Chase Away the Chill [Caelum]

[Seodai]

Date: 91 Fall 511AV Seodai would never be certain just how he managed to make it all the way back from that forsaken beach to the door of the clinic. It was a bumbling journey that earned him more than a few scrapes, but he could not feel the pain of it. His body was all but numb, his time spent immersed in icy waters refusing to relinquish hold over his slender frame. His blues were an ugly blue by the time he rapped weakly at the door, his teeth chattering. The water that had fallen from darkened curls was cold enough to ice the silken strands, now, and Seo was still without his shirt altogether. Worse than all of this, however, was the weight of the emotional turmoil Seodai felt. Another reality resided inside his mind, now, another truth. Another world, filled with anger and fear and war and blood and death. Filled with Kova, whom the memory of alone quaked him to his very center. Her smile, her perfect sense of justice, her kindness. Her willingness to sacrifice herself, the bloody mess that had been her end. That, of course, became an angry swell the likes of which Seodai, the Denvali farmer, had never known. He wasn't equipped to inherit the emotions of Melchior, from an age before. Melchior was stronger than Seodai had ever been, and this remembering was killing him. "Noc!" Seodai just managed, a hoarse cry, a plea for help. When the door tugged open, it wasn't Noc at all there, to be his hero yet again, but the stranger who wasn't so strange anymore. When Seodai slumped into the door frame, it was in relief.

[Caelum]

"Noc isn't here," Caelum answered. It was not the same man whom Seodai had met beneath a funeral pall sky mere days previous. Only it was, of course, just the sun that had swallowed the others eyes had shrunk to chips and flecks in a velvet dark set in a face belonging to a man long dead. A man, in fact, one Seodai had been killed. Once upon a time. These were the stories their souls could tell, twice told tales traded in the newborn winter on the edge of the world. A curse dropped from his mouth as the farmer's state was taken in. Hands littered with windmarks, another form of fable, reached to pull Seodai in. The clinic door was thrust shut behind them both and need spiked and stuttered in Caelum's limbs. The Drykas snaked a strong arm about the younger man's shoulders, leading him with unerring support and a competence reminiscent of Rak'keli's priest. Their steps tolled, battering soft against the creaking floorboards lining the interior hall. Seodai was led not to an exam room or to the parlor, but instead right into the kitchen that was warm from the oven fire and splendid with the scent of fresh baked cookies. Caelum kicked out a chair, nudging it right up to the roaring wood stove. It was into the chair he nudged Seodai, taking the blanket he had whipped from the back of the foyer settee over his shoulders. "What happened to you?"

[Seodai]

