four letter words like home.

[Caelum]

this will be my last confession I love you never felt like any blessing whispering like it's a secret only to condemn the one who hears it with a heavy heart - f + m - Timestamp: Early Fall 511 AV Ticktock. Tick. Tick. Ticktock. Tick. Tick. The floor was rough as the hands of man of against the face of time. It pressed patterns into his cheek that never should have belonged, but they traced the trusses of aeons embedded in the tattered threads of his soul. On Black Rock the eve of his execution he could hear the interminable clock echoing away in the pocket of the bland smiling man. The panels in the oak wood chair he sat in were visible, but the ghost yet possessed a presence more solid somehow than the bedchamber itself. "You're late," the ghost said with a voice that slunk down the back of Caelum's skull. "I was already here," Caelum replied with a tongue too heavy for the world. It had been weighed with meteorites in those infant hours, the first years following his fall from the thunder cracked sky. It was still too thick for this world, though the alien accent had faded out to the borders of his language. Today, tonight, it had snapped back to leave him with no recognition of even what language it was he spoke. He hauled himself off the floor, an unwieldy package. Salt clung to the insides of his cheek, scraped the back of his throat as he rubbed already weary hands back through his hair, finding the endless knots of Drykas weaving rather than the loose embers of his day form. Only it was day. The ghost kept smiling, one spit shined boot bouncing idly from a cross of legs. The collar of his jacket was upturned to brush against a sharp jaw. There was no color to him. The daylight spun right through. "I was already here," Caelum repeated. "When exactly do you think you are, Kasb'el?" The ghost raised his eyebrows, murmured words careful and calm. A spindly hand ducked into the pinstriped pocket of his vest and a glittering chain unwound, tugging free a battered pocket watch emblazoned with the sun and moon. It held hue, sun and starlight, striking and true, amid all of the grey. "Nine years," Caelum heard himself say, spine straightening slowly. "Nine years later, that's when. It's five hundred eleven years since Ivak's grief broke the world." "Is it?" The ghost frowned, lines of consideration denting into ageless cheeks. With a thumb he snapped the watch's latch, springing it open. "Surely you're wrong. You were just here. Here too late." Ticktock. Tick. Tick. Ticktock. Tick. Tick. The bedchamber lost amid the strange shifting streets of Dira's claimed city pulled itself inside out, the hands of the dead man's watch spinning against a wheeling heaven until Caelum's back hit a wall with enough force to jar the bones beneath his skin. Breath blew out of him while his eyes closed against the vertigo. "Did it never occur to you that they wanted you to forget?" The ghost's voice crept out of the dark, punctuated by the pace of approaching footsteps. Unsteady, beating an off color pattern against the walls of Caelum's hearing. "Who?" He shook himself, trying to knock loose the sense of impending instability; and it was not until he felt chill breath upon his cheek that he opened his eyes. He found that instead of the ghost, dapper and smiling, there was the too perfect face of Caius Delucia mere inches from his own. The captain of the Hanged Fate, Ravok born and bred, with all of his mysteries loyalties was smiling the ghost's smile and it fit poorly. "Me," Caius said, "Or Jin. Or Lillis. Yes, even her. Especially her." "Get out of my head," Caelum growled and did what in waking life he could not have done, reach out to shove the man back and prowl himself out of the corner he had been put into. "Stung, did it?" Delucia chuckled without smoke, clean and conservative. Like the ghost. Not like himself. Caelum knew heaven did not care for him enough for Caius Delucia to be dead. "Lillis. You'll be wearing the Lacun mark soon, Sunsinger." Ice slicked Caelum's gut and a palm slid over his throat unconsciously, across the firebird lines of his Chevas mark. No windmarks spilled across a gilded forearm and so he knew whose skin he wore. Sunswallowed eyes slanted sideways, finding where the windowed wall of Delucia's Ravokian townhouse ought to have been was the dangerous yawn of the grasslands from which he had been exiled. Or had he? He couldn't remember now. All of the homes he had ever known blurred together. The watch's chain was wrapped about his fingers, the watch itself bumping against his thigh as the sun rose in a sea of fire and blood over Cyphrus, over Zeltiva, over Ekytol and all the rest. Too late. Ticktock. Tick. Tick. Ticktock. Tick. Tick.

