shouldering the sky. (charon/baku/tabernac)

[Caelum]

Author's NoteTimestamp: 57th Day of Spring, 510 AV Location: Sea of Grass, roughly three days ride north of Riverfall Purpose: Acquirement of the first, positive gnosis mark of Rak'keli. Brother, I am fire Surging under the ocean floor. I shall never meet you, brother-- Not for years, anyhow; Maybe thousands of years, brother. Then I will warm you, Hold you close, wrap you in circles, Use you and change you-- Maybe thousands of years, brother. - Carl Sandburg; Kin. There were no trees to shoulder the sky. Cyphrus sprawled beneath the bowl of the heavens in an endless rush of quivering grasses and rolling hills. It was hundreds of leagues filled with wind that wept and whirled, pirouetted and pounced. It might gather a person up in it's lofty arms, vanishing them and scattering them, and allow it to be blessing or curse, the decision dependent on point of view. The wind wrapped hands of memory about him, clutching at limbs with phantom fingers in an attempt to fling him from the back of his mount. They were failing and he drank down the wind instead, swallowing the scent of the sunset he was racing towards. Syna's star had exploded across the horizon, the conflagration of color flailing against the sky and calling to him. It was three days since he had set out from Riverfall. Having been beleaguered upon the majestic city's docks, he had reluctantly resigned himself to yet another road block. The first had come in the form of the goddess Caiyha, summoning him amongst the bloodwoods, the very proximity of her having rubbed old wounds yet, perhaps, poured carbolic into some of them. It lingered, the sensation, in the waterfall mists of Riverfall, the surrounds of the Sea of Grass a dreadful weight upon his consciousness. Somehow, the two merged, catching fire inside of him until he plunged out of the city and into the land he knew he had last walked an eternity ago. Did it remember his footsteps? Did it recall the stretch of his shadow spilling over it? And if it did, if this earth here was sentient, nudged towards an amniotic awareness by centuries of blood saturating it's soil, did it remember him better than he himself did? The sun vanished below the edge of the world and he toppled to the ground, using a saddlebag as a pillow, in the windmarked body of that last life. Vega, relieved of tack, grazed through the grass, the crickets and the cicadas raising their songs to spit and blend together while the stars poked their way through the sky and into sight. He lay there, watching the constellations emerge, and wondered what it was he sought in this place. Yet as if conjured by the thought, a memory washed over him, filled with yearning, filled with fear that the woman in it was dead and gone as the Drykas healer whose skin he laid in beneath the moonlight. - - - Dying light filtered through the curtains, lighting the spill of her hair on fire against his pillow. He allowed his hand to trail down, knowing that to play with fire meant being burned, and slid his fingers over the smooth curve of her shoulder to touch upon the radial vein nestled in the crook of her elbow. If he closed his eyes he could see the murmurous metronome of blood being pushed through every artful limb, gathering now in the slope of her breastbone to flush oxygen to the injured cells the practice blade had ruptured. Bending now to ghost his lips over that nightbloom of color, he understood what had pumped fistfulls of adrenaline into his system as this girl began tacking off the charts, lips fading to the shade of the sky even as used every tool in his medic's arsonal to keep her stable. Love. It could make a steady man dizzy and a strong one weak. It could take a good man and blacken his honor and drag a bad man into the light. Love, the physician knew, could do a lot of things; it both saved and murdered more people than a physician ever did. It threw punches harder than a bare-knuckle boxer's right-hook and could spring and quick-step circles around you better than underdog looking for a hole in your defense. It stopped the breath. It bloodied your mouth. It gave your heart motivation to beat. And as he felt the swell of her flesh under his hand and laid his mouth again over her's, he knew love also drove a physician to break his hands against men of the same flesh and blood he toiled over in surgery. "Caelum." A bare whisper as her body arched against him, half in sleep and half in passion, and he closed his eyes let the sound of her voice heal the hurts inside him his colleagues could not touch. There was a burn in his muscles, endlessly trained by constant journeying, always riding at break neck speeds so as to feel like flying. Smooth, fluid, lifting her so that he could slip into the cradle of her body just one more time and feel the walls of her life surround him. The art of healing was the study his existence. The human body was part of that. It's wonders, it's powers, how and where it failed. A delicate shell a pound of pressure could break, but only if applied by the right angle, with the right edge; and in parallel, that same angle and edge could also fix. Heal. Remove deaded or mutated tissue so that the fresh, newborn cells could emerge to replace them. Only he didn't know how to do a biopsy of the soul. He swallowed her moan, cupped the lush curve of her breast in his hand; and he thought to himself, years of long nights spent dreaming of this. Napping on a thin cot in an empty supply room, lullabied by the drone of footsteps and breaths, screams and calm, shouted demands for this medicine or that saw and the slamming of the university hospital's door opening and closing and opening again for the stream of the dead, the dying, and the injured. Those nights spent within white washed walls, sweating or shivering depending on the world's mood, or shouting down terrified boys pressed into guerilla warfare of the streets, of the docks, of the piratical world as he fished arrow heads out of the flesh of their comrades, shoved his fingers into the spouting artery of another innocent bystander, knowing that nothing but a prayer would bring the proper supplies to him on time. Hold on, hold on. Damnit, just hold on. One more minute, damn you. Damn you! I said breathe! The thrust of braided fists against a heart, the feel of nostrils pinched between sweat-soaked fingers. Breathe. The gleam of a whale bone needle as he tapped off the air bubbles, listened one last time to a silent chest cavity, and with a strength that had nothing to do with muscle and bone slamming it into the heart of the woman he couldn't remember not loving. A jerk of his hips, a spill of his hair, as light and golden as it had once been, and the force gravity left him falling into her. Twisted sheets he wasn't sure when last he'd slept between. A tangle of limbs he knew he had never had before. The warm, honey drift of laughter in his ear as she curled in, rubbing her hands down his shoulders, and went soft and still and safe. Gods, safe, he thought. Please. Anything. Just keep her safe. Because he was not so much a fool as to think that she couldn't be taken from him tommorow; and maybe one day he wouldn't come running fast enough, his finger wouldn't be big enough to plug the hole, his needles puncturing too late, his supplies never coming in. His dead were already too great in number. - - - The scent of sweet meadow and sourgrass tickled his nostrils, a knee bent and the whole of him still reclining on the spring-warmed earth, bursting with it's liberation from the barren grip of winter. Lillis De'Nerys had been the one to teach him, ultimately, that not just anyone but anything was capable of being healed. A body. A mind. A soul. A heaven. He would find her. The scars of chains marked his wrists, a constant reminder of what had ripped them apart and cast him far off the map of his own quest, of their own impossible, impractical goals. Only, maybe, they were not so impossible after all. Who but the son of the sun, after all, could be capable of shouldering the sky?

