willing." Desperation laid bare then for this terribly private man to willingly submit to a woman he now understood to be capable of reading his whole history, maybe even all his histories, those lost dreams of lives he walked now beyond the borders of his memory. Faces and names, loves and losses had piled their hands high upon him since he had first slipped through the fissure sundering the floor of his goddess' realm. They had weighed on him and they weighed on him now even in the peace of this night with the wind that had chased him here mercifully becalmed. They beat heavy his bones, pulling him like a tide toward the moon north. "If all history is writ in the Chavi of the Chavena, what..." He trailed off, requiring a breath. The arrow had been released, Kavala or Nysel, both or maybe another, the master archer. It burrowed right to the heart of him and found the mark he had not been able to admit. "What if in there, somewhere.. Kavala. What if there is the answer to healing the rip in the Ukalas?" It was a whisper, that last, but treacherous for it. There, his heart. There, his hunger. Lillis was not the end of it, a piece but not the whole; and maybe, maybe then it was not she who had died or lost her love for him. Maybe it was he who had not loved her well enough.

[Kavala]

Kavala looked thoughtful. The last question she ever expected him to ask, and certainly not in that tone, was ‘why’. The Konti blinked, looked confused for a moment, then offered a hesitant smile that turned into a laugh.. “I’m a healer, Caelum. I must. It is more than a compulsion, it is a deep rooted need.” Kavala said, then went on to explain further. “The reason is simple, Caelum. I am like you. I’m a seeker of knowledge and someone who loves answers. I heal. I’m staring at someone with open bleeding wounds that I can heal. I can’t heal you by laying hands on you and offering up Rak’keli’s blessed power. But I can look for and find answers that are producing questions that are cutting you deeper than any dagger ever could. We healers just don’t need our patients to have sound bodies. We need them to have sound minds and hearts too. You are just not the sum of the vessel you are housed in. You are so much more than that… and your spirit is so incredibly wounded.” Kavala said.

She paused and let him take in what she was saying, working through it. She nodded where appropriate and then smiled brightly when he seemed to understand. “The Chavena holds all the chavi of everyone that’s ever lived. I’ve never seen a God’s Chavi, but I imagine they are there as well. Caelum, can you imagine it? I can slip into the Chavi and touch random threads of people’s lives and oversee them, living as they did, understanding things as they understood. I can learn a whole new way, search for lost medical practices, magics, know history for the truth and not what was exactly written. And there’s more. If Nysel favors us Dreamwalkers with further marks, we can do more than just look. We can alter things in the chavi. If Lillis was tampered with, hurt, injured, made to forget you… with more marks a Dreamwalker can sooth that over, change it, rebridge any damage on her Chavi and rewrite it completely so she remembers and implant even further knowledge… like where you are going, what your plans are, that sort of thing.” Kavala added. She took a breath and absently drew spirals not unlike Chavi on the table before them, indivisible but intricate. Even now she felt the pull of the Chavena. It was seductive. She wanted to be there, not here, exploring.

“Yes. It’s a massive library, Caelum. But the books are accurately written and there’s no lies to weed through. It’s very seductive though, Caelum. It’s easy to leave this world and your body and spend hours no days within it. You need strength of mind and heart to have the will to leave it each time you do.” Kavala said, nodding slightly.

“Of course I will. I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise. I have to warn you though. I have seen other Eth’s times with the Gods and their chavi is written in such a way it is impossible for me to understand looking at it. But if you move past it backwards, other lives get clear again.” Kavala said.

“The necklace will suffice, and you’ll need a measure of trust in me as well. Nothing gets damaged. Do you have it on you? It’s just a signature of energy I can take and use. But if I can find her Caelum…I’ll see everything. Do you understand? As if I was her.” Kavala acknowledged. It was the deepest most personal violation of privacy anyone could ever do to another. She wanted Caelum to understand that.

