(Untitled)
It has been something slightly more than fifteen years since he finally buried Gregor. It had been difficult between them since he'd begun edging up to fifty, had only gotten worse over time. Petty fights about worthlessness and age and beauty and, mundanely enough, money and infidelities, things that... simply did not concern Jast. His lack of ( Read more... )
There are a few birds around him already--black birds he doesn't know the names of but they sat with him in his perch and listened to him, eased his loneliness for another night. He doesn't quite remember what stories he weaved to them, the blur of memory fading into the black of his mind because he's learned how to stifle nostalgia when he must. Otherwise he'd have driven himself mad with sorrow decades ago.
Something about Kalika, his littlest sister, his closest companion in the years before they scattered. The birds had been enraptured by the tale, chirping softly their condolences and Niarkhos accepted them but it did not heal the wound, offered only a temporary salve. A usual medicine, although... his little one, the strange and beautiful creature, his sympathy spread farther than that, soothed the prince's aches for days, even after they'd separated.
Sleepy golden eyes open to spot Jast, and Niarkhos doesn't waste another moment taking flight, drops from the branch and flaps languidly to bridge the distance between them. He finds a place on the boy's shoulder, stealing dark feathery hair between that sharp beak and chewing in affectionate greeting.
"Good morning. I missed you, little one."
Reply
Perhaps Jast lets that flatter him, though perhaps he shouldn't. He reaches up to stroke Niarkhos' feathers, laughing softly, happily, under that tickling greeting.
"Hello, old one, I'm glad to see you had company to keep."
Perhaps he also should not crack about the bird's age, but he means it endearingly, of course. He tilts his head into the bird's touch, cheek brushing sleek feathers.
Reply
"Company, yes. Though they'll be leaving soon, I imagine. My stories are rather tiring. What brought you here?" Niarkhos drops from the boy's shoulder, curling into a form that can stand straight and be at level with his friend, smiling with a shred of sleepy mischief.
"Not that it isn't a lovely morning surprise, of course."
Reply
"Your stories aren't tiring," he objects, vacillating a bit, perhaps. He doesn't recall birds being known for their clarity.
Reply
But Niarkhos smiles and takes Jast by the hand, threads their fingers together in a familiar gesture of companionship. Pulls him along toward the base of the great, towering tree. "Come here," the gyrfalcon requests, wants Jast to join him at his perch.
Reply
Jast stands at the base of the tree a moment, palm caressing rough bark, the other held in Niarkhos' hand. He gives a little pulse, says hello quietly with an affectionate smile on his face. At some sign no one but him hears, he climbs up agilely, fingers finding holds where they aren't. He climbs up past where the blackbirds have just begun to lift their heads. All the way to the top, he had been invited. He breaks back out into the sunlight, glancing back down for him.
Reply
A breeze rocks the cluster of green leaves around their heads, far enough south yet to have escaped winter's harshest arctic claws. Sunlight mottles through in pale patches, and everything smells crisp and clean, open and free.
Finding Jast at the thicker end of the branch, the bird affectionately tugs, encourages him farther out. He's excited to share this spot with the little thing, thrilled to purl and fantasize and fabricate the images in his head, the memories. "Do I fascinate you?" he asks, does not quite wait for an answer, spellbound by their lofty surroundings. Niarkhos sits, legs hooked leisurely around the bark, pulls Jast with him. "I have something for you."
Reply
He doesn't even quite realize what the bird has said at first and once he's deciphered it he's filled with confusion and fluttering and--
"For... me?" He can, quite honestly, hardly fathom the idea.
Reply
Niarkhos nudges, lips gently touching to the fine arch of the boy's brow, smiles against the sweet-smelling skin. He murmurs something ambiguous and low, a strange, convoluted language bred from the bird's brilliant ancestors, a languidly spoken phrase that evaporates in the air on a hushed exhale. That same kingdom magic he'd shared with Jast before, after borrowing the cool salve of his hands to heal a hunter's wound. This time it goes deeper, further, slips into a fragile link between them where the warden's earthen and airborne influence begins and the prince's golden trail ends--until he is not showing Jast memory, he is reliving, letting the little one closer and guiding him into anamnesis.
Europe's Rhine is a long-throated beast coiling across the landscape, ripples like silver scales under the magnified glare of the sun. The air is clear, sky an unpolluted jasmine blue, breeze tickling the feathers spanned wide in smooth flight some hundred yards above water.
