[flashback] ancestry of the sun.

[Caelum]

"Sleep," he said and released all of their answers and questions into the air, not unlike the brushing of broken blades of grass and fragments of leaves from his trousers as he unraveled to his feet. The bedroll he gave to his companion, spreading it near the fire, not bothering with pitching his tent in the shadows. It was spring and if the night grew more chill, the fire and blankets would yet be kind. Dreams failed to find him that night as he offered them no opportunity. Sleep was avoided as he sat cross legged on the other side of the fire, head bowed over the pages of books and journals. He kept watch, thusly, while the gentle whir and whisper of the forest rose up around them in what he imagined might have been a lullaby. The scratching of his pen across the parchment did not intrude on the meditative humming of the wild lands, tracing out the shapes of the herbs and plants they had used today in an attempt to emblazon them more fully upon his memory. Aingeru. Aingeru. Aingeru. His pen paused, ink blotting against the precious paper, and he hastily continued on. The hair prickled stalk of orangeroot, however, began to flow into a cardinal line dividing the page and thus the world into halves from top to bottom, north to south. The gnarled depiction of roots tangled into the place in which the waters of the southern seas would be and as the moon crept through the sky he moved on towards the leaves. Their veins stretched through a solitary land mass, outlining the edges of the continent that had once housed the empires of Suvan and Alahea. Within the rough, artist rendering of an herb meant for purification he was drawing a map of Mizahar prior to the catastrophe of the Valterrian. Aingeru. Sunsinger. Aingeru. Memories prodded but be they conceived of actual recollections dredged from the mire of the mind of Kasb'el Sunsinger while he sat in his moonlit skin or from copies of ancient works glimpsed in scholarly tomes he did not dare guess. Down that path of recollection nightmares waited that he had dodged for five, long years; but as the hours waned from dark's deepest towards sun rise, he kept to his meditations and covered the entirety of three pages in unlearned cartography blended with feeble stores of a healer's knowledge. It grew in his mind as it had been planted, desperate and grasping, ridiculous and fodder for fools. Since the day he had coughed up stardust with seawater on the unforgiving shore of Black Rock, he had clung to the incredible notion that the rift in Syna and Leth's realms was capable of being healed and he, somehow, some way, had the ability to help it happen. There was only one living being who knew of that crazy notion, and she waited for him by a gold painted windowsill in the city of Zeltiva, ever patient when he vanished for days and months to tilt at cosmic windmills. Never once did she name him for a fool or call him an idiot when he stumbled home with whatever book or scrap of paper or tidbit of knowledge trapped in hand or in brain he had gone seeking. Instead she said things such as begin with a bone and so once he was fed and rested he would turn towards the clinic to piece back together the forgotten healing abilities of a long dead Drykas healer. Or she would say even the gods use words and he would bury himself in the antique shop or go rifling through the university library to read things about divinity, about the Ukalalas, of magics and history and anything, everything that struck him as even remotely pertinent. She had not yet said to him that for a man who had a chip on his shoulder the size of the sky for Syna he was incredibly dedicated to doing her a service. He was not ready to hear it. He might never be. Sunsinger. Aingeru. Sunsinger. When the first, pallid light began to suggest itself through the trees of their copse, he at last woke from that place of deep, strangely desperate peace. The pen dropped and he tilted his head back, heavy, dark brown braids weighing against his shoulders. A breath was inhaled through his nose, filling his lungs and his bloodstream with the first scraps of daylight; and, perhaps due to the presence of Sama'el, orphan of his former homeland if not orphan of his goddess, he was motivated by the abruptly buoyant memory to sing. His voice was untutored but mellow, low and bleeding with old world Pavi into the tangle of a tune designed before the grief of Ivak to honor Syna.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Whatever dreams kept Sam in the arms of sleep so long began to release him as soon as Kasb'el began to sing. His dreams bordered on the memories of someone else, full of the coppery taste of blood, faded images, and intense feelings. He woke with someone else's words in his mouth, unaware of the implications yet, that he had fallen asleep not long after the sun had and woken with it. Bleary eyed, he sat up, his muzzy voice buzzing below Kasb'el's. But as he awoke, he assumed a prayerful kneeling, as if he was instinctually aware of the need to praise the gods. His imperfect voice rose to the tree branches huddled over them, to the pale, washed out light that heralded the coming of Syna. Even as his awareness shook itself off like a wet dog, his voice rose in imitation, almost as if these songs were truly in his blood. Whatever the status of his pavilion, he was a sunsinger, his adolescent tenor rising with wavering grace toward the heavens to be laid at Syna's feet. Despite the old words, he was personally thanking the Sun Goddess for returning that august representative of his bloodline to help him secure his freedom since he was all that was left of the pavilion. The Sunkiss pavilion still existed, he imagined, that cadet branch, but it wasn't the same thing. Sam had the lineage, the blood. He just didn't have the bequest of his grandfather, the Ankal, and no wonder he wasn't sure of his ability to bring the pavilion back to life from its ashes. But all that didn't matter just now, because today was a new day, begun free, hopefully ended free, and he was not alone. He had a horse and a member of his family, and that would have to be enough for now. He sang for his freedom and his slavery and what he must learn from each state. He sang for his dead and for those brought back to life. He sang for everything and nothing, the sun and the moon, but mostly for the sun and for this promise of a new day celebrated by old songs.

[Caelum]

there is this thing that's like touching except you don't touch back in the day it just went without saying at all all of the world's history gradually dying of shock there is thing like talking except you don't talk you sing, you sing - dresden dolls; sing. The original Sunsinger sang poorly. While he possessed an innate sense of melody and tune, his voice was raw and untrained. The song did not gain heights either of volume or of glory, but when Sama'el stirred and joined his voice to his, the song became supported and through it as did the prayers it carried. Night's last fingers shades fled, slipped from the earth and taking with them the skin of a Drykas to reveal again the ethaefal beneath. He stopped singing when the change came upon him, song dwindling down into nothing with a breath and a sigh and the dull thunk of the back of his head falling against the tree trunk he was leaning against. Matchstick lashed rose enough for him to observe the image of Sama'el at worship and a smile graced an otherwise bitter mouth. He could hear the strike of breaking chains and the thud of free moving strides tangled in those notes; and he thought, perhaps, this handful of musical minutes might have done more good for the runaway slave than all Caelum's earlier efforts with medicine and herbs. Without a word, he crawled up to his feet when Sama'el too was finished, the hunger that had sat hollow in the pit of his stomach shrinking beneath the day light. "Time for breakfast," he said and nothing more.

[Lariat]

Caelum

Experience:

Riding (Horses): 1 xp
Herbalism: 4 xp
Foraging: 1 xp
Plant Identification: 1 xp
Medicine: 1 xp
Singing: 1 xp
Wilderness Survival: 3 xp
Teaching: 1 xp
Drawing: 3 xp

Lores:

Herbal Uses:
Identified Orangeroot
Conversing with blood
What it is to help family far from Sunberth
Reflection on the blood god
Morning songs that reveal a cut so deep

Sama'el

Experience:

Riding (Horse): 1 xp
Herbalism: 3 xp
Foraging: 1 xp
Plant Identification: 2 xp
Horsemanship: 1 xp
Singing: 1 xp
Wilderness Survival: 2 xp

Lores:

Herbal Uses:
Identified Lousewort
Identified Gentian
Identified Rose hips
Identified Goldenseal
Identifed Cascera bark
Talk of the gods
Thanks to the Syna for grandfather

If you think I missed anything just send me a pm.