She paused a moment, looked out over the Veranda and the Sanctuary stable yard and thought how odd the conversation was. A few seasons ago she’d never thought herself being where she was now, talking about what she was talking about. His next question, though, snapped her out of her musings and caused her to frown. It halted her asking him if he wanted to look now? This very instant. And caused her to sit up a little straighter and stare straight at him puzzled.

“Caelum, what do you mean? There is rip in the Ukalas? I don’t understand.” Kavala said puzzled. This was the first she’d ever heard of any damage to the realm of the Gods. Sure, Kavala had met Ethaefals but she didn’t know where exactly they came from or why. She only knew they were shapeshifters of a sorts that followed the celestial arches of the day and night and even the seasons.

“Is it dangerous? How did you find out about it?” She asked, curious to know more about it. “Was it something the Valterrian caused?”

[Caelum]

Caelum considered the words his hostess spoke while leaning back. A hand rose and flipped back the lapel of his jacket and tugging at the worn tie of his collared shirt. It spilled open to allow a hand to dig beneath and fish a glimmering gold chain out. It sparkled in the moonlight, sun shaped pendant swaying like a pendulum, battered and dented and worn. It had been through a great deal and was with his life the only thing he had taken with him when crawling out of the black waters of Ravok. Strangely, with the god of dreams in mind, the sight of the necklace did not remind him of Lillis who had gifted it to him, but rather of someone else and a conversation had years before. - - - “The gods are not infallible. If you are looking for a fairytale, Hadrian Aelius, a lesson crafted from snow, glass, and apples with definitive lines between the heroes and the villains, a tale of good versus evil and where the monsters are known by their faces and the shining knights by the white chargers they ride, a story where the light overcomes the darkness and in the darkness are only bad things and within the light only the best, a story where all choices are easily categorized into right and wrong and at the very last possible moment a good turn or the providence of great love or maybe a steadfast faith prevails to save the day, the maiden, the kingdom and even the world, then this is not the story for you." He paused while the light from the window waned, the world turning slowly their piece towards sunset. It was always torturous and doubtless some of that spun through his words. "Here, here there are no obvious heroes or absolute villains, the light burns and evil sometimes wins. Faith often flounders and love dies as often as it saves. The heroes are not always brave, villains tell the truth sometimes and good deeds are not always acknowledged. Further? This story ends badly and if it has a saving grace, it is the fact that a heap of ashes means whatever was there did not go quietly, did not fall without a fight. No, a heap of ashes means that whatever was there went out burning and no matter what Lhex or Tanroa, Syna or Leth or any goddess or god existent may wish, no matter what their followers or even their detractors may believe, they can make mistakes. They have made them. If there is a demiurge existent, perhaps it is infallible, perhaps in it's omnipotence there are no mistakes, there are no errors; but that is not the practicable divinity with which I am so well acquainted." It was more than Caelum had uttered in a piece since landing, broken and embittered. It was as if the very vocabulary which they employed was caught by a centrifugal force, spinning and spinning and spinning so as not to fly apart. Yet if it spun too fast it would, of course, only collapse in on itself and the bowl of the heavens would be bereft of another star. This story, he had said, knowing that where it ended another had begun. "Why am I here? What is it Lhex, shouldering up to the Bright Lady, to my Syna, has designed? Maybe we should return to your original question, Hadrian, when you asked what it was like there with the gods, as though they exist in some other place, some different land. The Ukalas surround us. The heavens are at your fingertips, inside your lungs, whirling about the candle flame. The realm of Syna, the realm of any god, is merely crafted from the fabric of all that is around you, a sort of pocket created amidst billions of tangled threads. I was here while I was there. How can it but be a mistake when I am now only here? Do you understand?" - - - “The necklace,” he told her needlessly while leaning forward again and out of the disturbing halls of memory where dystheism reigned. His eyebrows drew together as he offered it to Kavala. “Nysel’s marked can alter a man’s memory?” The way he said it, it seemed a sin; but he was not ignorant to the potential for healing ability in that. It seemed an overly nervous topic for him all the same, making the scar tissue on his back that should not exist twitch in reflexive recollection. “And you can’t read my time in the Ukalas…” He trailed off, though it was either a question or verification. Disappointment was fleet, eyes sliding away as she sat up, concern shifting the artful lines of her face. “It is a commonly held theory that there is a rip in the conjoined realms of Syna and Leth,” he explained. Every word was carefully contained, slow coming off his tongue. He handled them as one might fire, as if their utterance would blister his lips. “That it was caused by Ivak’s Grief and the result is me,” he spread a hand against his chest. “And my brethren falling through, falling out. Here. It makes such little sense,” frustration thrust out that last. “Trip, fall, done. Over. But it is the only one we have. Syna has never bothered to tell me different, nor anyone else insofar as I know. It is what it is, but if it is, Kavala, then it needs fixed. Her home is broken. It needs rebuilt. I intend to find out how.”