[Sitkanis]

While Caelum saw scenes upon scenes scattered from his life… lives, Sitkanis only saw one. Cyphrus, Endrykas to be exact. The man was alone, at least in a sense. He was keeping his own company. If the billowing stalks of green and yellow were indeed the Sea of Grass, Sitkanis would have been skirting the shore. Wading away from Runningwind pavilion. There was a woman waiting there. He did not know her but something within him did. "You don't belong here." The words seemed to growl in his ears, burning the corners of his mind. "She is mine…" Sitkanis did not know who she was. He did not know where he was going. All he knew was that he was heading home. Home was not Denval. It was not with Astrid or Lysander. Home did not have Veldrys or any of the Denvalis the Ethaefal had met. This was home, although the voice did not want to share. The scenes of the Sea of Grass looked eerily familiar but Sitkanis could not place a single one of them. It was as though he knew every last detail but could not remember it. "This is home…" Sitkanis repeated the words to himself in an attempt to drown out the voice burning his thoughts. "But it's not. You Ethaefal… You'll cling to anything just to say you had a home." The voice was demanding and familiar. Sitkanis knew who it was. The Ethaefal wanted him to go away. "I'm going to make sure you never return to Endrykas. You know who I am Sitkanis. Say it." Sitkanis kept silent and kept walking, his hand gripped tightly around a spear. He was walking to his death. A death he could not remember. The voice was resilient, calling from deep within Sitkanis. "Say it. Stop ignoring me!" The Ethaefal could not speak the voice's name. To give something a name was to give it form and life. If Sitkanis had anything to do with the voice, he would keep it as powerless as possible. "Fine… ignore me… petching moonlover." Sitkanis was getting frustrated and he gripped his spear even tighter, threatening it to snap in his grasp. "The creatures here will kill you. They love a nice, night time snack." The voice chuckled. "Get it? Night time snack? Because you are a petching Ethaefal." Shoving the spear into the ground Sitkanis yelled out. "Just shut up Luukas!" The name had been spoken and now a perfect copy of Sitkanis' day time form stood before him, smiling wickedly. To anyone else watching, Sitkanis would had seemed alone. Only the Ethaefal could see his Drykas self. "Leth really breeds them stupid doesn't he?" With what sounded like a low growl, Sitkanis thrusted the spear forward toward the man but Luukas gripped the head. The blood dripped from his palm, slithering down the body of the spear. "Stop running from me Sitka. It's childish." Before the pair they could see a man standing. "Odd… he doesn't look like a Glassbeak. Sitkanis looked at Luukas skeptically. "What is that supposed to mean?" Luukas smiled and motioned to the man. "You should go talk to him. He seems to be like you." Sitkanis shot Luukas a dark look. The pair may have booth been in their Drykas skin but just looking at the two, they seemed so different. Sitkanis seemed dark and angry, while Luukas seemed more lighthearted and carefree. No one else could compare them though. Luukas rolled his eyes at Sitkanis. "You know, divine children and all that shyke." Sitkanis looked toward the man. He seemed a bit like the children of Syna that he had seen before. Sitkanis stood idle, just watching the man. Luukas was growing impatient though. "Fine. If you aren't going to talk to him, I will. He needs to get his Ethaefal ass out of here anyways. The show can't start until we're here alone." Before Sitkanis could voice his confusion Luukas disappeared from sight. The Ethaefal looked around for him but he was nowhere to be seen. Inside Sitkanis things were changing though. Luukas was slowly weaving himself through Sitkanis, making the Ethaefal loose his more… reserved personality. Luukas was in charge now and he wanted to make the man ahead of him leave. Sitkanis needed to live though what Luukas had lived through and the Drykas would do anything to make sure that was possible. "It's good to be back…" Luukas walked forward toward the man ahead of him. "Hey! Buddy! You lost? Lhavit is much more north." He was referring to the city of the stars, a city Sitkanis had no knowledge of. The Ethaefal would know someday though. All of Luukas' memories would be his as soon as Sitkanis let the Drykas take control.

