[flashback] ancestry of the sun.

[Caelum]

Timestamp: 6th of Spring, 508 A.V. This scene directly follows (Flashback)Galloping Manic wherein Sam escapes slavery in Sunberth and encounters his ancestor. Orphans of Cyphrus rode wild and fast through the wild lands of Sylira, giving the horses their legs and clinging like burs to the backs of the beasts as they stretched out their necks and flew. The wind stung their eyes and ripped hems of clothing, loose coils of hair until they drank of it and tasted liberty. Caelum took notice of his companion's fatigue before the afternoon had yawned itself too closely towards sunset and with a whistle slanted their course in the direction of the stream. They had been following it as a crow flies, stumbling over watery bends and knees where cypress roots poked their elbows out the soil en route for the city of Zeltiva. Truth told, their goal was less the achievement of a destination so much as the stripping of the last -- Sunberth both of them wanted to leave far, far behind. "You need to rest," Caelum informed the runaway slave shortly when his stolen horse sidled up alongside Vega. The mare tossed her head, dancing a bit in the dappled shadows of the trees. "We'll stop, we'll eat. There should be some of the fauna around here I might could use to help you." He came across as gruff, elegant and pale, shining as the sun spread across the green; but his eyes were narrowed on Sam, something like concern crouching in burnished depths.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Their pace had been faster than he was used to maintaining. Hasieran could have run double or treble as fast, tapping into the Web to vault across the prairie plains like some magician's fireball, but this was not Cyphrus and his horse was not a Strider. His eldritch companion was not a Drykas, but he was; in fact, he was an ancestor. They hadn't enough food, nor enough sleep, and everything was just strange. He was free, he was starving, and there had been that blow to the head when the mercenary knocked him from his horse. He was only glad his father was not alive to see him fall of a horse. He hadn't done that since he was six. His stomach growled as he dazedly considered Kasb'el's plan, and then he nodded. Clearly food was a necessity, and both he and his windrunner were in need of a break. When they reached the stream, he slid inelegantly from the back of his new best friend and immediately, like some Sahovan automaton, went about the care and feeding of his mount before thinking of himself. That was just the Drykas way or, at least, as best he remembered it. "If..." he managed, voice a bit of a croak from disuse and road grit. "If you need... need me to gather anything, just... just tell me what I'm looking for. Other than food to... to beef up our stores. I couldn't bring much food. Had to travel light." Of course, this was repetitive. Kasb'el knew the details of Sam's escape by now, had shared in it already, but perhaps there was a part of him that was still a slave, still felt compelled to report, to work, to be ground into dust at the pleasure of others.

[Caelum]

A study was made of the gnarled arms of sentinel oaks creating a haven by the stream, obscuring the clearing from both the fields and the water itself with help from the dense undergrowth. Tall, scarred boots creaked as he dismounted, first untying a water skin to toss at Sama'el before going about unloading saddlebags and then the dapple grey Windrunner's yvas. Gear slipped through fingers with the same automatic motions his companion was using, known and familiar, until he found both a feed bag and a spare to fill and handed one of them to Sama'el for his stolen mount's use. "There are like to be some cattails nearby. Good roots for eating," he was explaining. "I've some dried beef strips, cheese and bread left that you're welcome to. I planned for the haul to Zeltiva," he explained. Every words continued to be thick, leavened with the weight of an unforgotten heaven. His Common was good, fluent, but for some difficult to understand due to that unearthly accent. "What I'd really like to find," he went on, lean hips shifting from strapping the feed bag over Vega's nose to picking up the brush from a discarded bag. "Is some medicinal herbs. I only brought my basic kit on this journey. More fool I. Though, I suppose it'd be rather hard to cart half the supplies of the university clinic through the wilderness.." He trailed off. Syna's light glowed off the curve of his horns, off the copper strewn through his hair, off the very skin stretched tight over his bones. The brush was applied vigorously to Vega's coat, the rhythmic motions soothing to both of them. "You need revitalizing," he muttered finally. "Some care taken with you. Worn down. Will you be returning to the Sea of Grass?"