[Kavala]

Kavala took the necklace in her hand, but her eyes were not on it. Instead, they were on Caelums and his strange tortured gaze. She couldn’t begin to understand what he’d gone through and what a hard road he’d ridden to make it to the gates of Sanctuary. She had no idea where that road would take him from beyond this point. But one thing was for certain, in her mind Crescent rose up – her old self – and demanded she take him for one of the Cytali’s own. And even as she reached for the necklace, the dreamwalker reached for his chavi. Kavala’s eyes lost focus, and even as Caelum was lost in his own memories, Kavala reached for his chavi and was dragged along it with the Ethaefal’s awareness.

When a person remembered something, what they did internally was a great deal like a dreamwalker did externally. So when Kavala reached for Caelum’s chavi, his mind traveled backwards, and she planted herself firmly in his memory even as he himself called it forth. Standing in his shoes was a new experience. She felt his pain swirl around her, his broken bitter life and his demand to not settle for that but to look for something else, something more. He spoke to someone she had no knowledge of. But it was not that person who’s interest drew her. It was instead Caelum and his own faith, his own stretch for something more that wrapped around her like a warm wool cloak in a blowing snowstorm.

Caelum asked questions. He demanded answers. He settled for nothing and wandered looking for answers when he realized he could not provide them for himself. Kavala clutched at his Chavi, almost swept away by his torment as she reached out and lifted her voice to Nysel, all but throwing Caelum to her own god, her prayer almost a tangible action in the void of the Chavena.

“My Lord of Dreams there is another dreamer here… another lost soul… another seeker… he is half dreamwalker already even though he cannot touch the Chavi… touch him… allow him.. gift him… make him part of yours. Feel his hunger – it consumes him. Let him feed on the knowledge that you house here… that you rule over… let him be one of us… “

She prayed, throwing out her power – a blending of her faiths – Nysel, Eyris, and Rak’keli and weaving it on a lifeline she tossed out to catch Nysel’s attention. There was no answer, no echo of agreement, but she expected one. Instead there was a banishment… the prayer made tangible message did not streak like a comet in the night sky, but rather it flared and vanished. Nysel saw, absorbed, and gave nothing. It was enough she knew he heard, enough she knew he listened. It was enough to know she caught his attention and threw Caelum to the wolf of dreams.

And then she traveled downward, while he was lost to his memories, she went to look for Lillis, where the girl’s chavi had tangled with Caelums, using the necklace as a key and Caelum’s Chavi pointing straight back into time. She would near no answer he made… skipping the explanation of the jewelery, his questions of Nysel, and his explanation of the torn Ukalas. It was perhaps for the best that she didn’t answer him because she’d have told him in the Chavena overlooked the Ukalas, bound to it in ways no one could truly understand who wasn’t a God. And if she’d heard him she’d have told him there was no tear that she knew of.. nothing marring the perfection of the realms beyond Mizahar.

Kavala danced down, eager, confident in her walking as she was in her breathing back in the normal realms. She spiraled downward, tracing Caelums life, dipping in here and there, checking, looking, overwhelmed by his pain.

