[flashback] lightning walks. (caelum + nel)

[Caelum]

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91st Day of Fall, 503 AV

if you think this is going to save you,
if you think anything is going to save you,
please consider this your final warning.
- choke: chuck palaknik.

Surrounding the seas of Black Rock was the calm of a sunny morning before everything changed. The hydrangea sky yawned clear, the breeze crisp but not biting on this final day before brutal winter descended. The seasons teetered on a threshold while in the canal riddled city nearby preparations were underway for the Day of the Dead. Then came the change. The storm swooped upon this section of creation without warning, throwing a flock of gulls into the thunder of abrupt, frightened flight as the sky broiled itself into a sickly green.

Lightning walked the day while he fell, back into the cycle of life and death, shooting like a meteor through curtains of rain. The sun was swallowed by the storm. It's broken shards lanced the sky, Syna's light burning to blood beneath the swell of black clouds. The elysium existence which had ascended him beyond earthly tribulations of pain and hunger, cold and loneliness shattered beneath the buffet of the winds to swirl away like so much dust half the naked distance between hell and heaven's ceiling.

A collection of memories, constituting all of the lives he had lived, broke and fell with him like a rock into the grave. The warmth and wisdom they offered vanished like Syna's sun in this storm, scraped out of him until the flesh of his soul was raw and littered with the ruins of the divinity which he had struggled to obtain. By the time he hit the waters even his name had been erased. It was trapped behind his teeth, hot as an ember crumbling to ashes, but incapable of being uttered.

Terror clawed as the water closed over his head and his body wracked with what he did not remember was a sob. Oxygen he had not needed in centuries was cut off and so became the rest of him, forsaken and sinking through the remains of himself.

[Nel Sayo]

It had been a beautiful morning.

A full, merry wind blasted full against the sails, the bilge of the Bright-Eyed Mariner cutting through the waves like a blade through silk. Smooth, unerring in her course, as she ever was. Hands crawled across the ropes and rigging as they toured the passage from the Suvan Sea to the open water.

Nel was within the nets, crouched barefoot, balancing, along one of the mizzenmast's arms, her fingers working to untie and retie the ropes caught about her ankles. Sunlight glanced across the silvery spill of her hair, warmed her back as she worked. A morning meant for bright omens.

The cry of gulls tore the sailors' attention skyward.

"Get down from there!" Syon shouted up at his sister, waving his hands so she'd see.

She turned her face upward, pale lashes fluttering against her cheeks as the first drops of rain fell, before even the clouds had time to shuffle across the horizon. Through the sunlight, a scattered shower began first in drips and spats, and then the water fell, pounding, from the sky. Thunder crackled. Stormclouds swallowed the sun, as though Syna herself had turned away from the day, a blackness churning through the sky to stretch itself languidly overhead.

Lightning speared through the storm, touching a fingertip to the suddenly bucking sea, stirring its waves to roil.

Nel tried to grab onto the ropes about her toes, but the ship jerked, tossed by an unfriendly hand, as though Laviku's hackles rose with the sudden shift in the sky. A yelp and a cry, and the tilt of the ship hurtled the Konti girl with a flail and pinwheel of her arms. She went crashing into the waves.

Rigging snapped and the sails buckled under the force of the wind. Sy stood on deck, pressed against the railing, screaming for her, but Nel could hardly hear him. The rage of the storm was too loud. As she watched, the Mariner got torn away through the waves. Panic clenched her heart and she twisted about, catching the rhythm of the sea as best she could, trying to figure out where she was and which to direction to swim.

And then she saw him, sinking. She kicked and dove beneath the frothing caps of the water.

She caught him with a sharp jerk as he plummeted downward, her hands beneath his arms, and then struggled to get them both to the surface. Fearing she wouldn't make it before he had to breathe, she pushed him up, and caught him again by the legs, forcing his head above water and remaining below herself, waiting to feel him lurch in a breath of air so that she knew he was alive.

[Caelum]

It felt as though the whole of creation was whirling around him, ripping at limbs, bruising an abruptly vulnerable body. It was that same body, however, that instinctively jerked, choking on oxygen when his head surfaced. He swallowed down air and rain and the sharp scent of ozone until the three mingled into a single concoction, trickling down his throat. It felt like acid. This horror had to end. Matchstick lashes swept against impossibly high cheekbones and his arms ceased their struggle against the cold waters. The intention of tumbling back down, into the deep, into the sluggish abyss of the damp underworld where fish still swam that had never known the light of day, never heard the blessings of Syna who had sentenced him here, was cut short.