[Caelum]

"This land knows me," Caelum replied. The words were smoke in the air, floating static rather than rising to scatter with the wind. He turned, dropping a shoulder to peer across its breadth at the stranger's approach. Dawn light limned him in all the glory of the Ukalas from which he had slipped, sliding on the slime edged stones lining the path of time. Lhex was doubtless twiddling His ink stained thumbs. Stripped to the waist of a pair of sailor's pants, a replica of those he had worn while a deck hand beneath Reznor in the cradle years, the evidence of scars skimmed his back in strange, deliberate patterns. Among a nest of those faded and barely visible due to the sheer headiness of ethaefal djed scraped others that burned unrelenting. His head stayed down, but his eyes were up as he completed his turn to face the Drykas. The watch chain was worried between calloused fingers and a frown weighed upon his face. Somewhere in the sky, the sun spluttered. Caelum imagined She was laughing, possibly at Kasb'el trying to crawl out of his chest with every beat of his heart.

[Sitkanis]

"I don't know you." The words were simple but why would the proud Drykas think anyone outside of the lands he thought were his would be know by the land. The man was Ethaefal. That much could be told by the horns that curled from his temple. While Sitkanis still knew so little, Luukas knew more than one would think. He knew of the places beyond Denval and Endrykas. He did not know of them first hand but he had heard of them from travelers and people of his clan that had left the land of Cyphrus. He could have known if an Ethaefal had been walking among his clansmen. Although Leth seemed to be readying himself to break through the horizon, Luukas did not fear his arrival. He would not bow out to the moon. Not here. This was his land and while he respected Leth, he refused to let Sitkanis free himself just yet. It would be such a disgusting sight to see the sad little Ethaefal try to find kinship with the man before him. "Oh, we are both Ethaefal. We understand." The creatures of the stars and sky could petching spare him. They fawned over the deities of the sky, begging to return to their arms. They did not see the chances before them. They were alive again. They had a second chance for glory. Think of all they could accomplish if they just moved on. Crying over it did nothing, at least in Luukas' eyes. The Drykas looked to the sky, squinting lightly at Syna slipping into the horizon. "Awww… is your Goddess leaving you?" Leth was coming soon. Sitkanis would be clawing to get out into the moonlight. It was almost cute how obedient he was to the lunar God. He knew once Leth shone above them it would be harder to keep Sitkanis quiet but he would try. In dreams Luukas had a lot more control and he would not share it. "Poor Ethaefal…"

[Caelum]

Unaccountably, Caelum laughed. It was the first sunset since Lillis had reached up paint stained fingers to catch his hands, his shirt, his hair and tug him after her into bed that he had laughed. It had, for that piece, already been too long. A day ago. A hundred. A thousand. The laughter bent him over in the dying light, the sound rising out of his core like the loneliness no rocking could hold down. No amount of cold staring nor pummeling silence could snuff it out, not when an entire world and all of heaven too seemed to already been trying. Poor ethaefal... He laughed harder, coughing up the chuckle like sea water and stardust. He choked on the snickers, trying not to snort them back up with arms crawling about his torso in a last ditch attempt to hold the whole of him -- whatever all was left of him -- together. So it was as Leth bled out from between the stars, eyes lowered watch his Lady lay herself in a bower of russet and lavender, Caelum skin walked his way into Kasb'el who at last at some point along the path of centuries someone, somewhere had thought had belonged in the Sea of Grass. "You are all the same," he remarked as starlight remade him, the pocket watch still swing, swing, swinging forth and back through his fingers. He straightened, shorter now than he had been moments ago, to peer through the altered air at the stranger and absorb the attitude he offered. "Who are you?" He wanted to know.