Lillis was easy to spot when she reached the point the pair had parted. The key in her physical hand gave her the knowledge she needed when she switched from Caelum’s chavi to Lillis… and began reading Lillis’ life. It would take some doing… careful consideration… as she slowly comb through, looking for the answers Caelum sought.

What happened to her? Why had they gotten separated? Where was Lillis now? Was she alive, happy? Did she leave Caelum by choice? Kavala dug and dug hard, combing through Lillis’ life.

[Caelum]

OOCPermissions granted by the player of Lillis De’Nerys. Forgive the insane interactive sparkles. I figured a turducken post deserved some turducken “art”. Soundtrack : Greater is the art of ending. - Longfellow - They say everything you cannot remember represents everything you cannot forget. This the exile knew to at least be true in dreaming. His closest histories spun out, a skein of memories unraveling through the dreamwalker’s fingers. The colors shifted, the texture ripened and love knots formed, tattered and worn, between two separate Chavi to tie them together like prayer beads. The first vibrant splatters of knowledge appeared where they came together in the congregation of a life too briefly shared. All of their orisons had not spared them. - - - I was a heavy heart to carry but he never let me down when he had me in his arms my feet never touched the ground When the world is choked with smoke and shadows, one must not try to grapple them into detail, but to instead rely on what is already known to be true. A starfish gifted him upon his fall he folded into the cradling hands of Lillis’ mother and sisters. It glowed in memory while he shoveled dirt into their grave, muttering half rotted prayers to a pantheon he did not know would feel to be in greater neglect years to come. Stars splattered and moon dust swirled, ricocheting a fiery death behind the seer’s far seeing eyes. Lillis wore the blessing of Avalis, finding a cursed form of knowing the deaths of those she touched. His had been fire lit and blinding and she unable to tell whether it had come before or was but waiting to happen again. Their Chevas mark had appeared in the shape of a phoenix, ignited from ashes. She had wept alone, where he could not see and would never know, for its resemblance to her vision of his death. Candlelight struggled to draw the sun from his skin from where she stood in the doorway, watching him drown himself again in a sprawl of tomes and star charts. He would leave soon. It was only a matter of time between when obsession bit him and he emerged from scholar’s dust in their shop to wander back out into the wild and the road with his desperate, dangerous hope. He always came back. Sometimes it was broken, others it was bitter, but he always came back. She was still safer for him to love, she knew, than his Bright Lady. A hand speckled with paint pressed against her mouth, holding back the words that would cause him to stay. Gold paint was brushed across a windowsill, layering over the white wash to shine in the day. It was a declaration of war against the agony in his eyes at any given sunset. It and the distance in his eyes diminished and vulnerable love came back into focus. She lay tangled in his arms, his prayers pressed with kisses all along her limbs, healing her more than his hands ever had. The pendant was sun or starfish shaped and spun in the yellow light, shooting off tarnished sparks. It made her think of her family, the dead he had buried for her and him, always him. It was the day she had picked to celebrate him, lacking an actual birth date. Slender hands spread over her belly in the city of shipwrights and scholars, seeking a fullness of fresh springing life that was not there. It drove him mad. Despite all his efforts, he could not heal that in her, for her. He could not heal any of the things that mattered to him the most. She made a face at her reflection in the silver backed glass and turned away, determined this time to create more achievable dreams for them both. She needed her paints. He could attempt to map the heavens, but she was going to map their hearts; and maybe somewhere in between they could find the way to healing both. I was a heavy heart to carry my beloved was weighed down my arms about his neck my fingers laced to crown The prayer beads dropped one, two, three on the floor of the Chavena, the weave of the two Chavi fraying apart from each other and from themselves. "Wake up." The demand of Maeclair rocked the world of the sleeper like a kick to the cradle. With words alone the visionary reached deep into dreaming and hauled him up, out while the layers of his Chavi peeled away at quickening pace. It seemed he gulped down the feet of a fleeing dream and promptly choked upon it when his eyes opened to find her - her - glaring at him through the dank and dim of the ship hold. “Kasb’el, if you sock me now, I swear on all that’s holy…” The strange Konti’s face formed an expression of warning and the instinctive tensing of his muscles checked itself before striking out. The bowed walls of the hold groaned around them beneath a crash of rising waves. The world swayed and swam, a collection of hours piling atop each other before bursting