There was somebody holding him up. Remnants of instinct had him twisting, long fingered hands crawling down through eddying currents to latch onto the sylphan stranger, tugging her up and up until they were struggling together against the howling waves. Sun-shattered eyes, bewildered as the wasting sunlight seemed to be, locked onto her's. There was anger drifting like phantoms through his expression. It could not possibly be for her, though, unlike the pain also present, maybe it was. He mentally flailed about for language, but that which was bright shining in his mind crumbled on his tongue every time he tried to put it to voice. Ultimately, he forced this exhausted, alien body into further motion, trying to haul them both in any direction that was not down.

[Nel Sayo]

Relief flooded through her when she felt his body jerk; good, an effort unwasted. She'd have let him fall after a few more seconds. Nel was the sort of girl to fight for a life, but she wasn't stupid. That he'd even hit the surface was a miracle; anyone this far out with no other ships in sight was a dead man.

Only then he was grabbing at her, and she tried to twist away.

Stupid, she wanted to shout, I'm holding you up, idiot!

But his fingers grabbed her shoulders and yanked, and she burst through the waves in a whirl of pale hair and long limbs. Grappled onto him so he wouldn't sink, but didn't come up gasping for breath as he had. Didn't need to.

Her eyes met his, a bright spot of blue in the deep dark. His anger could wait; his pain could wait. She saw it, was struck by it, but a flicker of lightning shook her before she could drown in it, and she pulled him close.

"I've got you," she murmured into his ear, over the crash and tumble of the waves. "I can breathe in the water, just hold onto me, I know where we are."

More or less. She closed her eyes and tried to think, think where they'd been and which direction was what, where the stars had turned when last she'd seen them. And then she pulled, focusing the strength he'd mustered to keep them up, turned him in a specific direction. There'd been the shadow of an island on the horizon, just before the storm struck.

The distance seemed interminable, but the sky cooled to a disinterested gray sooner than she'd expected. The storm receded, as if disgusted with the world, and a blanket of steely fog rolled in instead. When her toes finally hit the rise of the island's beach, she all but shoved him forward toward the waves that would carry him all the way to the shore, her muscles giving out at last.

[Caelum]

The words she spoke grated on his ears, too mortal in comparison to that to which he was accustomed. Yet her words managed as well to act as grappling hooks, grasping onto a thick string of memory that worked to translate the language into comprehension. Mouth still filled with the acid of wind and salt, ozone and rain, he mumbled something that drowned as he had wanted to and the world blurred into the struggle of reaching the shore. Sideways, he thought, rather than up. Why was he trying so damned hard to go sideways instead of up?

Waves tumbled him, aided by the stranger's shove, scraping him upon the dark sand even as the sun winked, diffused and malevolent, through the fog the rain had become. It ghosted over bare flesh like a shroud, too cold even to shiver, and unknowing the vibrant beauty he appeared amidst all of this monochrome world. It felt as though there was lead in his bones, needles prickling up his spine, the elegant curve of a an almost winter colored horn digging into the sand. His mind was a miasma of miserable misunderstandings, and for a while he knew nothing but feeling and that feeling was bereft.

He would lay there forever, huddling and soul sick, failing to form prayers to his goddess because they kept fumbling, fractured where once favored.

[Nel Sayo]

His misery and self-loathing were interrupted by the tumble of a wave, which toppled the pale girl practically on top of him.

She sputtered and rolled, grasping handfuls of sand, and struggled to stay conscious. Stars popped behind her eyes, a wealth of exhaustion she couldn't have put to words. Swimming was one thing; swimming for two lives was different.

But she wouldn't stop. Wouldn't just lie there. A flash that rippled down her spine, into the core of her, jolting her to keep going, and the inside of her right wrist burned. Salt, she thought. Too much salt on the skin, though that had never been a problem. She shoved her sopping sleeves up to her elbows and rolled over onto her hands and knees, pushing towards her feet.

She grasped his shoulder and gave him a good, solid shake.

"Get up," she ground out. "Get up or I'll dig out your eyeballs."

Wouldn't kill him; he seemed to want that too much. Nel was nothing if not inventive. But she lingered over him, without really seeing him at all, waiting to see his eyes open, waiting for him to get up. To go on. Needed him to, for some reason, and she'd worry about that later, after she'd figured out where they were and where she could find a place to sleep safely. But in that moment, she just wanted him to get up.

[Caelum]

Up, she said, and he thought up instead of sideways. A memory of the beckoning blackness of the giant's depths swirled through him, offering solace, but a trickle of sunlight puddled into his eyes causing him to flinch. It hurt and so enough anger returned to cause him to wish to thumb his nose in Her face, to stand up despite that she had cast him down, to rise and walk instead of break and drown. Of course, he was already broken, and that bruising had little to do with the battered state of his body as he struggled over onto his hands and knees without opening his eyes.