[Charon]

Somehow driven from the city and into the once familiar landscapes of tall grass and gently rolling hills, Caelum found himself in that crossroads of wakeful consciousness and soothing slumber. Thoughts and memories collided with the force of tumultuous tides created by the trademark winds of the Sea of Grass. The air rushed through tall fingers of grass, whisked around the hooves and legs of the recently unladen Vega, traveled toward the unexpecting Ethaefal and dashed into his lungs, filling them an unfiltered sense of life.

A sense of life was a precious luxury, a prized possession for most and an object of pursuit for many. This world, however, had an uncanny way of counter balancing the pursuit of life with the pursuit of taking it or damaging it by so many. It was only natural that during a race toward a goal shared by so many different people, cultures, and creatures that a conflict of interest would arise contact would be made. Lives lost and blood shed were often the result of this contact and the Sea of Grass was not unfamiliar with these results. This land had seen many battles--some open skirmishes between bands of fighters, some silent murders of both guilty and innocent souls, some not even physical battles at all. After these bloody conflicts life continues and the land perpetually exists following whatever ends are realized. It is not those fallen in battle that perpetuate this existence, however, but rather those that survive and make the effort to repair what was lost. The ones who heal the wounded and make every effort to save the dying souls are the same ones left shouldering the sky that bears witness to all the lives unfolding beneath it.