"S-swimming." It was a ridiculous answer, really, given that it was nearing the middle of the night, and Winter had staked her claim on Denval. It was his answer, though, before his jaw clenched shut, near violent shuddering taking hold of him. Numb fingers clutched dumbly at the edge of the blanket, scarcely managing to keep it snug about his quaking form. The heat from the stove was painful; intense, stubborn heat that drove the chill away from his limbs in sharp daggers. As he began to thaw, his strength went with the cold, and Seodai slumped precariously on the edge of his chair. As soon as his tongue was loosed, however, words fell from his lips like water. "It was too much, Caelum. The dreams and it was like drowning, and I couldn't think, and it was just so... hot. I just wanted to clear my head, but the water made it all go away." His words were hardly perfect, interspersed with the chattering of teeth and the occasional jerk of his too cold form, even as the heat forced it away. One particular shudder caused him to lose his grip on half of the blanket, and it slid over his bare, paled shoulder. He was too clumsy to retrieve it himself. "And w-when I came out, Lysander was there. And I kissed him, but it wasn't anything like I thought. He wasn't himself anymore. He was her. Petching Kova. And I wasn't me. All these dreams, they made sense. The war, all the death. I loved her. God, it hurts to even think of her now, I loved her so. But he..." Seodai gave a great sniffle, and wiped his runny nose on the edge of the blanket. His big blue eyes were wide, and bright. Caelum did not know Seodai well enough to comprehend how absolutely out of character his behavior was. The sunsinger couldn't possibly know that the mellow farm boy had likely never been as unhinged in his life as he was in that moment. His emotions were raw and convoluted, a mixture of his own and those of a lifetime before. He couldn't untangle them, couldn't find himself in them, and he felt like he was drowning, still. "He was someone so different. He had magic, C-caelum. Crazy magic. And he fought for her, and ..." Seodai paused, staring ahead but not seeing the room in the clinic at all. He was elsewhere, reliving the memories he had been given in a brush of lips on the sandy beach. His lips trembled from something other than cold, now, and the moisture in his eyes fell in unabashed tears along his cheeks. He didn't seem to notice. "He lost so many people he loved. But he did it. The stone, she wanted it. And he brought it to her, and it was worth all the blood and death and... and then, gods..." Seodai fumbled to wipe at his own cheeks, those tearful eyes darkening, turning to glower at the stove. Everything was tragically raw, emotion easy to read in each pained expression. His profound hurt became a gut-wrenching sort of anger and loss, and he stumbled over words for a moment before he could actually continue. "And then Odalah destroyed her." The eyes that suddenly turned to Caelum, as if seeing him there for the first time, were wide and red-rimmed. "Suvan destroyed her," he nearly spat, teeth grinding over the words. "Barbaric, ignorant, cruel bastards..." Seodai ranted into the palms that suddenly came up to scrub at his own face, as if he could claw his way out of this reliving, out of this knowledge. He couldn't even put into words the swell of emotion he felt as the concept of a never ending war became so very real to him. He just saw her face, her smiling face, and then her bloody end. It shredded something inside of him, and Seodai bit back a groan beneath the burden of who he had once been. "They destroyed her, Caelum. And do you know the only difference.... the only difference between Ivak and Melchior?" By now Seodai had found his feet, wavering only slightly as he turned his back to the stove, facing the no doubt bewildered newcomer. "Ivak had the power to make him pay. To make them pay." Seodai trembled, but it wasn't with cold any longer. He clutched helplessly at his wild curls, and paced as much as his feeble steps would allow. Those days after her death were choking him, now, tightening his throat and robbing him of the breath necessary to stay alive. He couldn't bear up beneath it, and his mind raced wildly, frantically. And then, suddenly, Seodai stilled. He froze entirely for a long moment, and then with a humorless laugh that was more desperate than amused, he dropped back into the chair, just as his strength gave out. "And of all the things to revisit the world as, of all the things I could have become..." Seodai said, blurring the lines between Melchior and himself for the first time. He lifted his big blues to affix Caelum in them, all the confusion and misery of the world reflected there. "It was a damned Denvali."

[Caelum]

I am sick with wanting and it's evil and it's daunting how I let everything I cherish lay to waste I am lost in greed this time, it's definately me I point fingers but there's no one there to blame Seodai's story laid siege upon the night. It caught Caelum like an insect in amber. Tanroa cupped him like water in Her hands, unbreathing, while Seodai ranted and raved like the madman in the mirror. He watched, absorbed, while the younger man rode to his feet to pace and range through the cage of the present, words warped by fury and grief and thereby creating a language that was at once uncommunicative and universal. The stove fire spat at their shadows, shattering them across the counter where bread was left rise and children climbed in search for treats. Caelum blinked and time stuttered, jumped ahead like a horse beneath spurs. The wind of memory lashed at him and he stepped back, sank down, hands reaching for the blanket shrugged from his patient's shoulders. It felt heavy in his hands but he gathered it up and by the time Seodai had relocated his chair, was driven back into it, Caelum was there to draw the blanket over his shoulders once more. "That's right," he said quietly, hunting up the words, shoving them into the shape of a sentence. He sank down, eyes catching Seodai's, waiting for those hydrangea blues to to click. To register. To hold against the surprisingly stable regard he was offering. "You're Denvali, Seodai. Defend yourself." temporary is my time ain't nothin on this world that's mine except the will I found to carry on free is not your right to choose it's answering what's asked of you to give the love you find until it's gone Hot water released licks of steam into the firelight. The fat bellied pot was black as their recollections, but it was forged for these coals. Caelum dipped the bucket into the scald again and again, carting it to the copper hip tub he had dragged out from beneath the pantry shelf. It was lined with a thick fold of homespun linen before he began to fill it. A mug had been dipped first into the boil and poured across the arrangement of leaves and spices he had selected with utmost care from the neat labels scrawled upon Cian Noc's kitchen medical kit. Rose hips and rue. Chamomile and cloves. The purification of orange root shaving and a handful of petals bunched from the bulb of a daffodil. This and mint steeped as he worked, disappearing for mere breaths before returning with a stack of thick, clean towels taken from the below stairs linen closet. They existed for just these exact reasons and Caelum well knew it, having pried and peeped into every cranny of the converted garrison in his short days here. "The heart and mind need as much if not more defense than the body, Seodai," he said while netting out the tea steep. It was dumped into a second, clean mug for himself, thinking a bit of heat and calm could go a long way for both of them. The Lacun mark on his chest, as of yet still fresh, ached. Every divine hand ever laid upon him ached, in truth, all of them with need which only left Nikali's chain struggling beneath the blasphemy of what corruption lay upon their city. "Vengeance, hate, these aren't natural conditions of your soul," and here he spoke soft, setting the mug aside after dosing it with a stiff shot of degtine and a touch of honey. Love knotted braids loosed from their Drykas weave as he returned to where his patient sat beside the fire. He reached down to draw the farmer up, head bowing and mouth settling into a thin line. "Are your hands working? No?" Unlikely, still frozen to bits, so he raised his eyebrows in a healer's matter of fact manner before reaching down to begin assisting Seodai out of his frost and mud slathered pants. "Love is real," he went on, Rak'keli's opalescent light glinted tarnished off the back of his hand. "Focus on that. What do you love, Seodai of Denval? Melchior of Alahea? What and who? Tell me. What and who and why?" Once Seodai's pants were shucked off, Caelum nudged him toward the steaming tub, intending to help him climb in. It was a corporeal reflection of the healthy tethers he was attempting to coax Seodai into using to tie himself back into a soul's safe harbor. oh something has me (something has me) acting like someone I don't wanna be something has me (something has me) acting like someone I know isn't me ill with want and poisoned by this ugly greed * The Avett Brothers, Ill With Want.

