one foot in the sea. (closed)

[Caelum]

I can't look, I'm so blind I lost my heart, I lost my mind without you - guetta - Timestamp: 88 Fall 511 AV Denval rose out of the waters like an apparition with all of Leth's panoply spangling the heavens behind it. The tide churned against the rocks and the shore, foaming up at the sky beneath the guiding hand of a winter born wind. It gasped at the sails until they billowed and snapped, ropes and rigging chattering their teeth in the cold. Caelum watched the boat surge back against the horizon with the pull of the tide, water eddying against the posts of the passenger quay and the thunder and boom of crates being unloaded from ferry to the waiting stevedores. Velvet eyes flecked with lost bits of gold hung on the outline of the ship’s captain shrinking smaller with every gust of wind. The Zeltivan captain bore in the pocket of his brass buttoned coat several letters penned in Caelum’s careful, queerly elegant hand. Captain Moran had accepted the letters that morning with a long, hard look delivered the day-clad ethaefal. Nights and languid noons had found them exchanging stories and philosophies while traversing the merchant deck. It left Moran with a surprisingly better understanding of the traveling healer than most any other. “You’re sure about this, Caelum?” He asked and tapped the wax sealed stack of parchment lightly against the mess table. “Sometimes what seems at first to be sacrifice is in truth a reward.” Caelum’s mouth pulled to the side and his eyes dropped behind a thick veil of matchstick lashes. “Aye, Moran. I’m sure,” he answered at length and turned to finish packing his scarce belongings. Moran had stopped him, however, with a hand steady on his arm. “Listen, mate. Think. Which of you is actually the knife? I don’t want to be crossing masts with him next season and find, turns out, it wasn’t you.” “I’ll be what I have to be, Moran.” He tugged loose from the captain’s grasp, but it was only to grip his shoulder in what would stand in for a fond farewell. Sun swallowed eyes caught the captain’s, harder than they had been a minute before. “And I don’t suspect you’ll do any less.” His mouth twitched, trapped somewhere between humor and horror. Moran shook his head then with guilt writ indelibly alongside irritation, and that had been that. The lonesome screech of a seagull sharpened itself against the night, drawing Caelum back to the present where his feet were still planted on the dock. He blinked and turned from the ocean and the swiftly disappearing ship, stooping down to heave his bags over a shoulder and begin the trek the final distance to Denval shore. For a disorientating beat of his heart, his vision wavered and the quay dropped out from sight, sucked down with the rocks into the retreating steps of the out bound tide. He stumbled, boots scraping against those same vanished boards, while the world spun and the mountains immuring the tiny city grew opaque like phantoms in the fog. A nearly overwhelming sense of déjà vu swamped the remains of his senses and he stopped with one foot on land to re-gather the reins of his breaths. Denval, like Cyphrus, he realized, knew him and maybe a little too well. As the world settled itself back into place, his concerns began to gravitate around what Denval might remember of him that he himself did not.

[Tabarnac]