That sense of life that was pushed through Caelum's lungs seemed to find its way into his mind as he lie there with his back on the ground and his face open toward the looming sky. Through his dreams and memories of lives lost and the effort expended to save them, a new sense of loss crept into his sleeping recollections. This was the loss of lives he knew knew, souls he never touches, and faces he never saw. This was the loss of the sacrificed Akalak defenders, the unlucky Drykas caravans, and even the quelled aggressors of many varieties of creatures. The loss of innocent lives and guilty souls now filled the lungs of the Ethaefal with every unconscious breath he drew. The lives of acquaintances lost burdened his mind with memories while the lives of unknown victims filled his lungs and heart with an alien weight never before felt in his chest. This was not love or any other feeling toward these souls but simply a ever growing mass coagulating on the lungs and heart of a newly burdened healer.

This new load hung within his chest causing a sensation of being pinned in his position on the ground. It was not the memories of loved ones and innocents being wronged that caused the undue stress but rather the the feeling of the other souls that were looming around him and finding their way into his body. The Zith killed by the Akalak or by others of their own kind found a place within Caelum's heart and lungs. The glassbeaks slain by young groups of Akalak boys trying to prove their worth to their community had nestled into their new niche saddled against the Ethaefal's soul. It was these past lives and ghostly souls that rushed in with the breezing air. The weight was immense and was rapidly becoming heavier. It was becoming difficult to breathe as the lung cavities, though filling properly, felt was if they could no longer shoulder the massive burden they were suffering.

Through the growing feeling of suffocation, Caelum finally snapped awake. Sweat had been beading on his forehead and arms and when his eyes jerked open the rivulets found their way into their corners, stinging them slightly. The first image he saw was that of the sky bearing down on his face and closing. The stars were closing in on him and the clouds had parted to make a clear path. The air was rushing down upon his face instead of brushing against it and it was then that Caelum realized whatever force he felt within his chest must have come from the sky itself. No familiar power could have brought the sky down upon him in such a fashion. Something unnatural was occurring and in his current state it was too difficult to determine how it was happening.

Caelum retained full feeling throughout his body but lacked the strength and energy required to move anything but his limbs. His chest still felt laden with a massive weight pinning him down and his eyes were unclear and stung with what he assumed was sweat as his breaths slowed and his nerves calmed. The sky seemed to be a couple arm lengths from his face and, luckily, seemed to have paused its decent there. Vega stood a short distance away with eyes closed in slumber and completely unaware of what Caelum was experiencing. Though awake, he could recall every thought, feeling, and memory that rushed into his mind, lungs, heart, and soul during his brief and unrelaxed slumber.

[Caelum]

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. - Chuang Tzu. The sky had him pinned and filled him with the dead. It was the radioactive decay of corporeal entities, unstoppable, interminable, beginning a millenia ago when the world began and Syna first thrust herself up to energize and astound, dissolving the darkness that dwelt within her lover. Yet night was her lover, her mirror-bearer called Leth, and so light fell in love with shadow and life stumbled it's way towards death as Dira kissed the cheek of Lhex and destiny derailed perfectly on track. It was the generous twins who lifted high their lanterns, casting the path into detail, attempting to haul back the dying and revealing tomorrows with all of their endlessly branching ways to the denizens of today. The denizens, the people, the waywalkers did not, for the most part, possess the capacity to comprehend that it was not a war that the dark sister Rak'keli was at with death. It was. perhaps, closer to the reading of the words viewed through fate's magnifying glass, a debate of translation, a battle of what a demiurge, be there one existent and infallible unlike the lesser brethren, intended. The argument was endless, carried out in the echoing tones of thunder beneath the bowl of the heavens. The dead swarmed, full of monstrous, pressing need until he was unable to discern whether it was them or the sky holding him down, weighing him down to the earth. A sharp blink was made against stinging eyes, sweat or tears or a concoction of both bled free of him by the needy ghosts. Man, monster, beast, creature. Kind and cruel. Right and wrong. They were the walking wounded and they called to him, the need an undeniable compulsion to go to them, to somehow fight his way across a threshold Qalaya might deign to reveal to him and into the past wherein these people, these creatures, could still be saved. It was a lost cause, however, and Kelwyn's purview. Only Caelum had spent his waking hours since stumbling out of the sky fighting for lost causes, for impractical hopes, impossible dreams. He had been trying to heal the heavens, to fix the very fissure he had slipped through and out of the light and love of his precious Syna, his Bright Lady. The sky was now so close he could inhale comet tails and breathe them out into freshly spinning solar systems. The bursting of a red giants nearly blinded him and he realized he could move his arms. A hand lifted, trailing through the cosmic dust, seeking a touch, a glimpse of what he had once had, but he had been struggling with the idea that all of this was for a reason too long. Battling it, beating it back down so as to be able to hold on to his bitterness and not confront the wounds in his soul still gaping. With the sky bearing down on him, he realized it was not Syna but another, one yet close to his heart, always at hand these long years. A friend, a watcher, equally as bright as Syna, as determined and driven as he. "Rak'keli," he breathed and her name was heavy with the weight of the dead in his lungs. It was she who had him pinned like a butterfly to the earth, who had brought the heavens bearing back down upon him. He could see the curve in the sky, close enough to cut, behind which Syna's star waited to rise again. He thought he sensed approval.