[Seodai]

All the while Caelum served him so kindly, so diligently, Seodai stared past him. The wall held his most astute attentions, if only because he didn't see it anymore at all. The more he thought of, spoke of Melchior and the life he had lived, the more he remembered. A million and one faces, places, and feelings. It was the brush of Caelum's fingertips, which felt like fire against his cold flesh, which finally nudged him forward, broke his reverie. "Ahh," he hissed as he stepped into the water. It felt miserably hot to a body so cold, but he was obedient. Trusting the healer to make him better, with the simplicity of the oft ill, Seodai sank fully into that aching embrace. For a long moment he didn't speak. He stared at his own fingertips, still blue beneath the nails. After a few moments of this, the piercing hurt had abated and Seodai began to feel his limbs unwind, his lanky frame thaw. He reached for the edge of the tub, where it climbed upwards to an arch just behind his head. The line of his jaw found rest against his own clinging knuckles, and with damp hair clinging to his brow, Seodai finally attempted to respond. "I don't know." It sounded hopeless and tired, his meager efforts. He shifted, the tub too small to accommodate the length of him entirely comfortably. When Caelum moved about in the dim light, blue Denvali eyes followed him. Upon his return, the young farmer tried again. "I feel as if there is more conviction in one of his memories than in my entire life. I cannot... I cannot feel the things I feel around him. I love... Theo. Bala. The farm," Seodai said, struggling through images in his own mind to find the answers. "I love Syllke. But these things are all... they're peace, and all of his hurt and anger swallow them up. He loved..." Seodai paused, blowing out across his lips. Such a simple question did not, apparently, mean a simple answer. "Kova. Kova above all. His family. Alahea. Magic. He dreamed of peace. But everything... everything he loved was destroyed. Suvan destroyed everything. Denval devoured his brothers. I can't... He despised the very ground I work, in love, every day. He'd have despised me." Big, blue, imploring eyes flickered up to Caelum's own. "It's too much. Too much."