The streets didn't run with blood, nor the earth tremble and shake after such a long parting from this one, but when his feet hit the true shore, it was like being a child on the beach carefully stepping inside the greater bounds of a parent's footprints. A glance up at the Eye of Leth, the knowledge that it gleamed with light borrowed from Syna, sometimes all the shattered pieces of himself that he collected over time came together out of nowhere, and sometimes things fell apart. Rak'keli's mark burned, his stomach churned. And this was not how Denval was supposed to be. He had vague memories bubble to the surface of a more remote, militaristic garrison, its watchtower burning brightly. These were the far-strikers, the long-walkers, a terrifying branch of the Suvan armies, who appeared out of nowhere as if by magic. The thunder of hooves echoed down the centuries in the hollows of his ears, or perhaps it was the sea, or the rushing of his own blood. Syna had sent him here once. Of this he was suddenly quite certain. I had to find you Tell you I need you Tell you I've set you apart Tell me your secrets And ask me your questions Oh, let's go back to the start In the mundane present, the shadowy form of the gull flapped its wings, rousing itself a bit to peer at him curiously. Newcomers sometimes had food, he had found. He cawed sleepily, sounding almost human. One might have mistaken it for 'Jolan'. Nary a few steps beyond him was the Stranger's Welcome, a lantern hanging near the door, and light coming out from the windows. Sounds of revelry leaked through its chinks and cracks, a tad desperate for a sleepy little town such as this, its multicolored houses barely discernible pastels in the moonlight. There was the faint buzz of fear in the air. Soldiers marched into the teeth of fear, into the maw of death, but only the foolish and the mad did not fear. But this settlement had survived the centuries in isolation, proving themselves hardy and a force to be reckoned with. The door of the tavern-cum-inn swung open, the noise spiking as a red-faced drunk twirled about swimmingly to laugh and call back inside: "Aw, c'mon, Lena! The world could end before we wake! Hike up that skirt and sit in my lap and let me die a happy man!" But he tripped over his heel, stumbling and letting the door fall shut before he hiccuped and waddled over toward the quay. "Evenin'," he said to Caelum, his dialect of Common strange but somehow familiar. He walked to the end of the passenger quay and the tinkle that followed alerted the ethaefal that he was making water. "Don't tell," he called over his shoulder, a chatty pisser. "Can't remember where the privy is." The captain of Denval ran a tight ship, and Caelum would soon find that her people knew of her grandiose plans: a road to Sultros, a boom in population and export, the development of education and innovation. But such a growing utopia would require strict administration. What was Caelum doing here? Running in circles Coming up tails Heads on the science apart Nobody said it was easy It's such a shame for us to part Nobody said it was easy No one ever said it would be this hard Oh take me back to the start The friendly drunk shuffled away, listing to the side and hopefully heading for his home. Between one blink and the next, the drunk was gone and another figure was standing nearby, tall, lean, and most definitely watching Caelum. There was no malice to be detected there. He came forward into the lamplight, his cloak swirling around his ankles, his boots crunching through a bit of early snow that had not quite melted away yet. In the uncertain light, he was quite as exquisite as many an ethaefal, though lacking in horns -- only human. And yet the healer would recognize what burned in those eyes: compassion. It was a sort of compassion so naked and honest that the person viewing it often felt themselves the one naked before it. How could a stranger love one so? "Welcome to Denval," he said in that archaic Common. His face was careworn, weary with worry. "We are under attack. If you have been marked by one deity or another, I would advise against availing yourself of their power. Something is wrong with the connections..." He sighed. "You need a place to stay," he said matter-of-factly. The chain of Ranuri was hidden against the cold, but he could not stop up his goddess-enhanced empathy forever, and so he still sensed need, but it was warped. I was just guessing At numbers and figures Pulling the puzzles apart Questions of science Science and progress Do not speak as loud as my heart Oh tell me you love me Come back and haunt me Oh and I rush to the start "Good night, Jolan," he said, looking past Caelum's shoulder. The gull made sleepy noises, jolan, jolan. "I can help." *partial lyrics from coldplay's "the scientist"

[Caelum]