[Charon]

Caelum uttered her name with much effort, the word being force from his throat with what felt like the last breath in his body. His chest sank as he said it and the air escaped rapidly as the Ethaefal started to see shapes and silhouettes in the night sky. The feeling that overcame him was not pleasure nor was it pain. The sensation seemed to blanket his whole body before entering him and filling his veins but it was not joy nor was it sorrow. He felt neutral as he lie there mesmerized by the swaying, dancing, and constantly altering outlines creating some sort of solo charade or intriguing scene in the sky. Caelum almost forgot to draw his breath back in and when he realized his mindless mistake his mouth opened in a gasp but the air never came. He was suffocating in this impartiality he was experiencing and before understanding how or why the darkness of the sky transferred to his eyes as they too fell dark.

The bodies of the wounded... Did they haunt the Ethaefal as they stalked aimlessly through the Sea of Grass as a mid-spring fog settled in? The clouds had fallen to the earth and effortlessly draped themselves over the grasslands successfully concealing any roaming victims that dwell here. Caelum stood in the center of what seemed to be a protective dome impervious to the clouds themselves. He was clothed but without his equipment. He was not warm nor was he cold but his skin had a temperate feel to it. He could move, though without much accurate control over his extremities. In his neutrality his foot staggered forward and he teetered before his other leg moved at the last moment to sustain his posture. His hands moved, though the actions were delayed. The mist that surrounded him seemed to swirl around a defined perimeter about fifteen feet from him and it thickened quickly the further away from him it was.

Suddenly from toward the left a darker shadow was outlined in the fog. It emerged gently which gave his tardy movements a chance to look at it head on. It was short... a child? The young human was clutching some sort of wooden toy in one arm as her long brown hair looked matted with... what? Dirt? Her unemotional eyes addressed Caelum blankly and as his eyes poured over her the dried blood splattered in her hair became visible. The toy she held looked to be the shape of a person with wooden blocks for a head, torso, hands, and legs tethered together with rope. It dangled, dragged along the ground, yet somehow possessed more character than the girl who was alive before him. Her face was scarred and there were bruises along her right arm and cuts longitudinally along her left arm which lugged the eerie doll. Her legs were also tattered with bruises and scabs but here eyes were crystal blue and unscathed. She stopped only feet from the Ethaefal and peered into his eyes, or was it his soul, obviously here for him.

[Caelum]

Author's NoteAnd we're back! Baku has very kindly agreed to continue this with me. But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us in their thousands, no man can turn aside or escape them. - Homer, The Iliad. A memory rose unbidden with the approach of the battered child, that of another with small, bruised limbs and eyes to strip a soul dry. That one's gaping mouth had been caught crying by death centuries before, but of those clipped and shuttered memories Caelum had to call his own before knowledge of Syna's heaven blazed to cinders, it remained vivid despite the disparaging passage of time. It lived now amongst the grasslands where it had walked before the Valterrian, overlaying this phantom girl's face and only deepening the intensity of her regard. Her eyes shone with the accelerating heat of nova stars. The immortal grace that lived within his limbs so long as the sun sat in the sky had abandoned him, causing his motions to be awkward, the act of sinking into a crouch so as to be on level with the child disjointed. Wordlessly, he lifted his hands to her, rough palms turning up and the scars bracketing his wrists ruining luminescent skin. The air between them was clear, free of the fog that encircled and surrounded; and through it he peered, first at her, then at the doll dangling from her hand. "Is your doll hurt, honey?" The words were hard to work out from behind his teeth, thick with the oxygen previously robbed from his lungs. His accent here was heavier, splinters of meteor iron leftover from a lost heaven. The endearment -- mostly foreign to his tongue -- came, however, with surprising ease. This was the Sea of Grass and the soul of him had once known fatherhood within it. Yet another reason why he had avoided it for so long. "Will you let me help you?"