through a thick haze of pain and disorientation. "Who the fuck are you?" Caelum spat and heaved up to his elbows, the soot stained toe of his boot scrabbling at rotting wood as he forced his knees back under him. Sharp pain lanced through his hip and breath clogged his throat. "Where's Lillis? Where are we? What --" A pitch of the ship was heralded by a volley of footsteps, a man's hoarse voice ringing in what Caelum only knew to be night by the rushing spill of Drykas windmarks over the backs of his hands. "You used to know me," the woman said swiftly and snatched at his shoulder, surprising strength helping to haul him up. A booted foot kicked at the rat chewed pallet, sending it against a stack of roped cargo crates and what appeared to be medical tools flying. "Trust that. They're coming. I thought the storm would keep them --" "Lady," Caelum began, "Where is Lillis? I --" "This has got to stop," Diarmid Bodei demanded from the black doorway torchlight kept trying to choke. The first mate's haggard features seemed to swim in the play of smoke and shadow. The rest of the ship followed, a dizzying blur of the woman screaming and rough hands tackling and a sky so swelled with wind and fury that Caelum was almost unable to hear the whiz of the flog whistling through the air. "Bruin!" She was calling, Zulrav's breath tangling pale twists of air into a veil across her face, smearing her features from sight as had the dark of the hold. Blood coursed down his back, strips of flesh peeling off; but the language, that heaven spat language diamond cut in his mind and slicing his tongue to more ribbons than Captain Amadeo Bruin was his back. "BRUIN!" She screamed it this time, Diarmid's muscled arm cinching about her waist, lifting her feet off the trembling deck. Sailors scrambling through ropes and rigging, jerking ropes and hoisting beams against the primary mast. The captain's arm paused and Caelum's fingers released, knees giving out. "It isn't worth the money! I told you, Delucia will sling you under the sea so's you won't go telling tales! Stop! Stop-stop --" The flog fell again and the world erupted behind Caelum's eyes. Lighting had cracked, thrown by a small Konti's righteous fury, but it was not enough. The last thing he heard was her screaming, screams that sounded like Lillis, swearing to Bruin that he would get what he deserved. who is the betrayer? who's the killer in the crowd? I'm so heavy heavy in your arms Flames consumed the antique book shop, sending smoke signals spiraling toward a deaf heaven. The hand over Lillis' mouth tasted of Caelum's blood and ashes, smothering back her screams. Every star chart, every map, every desperately sought tome in her lover's starving bid to heal the Ukalas was speckling the sunset with soot. Where was he? Where had they taken him? Syna closed her eyes in the west and pain bloomed against her skull. Lights doused. An oil lantern shattered against a silk papered wall, the dark canals of a city besieged by a chaotic god slithering beyond the windows. A pale cat howled in the hall and the third set of journals were thrown into the miniature bonfire. She could see it all the way from her cell in Sunberth, the kiss of Avalis a searing grace. The chains they had around him, both the seen and unseen, were strangling his soul. Shock cold water split beneath her swan dive, liberty lost beneath the waves. They fished for hours, but she had long since reached the shore. Hungry cheeks, hollow eyes. A glance in a shop window and the last, regretful letter from an old contact in Zeltiva. It was crumpled in her fist, left to drop in the corner of a walled city to be swept up or forgotten. That afternoon she painted his image on a crumbling wall, and the day after she left. He haunted her everywhere his road had once led him. She had to find a place, she had to find him. Her Chevas mark blazed brighter than her eyes still. The call of another goddess tolled like a bell through his skeleton, flinging him off course. Ruined and broken, all the precious colors of his frozen while in chains, he tried to ignore Her. He failed and was gone again. A press of warm lips, a smile that knew only kindness. Exhaustion went past her blood, the sick caught on the edge of a city destroying the remnants of her endurance. He was a good man, a nice man with blue sky eyes; but she dreamed of starfish and golden windowsills while lying in his arms. Sweet Rak'keli whispered in Caelum's ear, the grasses rustling; and when he rose again it was to shoulder the sky. The hunt was begun anew, but lost in holy thrall. Beautiful. So beautiful. Ten tiny fingers, a single little nose. She smelled of milk and blood, red cheeked and opal beneath the birthing fluids. Lillis saw shooting stars behind her eyelids before her heart beat a final time. is it worth the wait? all this killing time? are you strong enough to stand protecting both your heart and mine? - - - Night sang with cicadas while Caelum stared at Kavala with heavy eyes. He waited, studying the pendant in her hands, the lace of lash shadows against her cheeks. The scars on his back itched and a length of hair braided like a love knot drooped out of its tie as he slumped further down. heavy, I'm so heavy in your arms