The world, Caelum thought while watching the drunk spin away, had ended a long, long time ago. No cheerful fatalism or pickling by alcohol was going to change that. He remembered in the stranger a man he had never been. For a few dank days in Ravok, with the pressure of Delucia’s demands and the hope stripped from him like skin beneath the whip, he had chosen wine over water and drowned himself in lucid, careless dreams. It was now but one of many poor choices he had made in that blood soaked era, and among those which had nearly killed anything good left in him rather than spared it. Whenever he looked back, peering over his shoulder through that window of his past, the black took notice of him and shivered in remembrance. Moran had known it, and so had Alander Jin. The unseeing eyes of Aurelius had made out the shape of his shadow in the bemusing blur of Ionu’s favored city. It was in him, on him and he feared even more a part of him now as that which took in the skyline of Denval, city on the world’s edge, and felt a drumming noise inside his head. Here. He was here. Only he still did not know why, nor if he had arrived too late. He had a bad feeling that had happened before. god bless us every one it can’t be outfought it can’t be outrun Welcome to Denval. The broken heel of his riding boot scraped against the hard packed earth as he swiveled, drawing up short at the sight of the man before him. Years previous his path had laid itself across the blade of another’s, a man who wore the countenance of the moon and was cloaked in all the dreadful beauty of the night. It was the first other ethaefal Caelum had met, and this man with the shadows of no horns throwing themselves to their feet, was more striking in his beauty that Leth’s fallen had been. Far more, Caelum felt certain, than he was himself when Syna sprawled illuminate across the sky. “Who is attacking?” It rambled out of his mouth before he thought and a hard shake was given his right hand. The motion traveled up his arm, ending in a roll of a lean shoulder. He lifted that hand, the skin upon it prickling as if brushed with starwort, painful and inflamed. Ducking his chin, he kept a wary, boxer’s regard on the stranger while dragging off his glove. The sheer force of the man’s compassion, bared and breathing, was disconcerting, was even frightening as it forced one to wonder what it was about themselves for him to be so concerned with. Not that Caelum bothered with such questions, having known long and long what in him was wrong, what in him was broken. He dropped his eyes to his hand, sweet Rak’keli’s kiss upon it unveiled and eldritch in the starlight. The flesh surrounding was calloused and scarred, but so his hands had always been, and there was nothing unusual to see. Fingers spread and he peered through them for a moment at the man, almost childish, before letting his hand drop. The density of djed in Denval was heavy in his lungs. Maybe if he kept trying to look at things from the corners of himself, try and take them in different slants of light, truth would start shining through. The real question was, when it did, if he could handle it this time. like memories in cold decay transmissions echoing away far from the world of you and I where oceans bleed into the sky “Yes,” he answered. “But I don’t have any money. I’m looking for a job.” Breath stilled, hesitation catching it behind his teeth. “Who are you? And what have the gods done here?” god save us every one will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns *partial Lyrics by Linkin Park.

[Tabarnac]

"Enemies," he said, shrugging. They did not know yet, entirely, what was going on. He was just warning people because some had come ashore with no word from the longshoremen and stevedores. The Denvali could be close-mouthed about their problems even as they were welcoming of strangers as always. "We will find out and deal with it appropriately." A glance at the glittering kiss of Rak'keli told him all he needed to know. Cian and this one would need each other, and it was his calling to put them together. He nodded, things falling into place like dominoes in his head. He could still help some people, even if only in little ways. What about my needs? he often found himself asking these days, petulant even in his own mind, and it disgusted him. He was a priest, for goddess's sake. He had a duty. "I know a few empty houses," he said. "One will surely work for you. I'll introduce you to Cian Noc at the Opal Clinic. He was trained in Mura. I'm sure he would take you on. He has three of those dainties," he said, motioning to the tattooed man's gnosis. "And more besides." Justus had seen them all. Housing and employment were still found with military alacrity here, even by a priest, or chaplain. Justus straightened, looking more a soldier now and less a tired workhorse. As the light shifted over his face, a razor sharp shard of memory moved of its own accord within Caelum's psyche. For a moment he saw someone else, a general, a great leader of men, wearing a great amber gem upon his chest that twisted his insides, pulled at him. In a blink, Caelum found himself clutching the man's biceps even as Justus reciprocated, ready to defend himself as any Denvali. But when he spoke, it was with that impossible compassion. "Must have been asea for a while. You'll have to find your land legs again. My name is Justus. I'm a chaplain, the priest of Nikali. We have a temple devoted to the goddess here, among others. But if you're speaking of apparitions, you missed Syna and Leth by over half the season."