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"I can find cattails," he assured the man, his ultimate grandfather. He wondered idly if Kasb'el would object to being called grandfather; he certainly didn't look old enough to be one unless he fathered a child as soon as he was able and his progeny did the same. There was a ghost of a smile as he pulled the feed bag over the horse's mouth. He only gave him a bit at first, though, and nodded to himself seeing how he gorged. There would be no use in having him vomit up the precious feed. A little bit at a time would be best. Even if Sam wasn't used to long haul riding anymore, he was certainly practiced at caring for horses. "Medicinal herbs, though... ah, well, I remember a bit that my Nana taught me, but that was... not here. I'll bring whatever looks promising and let you be the judge of its worth." As he groomed his horse -- it was his now; they had formed a bond, stealing freedom together the way they had -- he considered the last question. "I don't know," he said quietly. "My pavilion is gone. Hasieran... he's gone. Maybe the gods... maybe they were telling me I don't belong there."

[Caelum]

"If we can find some gentian root and goldenseal, I've cascera bark. Together that'll make a good tonic for you," he was muttering, a scowl on an otherwise glorious face; but Sama'el might have been starting to realize it was a common expression for Caelum. Finished with the horses, he slung the saddlebags over his shoulder to drop them into the crook of tree roots before moving to pace a circle around the clearing, kicking aside stray bracken and rubbing deadfall away from a central point ostensibly with the intent to keep a potential fire from accidentally spreading. "Rose hips," he said abruptly. "I've some dried. That'll help with your immunity, with your energy.." He trailed off again, racking his brain for his pitiably threadbare knowledge of herbalism. Most of his healing knowledge was medicinally based, relearned and reordered from scholars in Zeltiva and the occasionally wandering Opal Order healer. "Hasieran," he echoed the name with surprising reverences, slanting an aged glance at Sama'el sidelong. "Fire after gathering," he determined after a beat and sank into a crow's crouch before his bags to dig through them. "It's strange, isn't it? That I can't recall my Strider's name. I didn't even know what mine had been until a couple years after landing here, and that was thanks to a Drykas who tried to slit my throat while I was setting his broken humerus." A linen wrapped package was lifted and, once unwrapped, revealed a wedge of pale cheese that he proceeded to toss to his companion. "If you want to return, Sama'el, you should," he opined at last.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"Gentian root... isn't that a dreaming root? Goldenseal. Cascara bark. Tonic." He was weary, but committing these things to memory as best he could. This sort of lore could keep a body alive, and that was good to know. Later he would remember to ask if they could be applied to a horse, because a horse's health was as important as its rider. Moreso sometimes, as they could be depended upon to carry a sick rider, while the rider could not carry a sick horse. Caelum's tent could wait, but the light was more necessary for poking around after twigs and berries, and also dry firewood. While they spoke, he dug around for a proper bag for whatever he might find, and his hand tapped at the dagger in his belt, for cleaner cuts to whatever he found. "Rose hips for immunity," he said aloud, and then repeated it several times in the buzzing of his head, waiting to hear what might grant him energy, though he thought no plant would give him enough. He figured that once they ate and the light began to go, he would go soon too, though his interest was vaguely distracted for a moment to marvel at the fact that he had been saved by a fallen avatar of Syna and when she turned her eye from the world, her avatar became his ancestor. He had seen Kasb'el Sunsinger with his own eyes! "In the family stories," he offered, "your Strider was named Aingeru, but... the language has changed some. That might not be right." He glanced at Caelum, who would become Kasb'el again in a few hours, curious to see if the name would spawn memory or not. He caught the cheese and set aside his makeshift herb-hunting kit. Sitting down with his back to a tree and his long legs splayed out to stretch before him, it took all his willpower not to tear the wrappings off and shove it into his mouth entire. But that would only make him sick, and they had to make the food last. Spring's growth had not yet ripened into much that was edible and nourishing. "Hasieran," he agreed. "First, or beginning." Of course, in his mind, it was ironic, because surely Hasieran would be his last. Why would the gods and the Striders choose him again after he had so entirely failed the beautiful stallion? Unconsciously, he tucked his left wrist against his flat, almost concave belly, hiding the windmark, the seed rune that was to have blossomed into the story of Sama'el. "Do you not remember Pavi?" he finally asked in the language itself. It felt strange in his mouth for disuse, but it seemed odd that they would be speaking in Common when they were both ostensibly Drykas men. "If not, perhaps you will remember tonight when you become human again."