Once on his feet, he wavered, salt stung eyes blinking owlishly down at the creature that had hauled him out of the sea. A violent shiver coursed through him, but he believed it had more to do with this dying season than the actual weather. He did not yet know he had washed up onto the shore of the City of the Dead. Befitting, he would find it later, and sink deeper into bitterness.

"Don't touch my eyes," he informed her, words harsh and feeling too large in his mouth. The syllables clamored together in his head and he hated them, hated this language with which he was stuck.

[Nel Sayo]

"Don't be such a baby," she shot back, grabbing him about the waist when he wavered, and walking him up the beach.

Wasn't about to let him just die there, not after all that work. Probably should've. Sy would've told her to leave him; he would probably have been right. But Nel had one of those hearts -- the easily breakable kind.

She shouldered underneath his arm, and when her cheek brushed his skin, she realized that was all he wore. Just his skin, and nothing else. She'd had the good sense, at least, to almost-drown in pants. Everything just got more difficult.

"Sink me," she muttered.

And then she turned her attention on the landscape. And breath failed her for a moment. She staggered, caught her balance before they both toppled over, and kept going, but now her eyes were scattered across the island they trod upon. She knew where they were. And had no idea where to go from here.

[Cayenne]

Black Rock's shores were hardly hospitable. Some islands held white beaches, some a dark brown, but usually... each had sand. Black Rock's sand, if it was that, was like coarsely chopped rocks. It was stony and gritty, dark and grey and gloomy. It was harsh against their skin. All they could see in either direction on the coast was miles of the coarse dark beach. If they chose to go upwards, they'd encounter a rise, but could crest over the rocky dune to see what looked like row upon row of plain, similar buildings.

But in the distance, rising out of the mist, that enveloped the island was a lighthouse, its eerie light rotating slowly, casting its pale glow out over the water and the rest of the island. But before the pair of castaways had any chance to go anywhere, a pack of ghostly children, yelling and screaming and clearly engaged in some sort of game of tag. They swarmed over the dune, some of the children looking like they were hardly old enough to run. They seemed to spot the Konti and the Ethaefal, and stampeded towards them as one, all of them calling questions. They were followed by a fair-haired woman wrapped in a shawl, just walking along the beach after the children. But she was hardly noticeable in comparison to the ghosts, despite the fact she was clearly alive.

"Who are you?"

"Where did you come from?"

"When did you get here?"

"Why are you here?"

"What are you?"

"What are your names?"

"That is enough," the woman spoke up then, coming within range. Her voice was soft, quiet, and yet it cut through the higher-pitched calls of the children like a hot knife through butter. She was only of average height, and clearly human, despite her pale hair and eyes. Her arms were wrapped around her under the shawl, and at her words, the myriad of ghosts pulled back from Nel and Caelum only to crowd around the woman. A mother? A sister? A babysitter? "How did you get here?"

[Nel Sayo]

A shiver touched the base of Nel's spine, rocketing in either direction to drill into her bones, and then she saw the flicker and dance of the ghost children. Instinctively, she stepped in front of the man she'd rescued, blinking exhausted blue eyes down at the sudden swarm of fragile forms.

She expected to be terrified, but wasn't. Perhaps because they were children and Nel wasn't much more than that herself; perhaps because there were so many of them that she wasn't immediately able to differentiate them. Perhaps because they asked so many questions that she didn't have time to really think about it.

She was laughably smaller than Caelum, so that she stood before him as some measure of protection may have seemed silly. But of course he wasn't wearing anything, either, and Nel would've said it was just more...to get the point across, really.

Tucking the spill of pale, wet tangled hair behind her ears, she directed her attention down to the ghostlings, trying to summon up acceptable answers through the weariness and the dread still lingering at the idea of being stranded on a dead man's island.

"I'm Nel. From the Sea. We just washed in. Our ship got caught in a storm. I'm a sailor." She answered each question readily and swiftly, the way she would've wanted to be answered, and Nel was a great lover of questions.

Sure, she altered it a little bit because she had no idea what Caelum was or where he came from, but he looked harmless enough. Not that she'd really looked at him. He looked naked and drowning enough. That line of thought got cut swiftly off by the human's voice, which summon's Nel's eyes upward with a snap and a blink.

"I'm sorry," she said miserably. Because Sy always said it was better to begin every new acquaintance with an apology, just in case. "There was a storm, and we got knocked off our ship and had to swim here."