[Flashback] Galloping Manic

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Sam sat as if mesmerized all the while that the man was working in his stead. When he thought of it, he took a sip of water, held it in his mouth for a while, then slowly swallowed it as if afraid he would choke or drown. The fire drew his focus, and it wasn't until Caelum spoke that he blinked back to reality--though he could not have said if he had been somewhere else.

The man's face looked familiar somehow. Or perhaps it was the sound of his voice. But the impressions of familiarity made no sense and so he let them go. Everything was too strange for him to worry too much about it overmuch.

As to the question, he had to think about it for a moment. His freedom won, was he Sama'el again? He had no pavilion or strider. Was he still a man? Or, at fifteen, was he just another poor, wandering orphan.

"Sam," he said, a little disappointed by his answer. It would be nice to be Sama'el again, but Sama'el was dead.

[Caelum]

Crouching before the building fire, a smile flickered upon his mouth, transmuting the flames that licked and slid across his skin even as the sun itself concluded it's retreat. "Pleasure to meet you Sam."

He cast his eyes towards the West, regarding the horizon heavily for a moment before saying, "Don't be afraid, but my appearance is about to change."

And it did.

The copper was wiped from his hair, leaving it the color of bitter bark, and his horns twisted in on themselves before vanishing altogether. His statue shifted, as well, for the Drykas he had been in that last life was shorter than the ethaefal who had walked the Ukalas hand in hand with the Bright Lady. Windmarks spilled, a few visible from the cuffs of his sleeves, and another most prominent fletching out in the most delicate of lines and detail like sun rays surrounding his right eye.

Night fell. He blinked, eyes opening, and shoved back to his feet again.

"Hungry?"

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

The transformation had its complacent audience. Through weariness, shock, and a possible head injury, Sam remained conscious, but this thoughts moved in a manner he was unused to. As the horned man, servant of the sun, revealed himself as a Drykas by night, it was interesting. He had heard stories of the ethaefal, but never seen one to his knowledge. They weren't known for being especially common, and to his mind, at least, there would be no reason for them to spend any amount of time in Sunberth, or at least in the home of his master.

Completion of the change brought its own revelation. That sense of recognition. The windmark was like a glyph that recalled his childhood to him, and everything felt so queer that he wasn't sure of anything anymore.

Hungry? He couldn't begin to tell.

Kasb'el, he thought. Kasb'el Sunsinger.

He glanced around quickly, but found nobody else approaching.

"Am I... dead?"

[Caelum]

The question brought Caelum to a rocking halt, blinking down at Sam. Am I dead? He asked in the firelight, as cosmic magic whispered around him. Slowly, Caelum eased back down into a crouch, closer now as he sought Sam's eyes, concerned enough to check against their clarity, the size and shape of the pupils.

"No," he told him, "You're very much alive. You're escaped and it's safe enough for you to sleep. You can make use of my bedroll, all right?"

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"But..." he began, stumbling, confused. "You are Kasb'el. My ancestor. Why would you be here when I've forsaken my people?"

His chin dropped, turned, as he tried to hide the shame apparent on his face. Following his chin, he began to turn away entirely, to find soft grass for his bed. The shame came back full force after years of repression, making his hands shake and his stomach churn its acids around.

"I'll sleep over here," he assured him, exhaustion opening up like a void to swallow him. He would fain jump in if only he could be assured of eternal oblivion, if only the Anvil of Souls waited therein and someone to strike him with a hammer to sever his spirit from the ability to reincarnate.

[Caelum]

A hand caught Sam's shoulder, gentle but entirely firm, urging the former slave back around. Caelum's eyes revealed shock, blown open like nova stars, the gold ringing in the pupils not quite swallowed by the shadows of the rest.

Kasb'el. Kasb'el Sunsinger.

The name jumped out of his nightmares, hurling itself headlong against his consciousness and splattering there like a swarm of fireflies to spark and sputter and flare again. Miniature phoenixes, not unlike that swirled in delicate, silvery artistry behind his ear in the mark of Chevas, one of the only things that failed to transform at every sunrise and sunset.

"You're a descendant of.." Words, awkwardly, gorgeously accented stumbled. "How.." He exhaled, muttering. "Windmarks," that told a story, his story, he did not know, could not remember in entirety, just the shock of horror that kept him far from Endrykas and had him steering clear of what few Drykas who slid across his path.

"Sam," he said, surfacing from his shock, focusing. "Sam," he said more gently, "You've forsaken nothing." How could he know that? He could not, but he could guess, he could attempt to sooth, to ease, to heal.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Sam balanced on the knife edge, his mind wanting to shunt itself into unconsciousness rather than face the enormity of life and what it was throwing at him. His left wrist was cradled against the pit of his stomach. Though wrapped in cloth and leather, his single windmark burned at his skin like the ire of his kinfolk, dead and reborn by now.

"I'm not a Drykas anymore," he said, the millionth repetition of the litany in his mind for the past eight years. His eyes wouldn't meet Caelum's, but the way his vision swam, he didn't see much of anything. "Not without Hasieran..."

Walls were cracking, and he could hear his Strider screaming like a human as he was crucified by steely pain. An edge of hysteria was forming, fingers flexing. He wanted his scimitar again so he could dismember the mercenaries and then track down the bandits, the slavers, the magnates of Sunberth. Surely the blood would call to him to spill it.

[Caelum]

Empathy threatened to consume him, amplified by related emotions and poked at by the spears of a dead man, fallen centuries ago amidst in the grasses at the foot of mountains. To forsake was to be forsaken. To cut off was to be cut off. To betray was to be betrayed. Fools who said otherwise, because the knife always cut two ways, and what rose always, always set.

The fire threw reflections of Sam's dead upon his eyes, ghosts that Caelum watched, a man familiar with phantoms.

"Have you broke the Seven Laws?" It was direct query, intended to snap Sam's attention back upon him, drag him up from the cess pit of memories Caelum understood in his gut to be horrific. In this unstable hour of the world, they reflected each other and the glass was not tinted rose.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"No," he said finally in Pavi after he had gone over the Seven Laws in his head, but by the first his membership in the greater community of the horseclans was suspect. He had earned his windmark, but his strider was dead so it was only so much ink marring his flesh anymore.

But that denial didn't make him feel better. Instead he felt the darkness rising and was once again afraid of the dark. Out of the dark came the horse-killers, the rapists, and the thieves; the enemies of his dead people. They came when you slept. They defiled what you loved. And one was never quite strong enough to stop them.

His life since had taught him no greater lesson than that.

[Caelum]

"Then you have not forsaken your people." The words were quiet against the darkness, but they possessed an element of undeniable truth that he could only pray might eventually worm it's way through the thick haze of tragedy that encompassed this young man.

A few years ago, a scholar in Zeltiva had wondered whether Caelum was so terribly driven to heal and not just people, not just bodies and creatures and animals, but the whole horrific world, because he himself was in so desperately in need of healing.

Quietly, he rose, gathering up his bed roll and spreading it out beside where Sam sat. That accomplished, he settled onto his saddle blanket, a sheaf of well worn papers in hand, to read and guard, watch and wait by the firelight for a dawn literal or metaphorical.