[Caelum]

“I remember Pavi,” came to answer in muttered but nonetheless fluent style while his head remained bowed over the saddlebag. His Windrunner, Vega, perked up her ears at the musical sound, settling a lambent eye on her rider while he pulled a rough bound sheaf of parchment out along with a more promising, leather bound affair. A bit of charcoal was next and with these he unraveled back to his full height to duck through the shafts of light and crouch at Sama’el’s side. The name of the Strider Aingeru tolled through him, summoning him to silence as he fingered open the pages of the parchment book in revelation of an accidentally elegant scrawl surrounding queer diagrams of everything from insects to anatomy and what appeared to formulaic charts of fragments of sky. Locating an empty page, he propped the little book against his knee and tugged the bit of charcoal from his mouth to begin sketching. “This is lousewort,” he continued in Pavi, putting words to the swift, careful lines he was drawing on the page. “Tall, flowering, but the flowers are little, hooded and can range in color. Hairy leaves, almost tufted like this here, and they’re soft with it. I’ve heard it called wood betony in the Talederas. We should find some here. It’s fresh in season, tends to shove itself up in thickets and the like. It’s the first bloody herb I learned through and through, and just about the only one too, primarily because it can do a wide range of things. Use it in a poultice for swelling. Increase circulation, help restore the air to your blood – There’s your energy there.” The sketchbook was offered up on a calloused hand while he switched to the printed book. “Herbalism,” he explained. “Just purchased it in Sunberth and have yet a chance to give it much study,” as they had been too busy riding as if glassbeaks were on their heels. “Let’s find out if my depiction is accurate.” While flipping through the pages of diagrams and descriptions, some even rendered in color, he finally addressed the topic of ancestry. “There are stories, are there?” That a murmur, eyes nettling together. “That’s somewhat disconcerting. I imagined there might be, The depth and detail of the windmarks suggest as much. Look, Sam, if Haserion is beginning, maybe you should go and find your middle, eh? Here it is,” and he held the book up. “Lousewort. Not too bad.”

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

The Pavi, even with its ancient cadences, was like a soothing balm to his ears, music that even caught his weary horse's attention. He smiled, a hint of something angelic there, pure and untainted. But when Caelum came over with books, he shoved a hunk of cheese into his mouth and handed the rest back to the Ethaefal that he might partake as well. Switching burdens, he took the bound illustrations. "Lousewort," he agreed after swallowing. His eyes flicked from feature to feature as the healer described its parts, and then he tried to memorize the whole from its picture. "Wood betony." He wasn't, perhaps, the most scintillating of conversationalists, but he was attempting to commit it all to memory when his mind was hardly in a good place for lessoning. Or perhaps it was, Necessity being the greatest teacher of all. "Swelling, circulation, energy." He nodded, repeating things to himself in a lower voice then. "We'll see about middles if we survive this new beginning," he promised, and that was about as far as he was daring to dream today. With a groan, he got back up. There was work to do while there was still light. Logically, one runaway slave with a horse and some equipment was not worth tracking for days and days, especially with mercenary blood already spilled. But he would feel hunted and haunted for a long time yet. When the mercenaries were a thing of the past, there would be the shades of his dead. "Lousewort. I'll look."

[Caelum]