[Caelum]

The world surged, swam. Long fingers dug into the stranger's arms, holding on to the buoy as it felt in these moments as the only thing keeping him breathing. Air rushed in, expanding his lungs in the trap of his mortal chest. All the light in the world was caught in that chunk of amber, the pendant of a necklace this stranger at this quay-side was not, in fact, wearing at all. It was an illusion, he imagined, like those thrown at him in the thoroughfares of Ionu the Tricker's mad city. He was over tired, delusioning objects from far fetched dreams in to common place conversation. He told himself this, he told himself, while straightening his spine and loosening his fingers with a pulse of power that was natural as the reflexive battery of his heart. Healing trickled for those unintended bruises, fractured in the air with a gasping breath of lightning bugs before turning back upon itself. He had been warned, hadn't he? The cold that had crept upon him unaware while at sea lunged and he sneezed. Knotted tangles of braids jounced as he bowed his head, huddling in on himself with the weight of the ballast stones beneath his boots feeling as though they were atop his shoulders. He had never considered himself worthy beneath Leth's glower -- and Leth, he felt, was always glowering at him -- and less so now as he shifted the bag heap-full with all of anything he could call his own. "Cian.. Three from sweet Rak'keli?" He muttered, peering up at the man through the soot and sour of too thick lashes. Memory dragged across his mind like a scrambling, screaming soul from the back of a galloping horse. "You know his name's not Noc," he heard himself add without thinking, half muttering in perceivable madness to himself before he shook his head and then the rest of him. Clearing. Clear. "I know him. This Priest of Rak'keli. Or.. I did. For a while. Once, before he was.. here," and here, Caelum did not realize, was not a place that knew from when their healer had come. They had taken him all besides. Fingertips twitched at the edge of the stranger's hood, instinctively drawing it back up, tugging it tight. He needed to be warm. "What?" Every scattered, disoriented imagining erupted and thinned, racing out like clouds from the face of the sun; and Caelum's regard, older than the rest of him, caught that of the stranger's to all but nail him in place. "They were here?"

[Tabarnac]

Justus could sense when a person was there and when they weren't, and he was patient enough as the hold of a dead man's memory released its rigor mortis grip upon the tattooed Drykas. Perhaps he should introduce him to Sitkanis, whose own day-form was a burly plainsman's. But empathy hardened into something else, brow furrowing at Caelum's words. Did he need to slit this man's throat to protect Cian (not) Noc? "No," he said, deadly quiet. "It is not." The chaplain could also sense when someone had dared the dangerous connection to a patron deity, and so he slung the man's arm over his shoulders and started to guide -- and drag -- him toward the Opal Clinic. Not-Noc could turn his thumb up or down and if the newcomer was trustworthy, he could, perhaps, take up residence with Cian as a proper apprentice, or Justus could break his neck in one swift turn, damaging him beyond Rak'keli's power to correct. "One foot in front of the other," he urged, much like a father teaching an oversized son how to walk. "Yes, that's it. Believe me, it was a surprise to all of us. It was the festival of Rak'keli, and Viratas appeared during a ceremony in the Summer. After hundreds of years of silence, they are making up for lost time now."

Moderator NoteIf you wish to play Cian Noc in this thread, you have my permission, but in order to be fair to other players, I will make sure you do not give yourself undue favor.

[Caelum]

Buried within the timbre of the stranger's voice, Caelum could here the rasp of a rattler raising its tail. It left dark eyes cutting at him sidelong, well accustomed to the wariness that lived in his look; but he allowed his arm to be hauled across shoulders all the same, finding himself plagued by an expected sag deeper into the gelatinous dank of dire dreams and unintentional vituperative. "Feet don't fail me now," he mumbled while a transmission caught him off guard, keeping his head turned firmly toward his companion while eyebrow nettled in. "I did not come here for him," he conveyed with words so soft that might have melted like ashes in the warning mince of snowflakes. "Keep him.. Keep him well," he sighed. The bag burdening his shoulder shifted and he found his feet himself for a while, letting go where the stranger would lead. It was not naivete so much as it was intuition or, perhaps, plain exhaustion. The ocean weathered walls of Denval sprung bright and clap boarded on either side, back set by staggering cliffs that kissed the crown of the horizon with a wine stained mouth. Compulsion snapped in his joints and tapped idle fingers against the backside of his spine, clarity grabbed at with a mixture of alacrity and desperation. He did not know from Whom this had first come, only that he knew it at all. "Gods keep a lot of things trapped behind their teeth, mate," he rambled at length. "Don't let Denval bottle her feeling for sake just yet." A beat and a mumble, "Lady always rises right on time, even when it looks like long gone." He cleared his throat and watched the ramshackle structure with its obsessively orderly rows of vegetation and plant life. The orchard waved fruit dropping arms at them a moment later, the distant, dull thunks of apples and pears splashing on some other mother's responsibility. "I don't need a healer," he attempted to convey. "And I can't afford a house. Is there something wrong? With you."

