Cousins of Light and Dark (Caelum)

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

53 Day of Spring Year 510 AV

The sun was finishing its doward journey when Taith stepped began to head down towards the water at the base of the cliff. He had spent the day behaving like an Akalak. He had trained and try to keep his mind off his losses, and his memories. He had hoped as the days went by his memories would sort themselves out but it wasn't turning out that way.

His handsome face with its dark hair, full lips and silver eyes, was set in a inpassioned looked as he walked. Each day he felt himself becoming more and more like a Akalak as he walked around, but each night he returned to his true self. He wanted that now.

His dark skin seemed to reflect the light as he walked but not like it did at night when he seemed to glow. That was only the lest of what he missed, but he couldn't clearly grasp what he truely missed. It was there but seemed to hang out just beyond his memory. With the rising of his god he would be able to touch some of those memories again.

He had begun to learn the rules. Durning the day his Akalak side dominated limiting his mind and speak from its true life and speach. Then again even in his real form. The beautiful pale figure who glowed in the moon light. With beautiful flowing hair and horns. When his eyes changed from silver to molten liquid. Even then it that breathtaking form he was denied the true speach. He couldn't say his true name.

He was so much more then the Akalak Taithrosa, he was a child of the Gods. He had served them, and they had given him his real name. A name of power and of beauty, but he couldn't speak it. He couldn't see his god except when his image arose in the sky. He was banished once again to the mortal realm.

He kept his emotions undercontrol. The name Syadai kept coming into him mind when ever he gave into emmotion, and it was a scary memory someone who had scared him when he had lived as an Akalak, but the memory of who he was was hidden from Taith. It was as if a door had been closed on that specific memory.

So it was that with these thoughts he made his way to the beaches at the base of the cliff.

[Caelum]

The beach was already occupied. A lanky Drykas, windmarks curling and coiling not unlike Rak'keli's winged serpents marking his skin. They burst into a needle-fine sketching of a stylized sun pattern about his right eye, visible when he glanced up through shards of bark colored hair, loosed from the intricate weave of knotted braids resting against the nape of his neck. A thin ring of defiant gold circled each pupil even as his eyes narrowed, breath shocking swiftly in at the sight of Leth's ethaefal.

He was crouched on the shoreline and appearing to be collecting sand dollars, digging them up from the brackish sand and rinsing them off in the eddying waters. The waterfall's mist fogged around him, breeches tied up to his knees and sleeves rolled up to elbows. Shells. Starfish. Sand dollars. He had been thinking too hard, perhaps, and too long on someone well missed.

Now he was frozen, watching the stranger brethren approach, unable or unwilling to move.

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

As the sun had set Taith had found himself changed to his true form. His brilliant white skin seemed to glow with the Light of Leth. His dark hair had lightened to the beautiful bluish silver. His liquid silver eyes seemed more alive. He paused briefly surprised by the figure kneeling in the water. He hadn't actually ever seen anyone collecting sand dollars or any type of shell.

He was to new to the world, and the few memories he could safely look at while an Akalak were of a land bound city, and at night when his memories had nothing to do with water.

He walked closer to tatooed man. "Greetings this evening. What are you doing?" He asked his silver eyes curious as he looked at the collection. Taith hadn't meet any other Etheafel an so did realizes the man before him was a brother.

[Caelum]

"Collecting sand dollars." Caelum's mouth shifted, something sardonic caught in it's twist and he rose out of his crouch. Water dripped like liquid starlight as he lifted a hand from it, displaying the rough circular shape of the sea creature. It's edges were delicately pressed between his palms before with a lithe twist of his hips and the cock of an elbow the sand dollar was tossed far back into the deep. Fine job of collecting he was doing.

Leth's avatar was considered out of the corners of suspicious eyes while he waded out of the water, bare feet tracking up the sand. Something tight in him loosened and he sighed.

"Caelum," he introduced himself. "How long have you been here?" He did not mean the beach, nor did he mean Riverfall. He meant the world, incidentally, and make no mistake.

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

The Ethaefel wasn't to surprised about the suspicious look he recieved, in his nightly form he was different then the recidence of Riverfall. His hair and his horns made him stand out in the black haired community. His lunious skin was the final differences that occured. His gentle glow that paleness was so different from the rest of the Akalak population.