[Baku]

The children of the world were more fragile than most. Their bodies small, their physical strength weak. Their mind was barely able to comprehend anything beyond what stimulated their raw emotion of happiness, sorrow and anger. They knew pain, and they knew comfort. Most often with the harsh living conditions within the lands, they knew more of the former. The child before Caelum seemed different, however. Her expressionless face seemed void of any emotion at all. She didn’t shy away as Caelum knelt before her. She didn’t flinch when Caelum reached out to her with his hands to her. It was almost as if he were speaking to the wooden doll she carried in her hands. As Caelum uttered his question to the child, she slowly shook her head in response. “You should go.” She said with a calm, even tone. “They’re dangerous when they’re like this.” Before Caelum could question who, a glimmer of light caught his eyes as the blurred motion barely gave him enough time to react, leaning back as the head of a Ranseur came rushing down, the tip imbedding into the ground between Caelum and the child. As Caelum’s eyes slowly moved up the shaft of the weapon, he would see to large blue hands grasping it tightly, blood trickling down from wounds that lined his body. That heavy feeling within Caelum became stronger as each fresh wound caught his sight. The musculature of the blue skinned man was large, and defined as his eyes continued to follow upward until finally meeting with a dark piercing gaze looking down into Caelum’s eyes. The Akalak’s long dark hair, matted with blood the same as the child’s. Teeth were bore as a hiss echoed out between them. “Don’t! Touch! Her!” the Akalak’s voice said, reverberating on itself as if two different people were speaking from one mouth. “I’ll kill you.” The Akalak then fell to his knees, as if his strength had fled him. One hand pressing along the ground for support, the other gripping the shaft of his Ranseur as he barely managed to keep himself from collapsing. The child slowly stepped over to the Akalak, her arms stretching out as one slipped under the Akalak’s neck, the other laying over his back as the doll in her hand draped over his side. Her head laid along top of his as the Akalak’s heaving breaths begin to slow down, to shallow. His intensity diminishing slightly. “Not yet.” the child said if Caelum made any attempt to move again.

[Caelum]

spiritless and mean ghosts that come between I will keep my wits about myself disregard directions sent from hell - the avett brothers; sanguine. Fear rocketed through Caelum with the razor flash and thud of the ranseur burrowing between him and the star eyed child. It coursed through limbs that still felt weighed with iron bones, jolting his heart until he fell backwards onto his butt, hands splayed against the earth behind him. Confusion garbled in his eyes, mouth dropping open as the child spoke again. He watched, riveted, as the Akalak warrior sank, able limbs seeming to leak out all of their hard won strength and the girl folded herself over him like a desperate, tiny protector huddling against all of the threats in the world. "Who are they?" Still the words burst from with a fight, every atom of his own sluggish and struggling. If he did not know better, he would think he had been drugged. Thoughts popped and died in his mind like stars, too close, signifying the burden of the lives lost counted by the dead who had drifted through his dreams. He wondered now if he had been dreaming at all, or if he still was. "What are they?" Even as his question reorganized itself, his attention refocused on the Akalak. The scent of blood was thick and familiar, the grieving cries of all those phantoms still a slaughtered orchestra in his head. Not yet, she had said. Don't go yet? He wondered. It failed to matter because he was scrambling awkwardly forward, to hands and knees and then just in a frozen genuflection to reach for the failing warrior. "Warrior," he used Common, unearthly accent thrusting itself against his consonants. "I swear I mean no harm. Child, let me see. Please." He was careful not to touch the child, the warning gritted through the rip of a ranseur not forgotten, but the Akalak's breath was fading, his body seeming to be failing. Time was crucial. He slid two fingers beneath the Akalak's jaw, gentle against sky colored skin, seeking a pulse even while with his eyes he sought the source of the worst wounds.