[Tabarnac]

"For him or not for him, if you wish to practice a healer's arts here, you will meet Cian Noc and Master Jarret." He didn't want to say it through gritted teeth, but he was too tired to be carrying this man to shelter, and for the first time since he had mastered the tricky gift of his goddess, that connection between them to which he had become accustomed was altered. He felt like he imagined the Ethaefal had when they landed in the watery womb of Laviku, newborns squalling at the discomfort of the world. But things changed, that was the only thing that didn't. "With luck, the Lady will keep rising each morning, but if it's secrets you're after, you will have to earn them." He stopped them and observed the Opal Clinic from outside. "We can go in, or we can find the nearest empty house and move you in. Captain Astrid decreed a season of free rent to newcomers in order to stimulate immigration, so the house would be yours, and you can start paying her when you find your feet. Cian Noc is your best bet for employment, which you will need to keep the house if you decide to stay. "So do you want the reunion now, or later?" When Caelum just peered at him, he sighed. "I'm tired. Someone has jerked the world out of place and I don't know how to fix it. If you do, by all means, do so."

[Caelum]

It was the weariest invitation Caelum had ever heard, that which directed him toward fixing, toward healing. It was the direction he had been turned since his catastrophic crash into the waters off of Black Rock where lightning walked like the legs of the gods to trample the world. It was as well the direction which had tossed him and turned him, torn and tormented him. It caused his mouth to set on this lonely street, staring at a man whose needs flared within the construct of his conscious unbid due to a corruption of Rak'keli's own grace. This was a city besieged, he began to realize, and even her most stalwart and brave were flagging beneath the onslaught of an enemy they could not fight. For it would seem they would be fighting themselves. "Maybe I do know," he replied at length with an odd note strummed in his words. His accent seemed to fit the archaic form of Common the Denvali spoke, though his words were claimed by the phrasing and vocabulary of the modern era. "Alright. Come on," he said and shifted the bearing of their weight off of the stranger whose name he still had not acquired. He kept close, matching steps, down the shrubbery lined path leading off the road and up the final stretch of cliff to the Opal Clinic where it roosted with windchimes chattering mysteries at the moon. Their boots clomped against the boards of the porch and Caelum hesitated at the door, glancing at his companion as if unsure whether they were supposed to knock or simply let themselves inside. Before he come to a decision, the door creaked open to deposit a lanky man into a slouch against the door frame. He was wearing drawstring, cotton pants and a grey, cable knit sweater that had known better decades. He blinked at them, starlight catching against the tarnished opal light of the gnosis swirling across an otherwise common face. "Well, shit," Cian Noc remarked eloquently.

Player's NoteI'll undue favor you.

[Tabarnac]

When they got to the clinic, both their boots trod heavily upon the boards, apparently enough to summon the healer with the rakish grin, a true whore with a heart of gold, or perhaps that was Justus. The heart-healer smiled for Cian, a tired, but amused smile. "He wouldn't tell me his name," he said, "but it seems like introductions are unnecessary. You're after the same goddess, so I brought him to you. Couldn't persuade him not to tap upon her shoulder for the time being, so I hope you know the best way to help someone get over the backlash. Will you have him here or shall I find him an empty house and let Astrid know we've another one banging about town?" When Cian didn't respond right away, Justus looked from healer to healer, wondering at the secrets that lay between them, whether he would be in on the need-to-know basis. "Or I can kill him...?" Just then a dark haired girl with her eyes demurely downcast, slipped past Cian with murmured apologies. Her clothes covered everything, but her hair was in a lover's knot, and there had obviously been some funny business going on. Siwa touched Justus' hand as she passed, then hung back to see if he were repairing to the Temple or if she should go on alone.

Moderator's NoteGod, Cian's real last name must be Slut.