Reply
He has shared memories about the old worlds, about the countries across the ocean, but they're abstracts, songs and stories written into the rings of huge trees and the grooves of mountains. Never with this same amount of emotion and sentience. These shape shifters are such singular creatures, there are so few of their breed that even Jast is surprised by their wisdom and powers.
That's not what he's thinking though. He's thinking that everything is so beautiful from here. Sharp and open, warm sunlight flowing over him as muscles that aren't his own flex and pull. He breathes in deeply, feels absolutely pure aether flood through him. He's wanted this for a long time. He doesn't feel the tears on his face until Niarkhos lets his mind drift back up.
Reply
"Don't cry, little one."
The blackbirds below are chirruping their concern in excited bursts of energy, dancing along their lower branch, jumping into the air and fluttering in circles only to come back, settle down, repeat the dance. Niarkhos settles a firm palm on Jast's shoulder.
Reply
"You are entirely too kind to me," he notes brightly. He can almost still feel the sting of that brisk air in his nose and lungs. Flight. He won't ever be able to forget that feeling, or this prince. Jast has yet to decide how he feels about that issue. If he'll want those gold eyes in his mind another hundred years from now. Gods, he is still a child if he is still questioning his eternity like this.
Jast holds out his arm absentmindedly for one of the squawking birds, an invitation to see that he's just fine and report it to the others.
Reply
"I can't quite help myself." Tone full of lark, he watches a bird flap its way higher, find its momentary perch on Jast's arm before jumping in restless motion, joining its brothers to spread the news. "I'm rather taken with infatuation. You're the first I've met in decades who has called to me like you do." Niarkhos leans a hand against the rough bark below them, fingertips playing over uneven grooves. "But I worry I'll be taken again by my travels."
It's like a bird to speak their mind, it's like a gyrfalcon to never trifle with honesty, it's like a shape shifter with avian blood to walk the world between eternity and attachment, whimsy and devotion. The prince turns his head toward the rising sun and lets another wave of cool air rush over him.
Reply
He thinks, perhaps, he should say something more. Something about the infatuation and the decades, his fascination. He doesn't. He doesn't even agree that he will be called to his own duties, healing the places in the earth and sky where mankind has broken its spirit. Jast can be taken by his promises for years, returning more untamed and trilling than when he left. And perhaps the solitude and wilderness is the culprit here that leads him to keep his piece, though he has never confided much in others.
Jast's eyes look downwards. They can have their paradoxes together, earth and air, boy and ancient, human and bird. Neither, both, neither. In the end, he is chained to the ground and Niarkhos to the sky. There is a reason Jast does not fly, it is a very important piece of what balances him as an entity such as he is. The wind moves around him, stirred up by his strange emotions. Ominous blowing perhaps and it quiets again when he glances up at the contemplative bird beside him.
Reply
Is it really so terrible, he reasons, if eternity maps their future whether they're together or apart?
Jast confounds him, his boy spirit infinite and intoxicating and ethereal, but not like those he grew up surrounded by, not those who guided him from birth to sky. Fascination is inevitable and he accepts that, but can't turn himself away from more, from spoiling this little warden bound to land, the first to tap into what he is past feathers, past skin. Niarkhos has not looked away and catches those eyes when they waver up again with his own, a drowning gold with black centers. He's affectionate now and always, leans to nestle a smiling mouth near the little one's ear.
"Your words are endearing because of the language you speak them in." A tug as he intends to stand, pace the length of the branch and lightly drop onto another scant inches below, welcomes the priest along. "Why did you wait to tell me your name, Jast?"
Reply
Jast has never quite acquired mankind's taste for dishonesty, though gods he know that he tried. Silence better serves his needs and... he had remained silent on his name thusly. Silent out of fear, willing to look after the bird, but unwilling to extend his own threads between them as he once had to Mist and Fallen. Isolation is intoxicating, it is liberating owing nothing to anything upon this earth except to the gods who he knows, loves, trusts implicitly. More than he ever had his own mother.
The most truthful answer he could offer would be that he had hoped the bird would not return, for truly he had, had feared the fascinating draw of this old beast and his stories. But even that is a lie.
"I'm sorry," he says instead.
Silence serves him better, words can be such cluttersome things.
Reply
Leave a comment