[Baku]

For the longest time there seemed to be silence as Caelum looked over the child and the Akalak that were cradled along the ground before him. The silence could almost be considered deafening as he slowly reached out, inching his fingers toward the pair, calling out to them. “What would you do?” a voice then entered Caelum’s head, like a whisper along the wind. It was then he would notice that the child and Akalak before him had turned black and white in color. Shades of blue had turned practically grey, and a tear along the child’s cheek seemed to be frozen in place without sliding further down. As Caelum looked around, he would notice other oddities. He felt no wind at his face, no sounds of nature. A dandelion’s seedlings, white and floating stood frozen in the air. It was as though things had frozen in that instant before him. “What would you do?” the voice then said again, this time echoing, and seemingly close. From behind. As Caelum spun around, he would see the slender figure of woman standing before him, the radiance of her white robes brilliant, her dark hair flowing, her blue eyes piercing down into Caelum’s own. She was the only other entity in Caelum’s sight right now that was both with motion and color. A warm smile crossed her face as she began to approach Caelum. “Here, an Akalak lays injured before you, fallen child,” the woman said, her voice still echoing as she stepped past Caelum, approaching the Akalak and young girl, “his injuries are lethal, but they are sever enough that he can no longer go on without proper rest. However, to fall into slumber, bleeding with an open wound, such would be the death of him as predators closed in.” The woman then slowly turned to look at Caelum once more. “So would you heal this Akalak then?” the woman asked. “Would you clean his wounds, dress them in bandages and see to it that he would begin to regain the quite substantial strength that he has?” Before Caelum could answer, she rose his hand to stop it. “What if I were to now tell you, that said strength was used to slaughter dozens of individuals, all in order to bring this girl back, and make her his wife?” the woman then asked suddenly. “Would you heal him then?”

[Caelum]

The deep freeze of time and space came in a moment with Caelum's fingers pressed against the Akalak's throat, just beneath the strong line of his jaw where the pulse he was so desperately seeking in order to monitor ought have been. The flailing kick of the warrior's heartbeat had just begun to thump against his fingertips and yet stopped with such shocking force that it stopped Caelum's breath along with it. He found himself staring blankly down at his patients, at the weirdling child and the violent warrior, attempting to make sense of the world. It had to be a dream, he decided, the resurrection of the restless dead, the weep and swirl of the wind caught motionless now against interminably bent blades of grass. This was what he had earned by riding through the swelter of fresh spring beneath Syna's battering light and right into the land that hosted so many of his fragmented memories. Only She spoke and this fallen child of the broken heavens would know that voice in even the dirtiest depths of the dark. He spun to face Her while his mind still struggled to catch up, slippery with stardust and Syna's shroud, unraveling to his feet so swift that it let him dizzy. "Rak'keli," he breathed for the second time, forgetting that he had already named Her. The pricks of gold in Drykas eyes brightened with the raw sight of divinity, jaw slack and knees abruptly shot with iron to bear him back to the earth. He knelt while her spoken words became the only other living thing, vibrant and shimmering to him for all that accent knowledge of the celestial language left behind on both their tongues. Slavery and slaughter, Her chosen topic, knifed through the merciless orchestra of bitterness and questions, demands and accusations that had begun to broil up from the bottom of his soul towards his teeth. He swallowed that sad symphony while staring at Her feet and grabbed hold of answers for her like a lifeline. It seemed so out of tune. It should have been reversed. "Foul," he spat, but whether he meant the Akalak's deeds or those of the gods was difficult to discern with his chin coming up, a loose braid heavy against his temple. He had to squint against Her light, a holiness sensed not with eyes but with the remnants of another god's blessing in his bones. Rak'keli, too, had laid hands upon him in lives lived and lost. Perhaps it was Her hands that had turned him towards this healing path when he was incapable of bearing the betrayal of Syna. Who but Rak'keli could heal what was in him? Be it in favor or forfeit. "Some say Justice is blind," he told her, voice rough and possessed almost of challenge though he remained on his knees. "But I know that fuck's got eyes and they're in the back of His head. He sees everything. It was this warrior's choice to sin and Tyveth's choice to punish him or not. If He wished me as His agent in this, then He can damned well come join our party. Until then, I see the goddess of health before me and even did I not, I would do whatever I could for this man until Dira decided to dance with us Herself. I make my own choices and I choose to relieve pain and suffering when and where I can. You, all of You, know there is more than enough of it in this world already." Air was drawn in, heady with djed, as he attempted to stabilize himself. He glanced over his shoulder at the frozen, bloody scene. More quietly, he added, "And if I cannot heal him, then a knife to his throat can be called mercy compared to what the predators will do; and then no more children will be sickened by his sins. Tyveth and Lhex can figure out the rest."