”It’s for you,” Caelum offered the cheese back to his companion as he rose. A queer smile quirked his mouth and sun-struck eyes turned upwards towards the lighted boughs of the forest. “Syna still deigns to sustain me.” On that caustic note, he ducked his head back over the illustrated book. “Leaves and petals only,” he muttered after Sama’el. Pages were flipped until he located the diagram for orangeroot. It was frowned at for a long minute, the description and uses memorized before he closed the book with a rather fatalistic thud and returned it to the saddlebag. The name Aingeru continued to circulate through his mind as he side stepped a yawning silver birch and disappeared into the cooler dim of the forest. Horned and elegant, sure footed and loose hipped, he was easily one of the earth’s creatures foraging in the hopeful cruelty of spring. Aingeru. Aingeru. Aingeru. Leaves crunched as he stepped over dead fall, mentally marking the spot so would think to haul it back for use as fuel. Aingeru. Kasb’el. Aingeru. A common thrush landed with a low beat of speckled wings on a maple branch, bringing the ethaefal’s eyes from their ground level search briefly up. Aingeru, Sunsinger. Aingeru. A slow spin around a prickly blackberry bush, its fruits still but tiny green buds and pale, delicate flowers. Sinking down, he brushed his fingers through the grass, pulling pine needles out to reveal his prey. The orangeroot sat sharp leaved and unassuming, its pair of palmate leaves cradling quiet, little flowers with stamens a shade of celadon. It would purify, according to the herbalism book and a half recollected lesson from a Zeltivan botanist; and so the reason Caelum sought it in this place. A patched knee touched the dirt and with careful movements, he dug long fingers into the loose soil surrounding the plant to raise it up until the twilight colored stem bled into seasonal yellow and, from there, into the twisted, knotted tarnish of the potent root. Drawing a worn-handled dagger from his boot, he carved out thin strips and curling ribbons from the herb’s root until he had enough to fill his palm. That accomplished, the plant was resettled back into the ground, soil patted gently back around the base with a half-mouthed orison of gratitude tossed Caiyha’s way. Years ago he had watched a worshipper of Leth restore a rose bush with a touch. That ability had never been his. Sunsinger. Aingeru. Sunsinger. He moved more quickly now, root scrapings wrapped in a bit of cloth and stuck into his jacket pocket for safe keeping. The names of an ancient Strider and it’s equally as ancient rider kept galloping through his mind, but they had died, hadn’t they? Died like stars, they had, that many times; and the rider had fallen like one too. Following the sound of the stream, he began pacing the bank back in the direction of the clearing, seeking the young, pale shoots of cattails that would be not yet tall this early in the season. Aingeru. Aingeru. “Damnit,” he swore, hands rising to rub the heels of his palms into his eyes, bruise the stardust out. Shaking himself like a solitary leaf left quivering on the branch, he blinked his eyes back open only to narrow them upon the cattails he sought. Soil squelched into mud as he stepped into it, unsheathing his dagger again to snip off the tips of the soft shoots rather than pulling them completely clear of the mud and water. This way, it would continue to grow. Once he had harvested enough for Sama’el’s dinner and his breakfast, filling up another pocket, he reoriented himself by the swiftly sinking light and went back the way of where he had earlier marked deadfall. By the time he returned to the clearing, Syna’s sign was gasping in the west and Caelum was going to be the long dead rider again whether he liked it or not.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"Oh," he said simply. He paused in order that his "thank you" not be mechanical and servile. After he ate a bit more, he wrapped it again and shoved the remains in a pocket. When Leth rose to prominence, Kasb'el might be hungry, even if Caelum wasn't. Though Caelum was glorious as the sun Herself was glorious, he looked forward to the vespertine crawl of night to change the avatar into a mere man. Then he would see windmarks, a less terribly beautiful face, and he could call him, even if it was only in the silence of his mind, grandfather, and have some anchor in the world again. He set off in a rather obtuse angle from Caelum's trajectory, erring toward the river, but upstream rather than down. His feet fumbled toward water like a man dying in the desert, but his burning eyes were alert as possible for the picture made manifest in green. Nothing caught his eye, but soon he found the stream and knelt down to put his face to Makutsi's gift and drank like an animal. He had been an animal for a long time now, or as good as. It would take time to become a man again, if such was possible. Caelum seemed awfully optimistic, all things considered. First he filled the waterskins. Then he decimated a thatch of cattails, pausing to eat a few uncooked. Life had boiled away whatever baby fat he had borne into slavery, and it was no wonder Caelum seemed intent on feeding him at every given opportunity. His stolen dagger was sharp enough to lop off the tops of the cattails, and the larger sack he had was easily filled. After staggering to his feet, he leaned against a tree whose roots had pulled it too far into the embrace of the stream, whose snowfall waters had finally killed it. The wood was rotting from the inside, and fan-like fungi were growing from its damp bark. He harvested a good deal of them and put them in another sack to ask Caelum if they were edible or poisonous. Heading back to camp by a different route, he managed to find a little thatch of the lousewort Caelum wanted, but only because it was growing near a berry patch that brought him to his knees. His dagger was quick to collect the leaves, his fingers the petals. He also filled the front of his shirt with berries, though his mouth was stained with his quick and haphazard meal of them when he returned to camp. The flesh revealed by his shirt was a terrible sight, skin taut over lean muscle and vital organs. His Master had not been kind to his slaves, but how could a slave run away without strength? At least Sama'el had found some reserve of gods-knew-what energy and had run into Caelum. Not speaking, he laid out the prizes: berries, mushrooms, cattails, and the bit of lousewort. He wasn't much of an herbalist, obviously, but there was plenty for Caelum -- soon Kasb'el -- to look over, approve or not. Dark eyes with a feverish tint gazed at the changeling as he rocked back from his knees to a crouch, watchful and hungry again.