[Kavala]

She met his gaze only once, sitting beside him, the pendant in her hands. To know him, and indeed the woman he sought, she had to leave him and walk where he'd already been. Her eyes turned from his, focusing on some distant point as she stared outward across the courtyard roof fixated on nothing but distant sky. A surreal quality slipped over her face and her expression lost its animation as if she walked from her body and left it only a shell while her soul took up a journey only one such as she could make. Shoulders stiffened then relaxed, causing the straight wave of her hair to slowly slide forward from where it was tossed casually over her shoulder. It fell slowly, like water suddenly tipped out of an urn, cascading across her face and making her look even more statuesque.

In her mind, Kavala left Sanctuary and Caelum behind.

The single spiral on her thigh glowed, illuminating itself even through the weave of her clothing. And the dreamwalker fell into its spiral, each breath and each heartbeat relaxing her more until she took herself, wholly, from where her body sat and molded instead with a world that existed everywhere and nowhere all at once.

It was like falling into a dream.

She lived his life, in that instant, trailing backwards from that which was Caelum to that which was Lillis. Kavala was respectful, and tried to keep as much out of his thoughts and feelings as she could. Instead the Konti looked only for what he asked, hoping to answer a question she knew to be his own. It was hard though. The healer drew her and she wanted to invade his privacy and feel what drove him. The moment she thought the thought her chavi dipped into his, entwined and she felt the overwhelming need to heal the Ukalas. She felt how much he loved Lillis, but that it wasn't enough for all the healer's heart said that it was. His spirit was built for a different task, made strong enough that he would search even on his dying breath to know what would undo the great wound that had been made during the Valterrian.

Kavala felt and understood more so after touching the dual nature of his drive that he was a creature divided. It was almost as if his humanity drove him to love and make a life with a person he could give of himself too. But in tern his immortality forced him onward and made his feet restless to what Kavala could only name a geis of desire.

Heal. Heal. Heal.

No wonder the man was a healer in truth when he walked in mortal flesh. His whole form was composed of the desire to right that which was now wrong. Lillis had suffered for it too. For when she found the connection, the separation, and the intense pain of it all, she'd left that which was Caelum behind and traced that which was Lillis. There was something in her Chavi, a wholly different quality, that Kavala knew meant the woman wasn't currently alive. There was a connect that seemed to supercharge the Chavi's of the living that were missing in those of the dead.

But why? How? Kavala in that moment was half in love with Lillis too from interacting with Caelum's chavi. She wanted Lillis, needed her, longed for her and mourned her all at the same time as she traced the dimmer light onward from where the two chavi branched. Back and then forward, an odd combination but since Kavala was still tracing Lillis' past even in making the transition down Caelum's Chavi and back up Lillis' she could still tell that she was in Lillis' past.