[Tabarnac]

Tabarnac taking over with permission from both the beleaguered Baku and Caelum's player. *** There was a momentary eternity while the goddess internalized his response, when the weight of the world's pains and illnesses seemed about to invade Caelum as well as crush him, make him suffer every sling and arrow, every fever and laceration. His mind was flirting with a more divine experience of reality, perhaps something along the lines of how Rak'keli Herself experienced the world. Armed with such knowledge it was easier to understand her demand that all wounds be healed. Caelum was correct: the world was full of suffering. She didn't care who caused it, but cared more that each case was dealt with, each aberration was corrected. She laughed. With that, the weight of the cosmic language singing in her wordless mirth, the patter of cool rain eased the pressure within him, though it did not dissipate. "Oh Caelum," She said finally, and the love in it was fit to make a heart break. "I have missed you these centuries. Do you remember Kasb'el? Do you remember when you were Yosef, from the tents of Gowan, of the sons of Basalom? Do you remember further back when I eased the pain of your children's passage from your womb into the world? You know these deaths and pains I share with you. You have known so many since the dawn of man, and you will know many more before..." She turned her head slightly, and it became quite clear that the Akalak and his child-bride were the objects of her attention now. "Heal them, Caelum, son of Syna, and I will help you." The world began to come back into focus, color returning, as well as the weight of the world's sufferings. Strange things shifted in his perception and within him, and his hand was back at the man's throat, the heartbeat not a dying sparrow but a mighty osprey buffeting its wings against a fishing net that dragged it down into Laviku's bosom. He saw things while in the thrall of this sister of Avalis. Saw the Akalak's life in one painful instant of revelation, seeing with clarity the cause and effect of his life, the choices and deviations, the joys and the doubts. He sensed with an ache in his own crotch the girl's womb opened too soon, the bleeding of a broken maidenhead from his overeager insistence. There was love, though, too, between them. A strange and damaged thing, but with the potential for Cheva's blessing. Who was he to judge? Who, indeed, was Rak'keli herself to judge? She left judgment to Lhex and others, merely answering the weight of blood and suffering with compassion and mercy. Justice might be blind, but she was not. Justice might have clever eyes like Caelum surmised, and certainly Rak'keli's vision was deep and probing. "You have to love them, Caelum," She said in his soul. "All of them, without judgment or attachment. That is the paradigm, the wholeness, of the healer's path." Her own empathic suffering, shared with him, began to push at the edges of what he recognized as himself. Just as he was sure he would be destroyed beneath its weight, he felt Her behind him. A hand on his shoulder, a hand upon his at the Akalak's neck, her forehead tipped to rest upon his crown, and She said one word. One Word. The euphony blasted him to deafness, the sacred geometry of the word searing away his vision. She moved through him. Her energy. Her being. All that he was sacrificed to become a channel for all that She was. In that moment, the death disappeared. In that instant, there was no death, only explosive generative power and he was bigger than Caelum, bigger than he had been since he sang to Syna in the celestial realm, his soul crucified with an endless ecstasy. The Akalak and the girl watched as the strange man fell face first into the turf, their mouths open with shock at their sudden good health. When it became quite clear that he was out for the count, the strong Akalak threw Caelum over his shoulder, took the girl by the hand, and went to find shelter.