[Caelum]

A three legged stool was plunked down beside the hip tub and Caelum dropped into it. A soft worn rag was offered his patient in one hand and a rough cake of mild soap in the other. There were flecks of green and hyacinth in the soap cake, marking it as one of Cian Noc's special concoctions. "Finish the tea," he instructed in a voice that remained glass smooth, opaque. This was a man that while aloof the majority of his life could be transparent in the holy dim of this kitchen. He resembled the horned creature with whom Seodai had crossed paths on the gray sky road little. This body was shorter and more mortal. The sun kept trying to prick through the brown of his irises, however, hinting at the celestial gold that seized them upon sunrise. Once his patient obediently finished the tea, Caelum plucked the mug from his hands to exchange for the cloth and soap. He slid it onto the kitchen counter, just within reach, and exchanged it for the full one he had steeped for himself. The aroma was inhaled, eyes closing, before he took a deep swallow to let the heat and peace sink into him. "Don't you see?" He spoke at last, eyes opening with a direct regard. Pieces of him were beginning to poke out from the fog of holy thrall. "You wanted peace, Melchior. Peace and love and you are now in the exactly right place to reconcile and so obtain them. The gods heard you." A musical clattered ghosted through the window. The wind chimes were answering the rustling trees. Memory flashed like a star's wink across his mind, searing and explosive. He drank deep. "I hear you," he knew now to add. A strange scythe drew his smile with self mockery. "I knew you then. We are all given and given again the chances to take what we've wanted."

[Seodai]

The tea was hot, probably too hot to drink down, but Seodai did it if only to have the cup out of his hands again. It warmed him from the inside out, settling heavily into a stomach twisted with nausea. When he was given the cloth and soap to hold instead, he was too grateful to object. He wanted to curl into a miserable ball in the slowly cooling water, but Caelum was distracting him instead. He accepted the items, but only held them as he rolled to face the ceiling again. Through the too long fringe of curls that needed a trim, he stared, seeing the wood above, and a lifetime before. "Peace in Denval," he retorted at last, blowing through his lips. "It is as if the gods are mocking. Cruel. Aquiras may just as well find peace in the arms of Sagallius." It was miserable, the truth of who he had become, and the more he thought about it, the worst he felt. Seodai rubbed the soap against the cloth, just to feign some sort of obedience to the implied request to wash himself. It was half-hearted and ineffective, but he did it. A few specks transferred to the cloth, and he stared at them, until his mind latched onto something else Caelum had said, almost as an afterthought. "What? You knew me? When I was Melchior?" Big blue eyes turned to scrutinize Caelum, as if he might remember him somehow. The truth of it was, though, the blue eyes that turned to the ethaefal belonged to Seodai the Denvali farmer, and he was only borrowing Melchior's memories. It was an imperfect tome, with more gaps than information at present. Caelum still appeared to him the man who had, on more than one occasion now, proven to be a savior to him.

[Caelum]

Caelum choked on his medicine. The tea had accidentally been inhaled, clogging up his lungs until he was forced to cough it up, force it out. A fist folded against his mouth and he pushed up to his feet, leaving his mug behind with a clatter on the corner of the table. Heavy steps carried him across the kitchen floor, the firelight throwing itself off the copper bottoms of kettles and sussing out the flakes of gold half buried in his eyes. The bucket he had used to cart the water was lifted and dipped again into the steaming pot. He winced a little as drops splashed across the backs of his hands and turned back to his patient. "Of you," he admitted. "Your name feels familiar. Nothing is entirely clear for me, Seodai." He jerked his chin for Seodai to lean back in the hip tub, heavy, Drykas braids rustling against the collar of his shirt. When Seodai complied, he hefted the bucket to pour the hot water in and restore the healing heat of the farmer's bath. "Syna sent me," he met summer sky eyes, his brow wrinkling as the empty bucket was set down. An absent, healer's hand reached, taking up Seodai's to spread the young man's fingers out and bow his head in study of their tips and nails, seeking signs of irreversible freeze. "Then and now. I failed then," a thing he had neither confessed nor reconciled. Not, at least, as this lonely outpost stranded on the ends of the world.

[Tabarnac]

XP Award! Caelum XP Award: Cooking +1; Interrogation +1; Observation +1; Medicine +3; Herbalism +3; Philosophy +2; Persuasion +2 Seodai XP Award: Storytelling +5; Philosophy +3; Interrogation +1 Additional Notes: You actually fit a fair bit of skill work into eight posts, kiddos. Caelum, the Medicine comes from the bedside manner and caretaking. The herbalism is for the tea, the bathing satchet, and such. Also, I’m perfectly willing to award past life lore; I just need to know what you want specifically and then I’ll add it to your awards. Just let me know! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions or concerns. Keep writing!