Closer to the now she moved. Dipping in she occasionally touched Lillis to see how she was and in those brief flashes she smelled paint, loved the feel of a brush beneath her hands, and mourned the golden eyed man whom love hadn't been enough to hold to her. Kavala felt a piece of Lillis' love for Caelum then. And as strange as it was, Lillis De'Nerys loved Caelum even more, in some ways, than he loved her. She had the courage to silently watch him ride away, to accept him back, and to stretch her awareness out and allow for his almost addictive drive for a solution to rule her as well.

She gave of herself, tremendously, and watched with silent smiling eyes as the restlessness in him grew and he rode away. She did not try to chain him. She did not try to change him. She instead tried to accept him, to understand him, to support him. But she was no saint either. She knew the love of others to see her through the days. Paint. Shape. Color. Lighting. Lillis' love was broadscale and encompassing. And she knew, as all Konti were prone to know, that holding Caelum was something that would destroy him.

Kavala knew that as well.

Sitting in her seat beside him, her eyes gazing into the distant sky, Kavala's body tensed and the hand holding the pendant reached out and tangled with Caelums. She shifted still lifeless and sighed with tangible acceptance as she traveled onward. Kavala never looked at Caelum, not really, though her sightless eyes shifted to his form once and back to the distant sky.

If she'd had been herself she would have looked at him with quiet sorrow and explained all that she saw to him. But instead she was buried deep in the chavi settling for something that was more what she could have than the piece of sunlight she'd tried to hold for a brief moment. And in that instant of acceptance that a man was just a man, even the good ones, she came to know immortality like her lover had when she brought life into the world in the form of a tiny scaled infant, delicate and perfect.

Kavala felt Lillis die, seeing her Chavi go inactive. In her experience it wouldn't' stay so for long, but she hadn't enough of Nysel's favor to move forward and see into the future like someone should.

She immediately switched Chavi, tracing the infant's pathway, a simple thing full of heavy needs and not too much understanding of the world around her. Because Kavala looked with a baby's eyes, she had no awareness of city, region, or even who cared for her though she knew she was love. Had the babe been older, Kavala could have pulled a where or who, even teased a name from the baby. But it was all too soft and fuzzy and the child's view did not provide for specifics.

She traveled the girl's chavi until she hit the boundary of 'now' and knew the girl was still too young to know. Later, yes, she could give Caelum answers. But now she only knew the how and what and indeed why. There was no answer to where though.

Kavala came back to herself, having no where else to turn for answers. She looked for no tangled chavi interwoven with the tiny Konti. She knew she was happy, healthy, and that meant well cared for. If Caelum wanted to know, he'd have to ask later, when the child had learned language and and fallen more fully into her awareness.

Blinking, Kavala's sight returned to the 'now' and she once more turned her gaze towards Caelum. She took back her hand, and ran it through her loose hair as if knowing something she didn't want to tell him. Her azure gaze met his and she softened slightly. Slowly, she started to speak. She related what she'd seen to him in her own words, which translated into swirls of color and hints of emotion and fluid dynamic descriptions of esoteric parts of his own life spilled from the near strangers lips.

Kavala didn't start straight either. She wandered in her quiet observations, her eyes drifting closed as she gave her interpretation of what she'd seen of his life and Lillis' life. She closed her dialog with a soft sigh and simple words.

"She died giving birth, with equal parts pain and joy. Lillis lived long enough to see her daughters perfect webbed fingers and toes and to see the joy in the baby's eyes. She was so happy, even with what had just happened to her. Her whole life she missed you, needed you, but she was in many ways content because she lived to do what she had always wanted. The girl should have been yours, but the Gods had other ideas. As it was Lillis picked who the father was, so that's better than most of us women get to do. Her daughter lives, but isn't old enough to know enough to see and know who or what she is." Kavala said softly. "I can look later, but it will probably take a handful of years for me to know for sure. You're kind have no lifespan that is known to anyone living, so you'll want to check for her later perhaps watch out for her since you'll even outlive the child if you are careful." Kavala said softly.