He watched as the man came out of the water throwing the sand dollors back behind him. He raised a thick eyebrow his molten silver eyes looking with confussion, briefly, at the action. Was it some type of strange ritual that they practiced. He didn't say anything about it though.

He was stuck by the question. There was a seriousness to the question and it seemed almost as if he was trying to communicate something. Taith had realized there were others of his kind who wandered the world. Luckly for both of them the answer to when he arrived in the world and at Riverfall were one and the same. "About Fifty Days ago." He said his eyes growing soft as he remebered the peace and tranquility he had experienced before the fall. He looked back with a curious look in his eyes. "And yourself." He suspected that there was a mystery here that he should understand, but didn't have all of the clues.

[Caelum]

"That's rough," Caelum's eyebrows rose while he shoved his hands into the ragged pockets of his breeches. A lean hip knocked out, slumping him indolently down. A resistant ring of golden light circled the pupils of his eyes, but other than that and perhaps an exoticness of accent that had little to do with this world, he was Drykas skin out.

"Seven years," he finally answered, still watching Leth's brethren with wary eyes.

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

The liquid silver looked into the eyes of the man who was staring at him. The golden ring did seem odd, other worldly even. The man spoke little but there was something about his accent, they way he spoke. His accent was actually similar to Taithrosa's. As if these worlds were lesser words.

His eyes looked intently at those of the normal looking Drykas. He himself looked normal in his Akalak form, but when his god came into the sky he would change to his true form. This man though wasn't changed and it was night. Maybe he one of the chosen of Leth, but of his beloved.

He tilted his head his crystal white horns glimmering in the moonlight. "Are you like me?" He asked wishing he could once again speak the ancient and holy tongue. "Are you a child of the heavens, a son of Syna? Like I am a worldly bound son of Leth?" He asked briefly hopeing that he wasn't alone in the world.

[Caelum]

"Yeah, I was Syna's," he answered. The line of his mouth grew darker, but the emotions behind it were not directed at Leth's scion. They held sorrow, instead, with a bitterness that was now almost old. Unconsciously, he rubbed at the scars at his wrists where chains, where manacles had rubbed them raw. There were chains of many kind.

He left footprints behind him in the sand as he approached the stranger, drawing to a halt in order extend a hand in greeting. Riverfall and his journey in the Spires had left him emotionally torn, and he was even now considering riding out into the Sea of Grass to learn if there, where he had been before ascension well over five hundred years before, there was something yet to be learned, to be found.

He wanted to find Lillis. He wanted to find what all he needed to heal the heaves. He wanted a great many things, and one of this was to know whether this brother, of sorts, would welcome him or despise him for his forsaken state.

"Welcome," he offered with no small amount of irony. To the world.

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

He extended his hand in return sad almost that their greeting was done in the simplistic and uncultured language instead of the language they both had spoken not so long ago. He bowed his head in acknowledgement of the greeting and welcome. "I am known as Taithrosa Eldytia." He said quitely. He noticed that Caelum had refered to himself as a former follower of Syna.

Taith could understand that. He himself had wondered a few time why Leth would allow this. He had been faithful and grated his rest. Why should he suffer, but Taith was begining to settle down. His mind was still chaos but he believed in the love of his god.

"Brother please tell are there many like us?" Taith asked motioning to see if Caelum would rather walk while the talked or if he would rather sit. "It has been such a confusing time, and any advice you can share?"

[Caelum]

At Taithrosa's gesture, Caelum inclined his head, heavy with the coil of drykas braids, and lolled around to fall into easy step with this earth-bound servant of Leth. Since losing Lillis, escaping the soul's toil of slavery and being summoned by the goddess Caiyha, his attitude had undergone a shift. The bitterness, the pain, they had distilled themselves into a diamond hard kernal buried deep within his bones. It allowed him to function and made room for his thoughts to perform a more reasonable egress.

"Only one that I've met," he admitted, regret in his voice for this man if not for himself. He had had possessed no urges to seek out other ethaefal and, in fact, had done a great deal to avoid many potential meetings. "A Leth's son, like yourself, going by the name Nimvhalis. As for advice..." He trailed off, dark eyes glancing at Taithrosa from their corners. A breath was taken to suppress the ache in his bones. "Find a purpose," he said at last. "Find a mission. Find someone or something to love. It's all there is, really."