[Caelum]

The chair creaked when he rose, offering protest to the leering moon. His face contorted, worn bootheels carving hours out of the veranda floor when he turned away. A broad path was made around the sleeping baby, incapable in this moment of even so much as glancing upon those tiny features, hearing those little breaths and heavy ease. His heart felt knotted, stabbing memories of pain through the rest of him while he absorbed the dreamwalker's words. There was good to measure against the bad and he heard it, recognized it; but until Kavala had spoken, until he had watched knowledge dust across her fair face, he had not known he had been holding out hope. The wind that had chased him here, hounding him out of Cyphrus and to the edge of the seas into which he had fallen years past, was quiet now. It had no more mockery left for him, he imagined, stopping at the rail, forcing his lungs to collapse and press out used air. "She wanted a child," he spoke at length. Then he closed his eyes, feeling all the words float like hymns through the surface of his grief. Prayers for Lillis, prayers for her daughter to an entire pantheon of flawed deities. He felt like running, continuing to run, but maybe this time in the opposite direction of what holy thing might call him; but he stayed, arms snaking about his chest and head bowing beneath the stars. He stayed.

[Kavala]

Kavala simply watched him, her blue eyes going so pale that she looked blind as she faced his grief and studied it in its raw form.

The Konti never said a word. She became something less and more in that instance. She did not offer comfort, for there was none to be found. Instead she simply became a witness, someone who knew in all the world what this man felt when he came to know the truth about that which he loved.

She knew the Chavi now though. She knew its taste and color and distinction and that of the childs as well for all that it was newly born and unaware of much in the world. She'd look again later, and if there was any help to it she'd make sure the girl was well periodically. If she could help, she would, for the child was a Konti and long-lived like herself.

Her eyes swept over Caelum repeatedly. She gave him no privacy other than what he created for himself, and faced his grief head on, watching him work things through in his head. There was no fixing this issue though, just as there was no comfort. Knowledge was power and she was able to arm him well enough with that. But it was all she could do. The hearts of men, even those God-touched, were a mystery to her. Watching this one break before her very eyes only added to her confusion.

Love. It was such a traumatic thing. It was something she wanted badly but something she was afraid of nonetheless. Caelum had love, but it hadn't been enough for him. He'd admitted as much. He couldn't stay home. He couldn't be what Lillis needed him to be. He couldn't even give her a child.

Suddenly, Kavala wondered if Caelum had any right to his grief. Wisely though, she said nothing.

The Konti never let herself feel so deeply or so profoundly. There was so much about Caelum that was raw, unfettered and in her eyes it made him seem even more alien than he already was as an Ethaefal. They were one and all godtouched and proof that there was life after death regardless of what the weak or scared preached. But worthy of love? Sure. Deserving of it? She wasn't so sure. Having touched Lillis' chavi she knew things from the other perspective and honestly she was glad the Konti had sought what she needed in the end. Even if in doing so it had killed her.

Wasn't that the best any of them could do?

Kavala reached forward, took Caelums hand, and laid Lillis' locket in his palm. She would have to think about this situation and this moment for a long time to come to decide what she really felt for everyone involved. Without peeling back layers, on the surface it looked like love just brought pain. That had been her experience too. She was a lot like Lillis in that she'd loved someone who wouldn't stay with her. He'd thought he'd wanted one thing and then decided on another course, throwing her and her child away.

Kavala turned from Caelum then, finally giving him privacy as she stood up and stretched, walking to the edge of the veranda to survey the Courtyard of Sanctuary. The only security you had in life is that what you built for yourself. Loving men, even good ones, had a price. Loving ideas and places came much more cheaply. Was the second sort of love enough? Kavala hoped so, suddenly and fiercely longing for Tasival and wanting him in her arms.