Terror had been something it had taken Destyn a long while to overcome in the aftermath of the massacre that left him an orphan in this world. Though he'd lost the whole of his clan, he'd begun to build some semblance of a family here in Kalzasi. As his leg healed, so too did his soul- carefully nurtured by his dear friends Sivan and Torin. His new friend Timon helped, as well, but another huge element was the familiarity of nature. He'd often flown out of Kalzasi and into the surrounding woods where he used to rove with his clan, and there were traces of their souls still infusing the trees and flowers of those lands.
But the terror was back, now. He still prayed to Talon every day, but now he didn't know if his well wishes were heard or if he was only talking to himself. He hadn't attended the event that turned Kalzasi on its head, but he'd flown close enough to see some of what transpired. That fell floating leviathan that rained terror on the palace and spilt royal blood making a blessed day a cursed one.
With the borders closed, he hadn't the freedom to haunt the places where spirits connected him to the former life he lost. So it was that he sought solace in the Tranquil Gardens. He'd been there for hours, in the branches of a tree, conducting the congregated flora to echo his silent prayers of hope and health for the city's missing prince. Focused as he was on his task, he didn't hear the rustling below as another figure approached. It wasn't until that figure below had begun his incantation that Destyn's eyes shot open. His cryptochrome vision recognised a shift in the fields that bisected the air below him. He sensed irritation amongst some of the plants adjacent to the warping fields. He knitted his brow and stood upright from his crouching position, spreading his dragonfly-like wings and beating them with thunderous force as he stepped off the branch to hover over the person below- Casting heavy winds down that whipped his hair about until the Fae descended and alighted on the grass before the stranger.
"What are you doing? It is bothering the garden." Destyn grimaced.
The baker was having an affair with the jeweler. The woman who fell in love with her drunken reflection. A shadowed ally with nothing but trash. Gambling dens. A midnight robbery. A flock of geese flying.
“Nothing,” Urs whispered behind a forest of ferns. Toothless nestled between leaves chilled by a late frost. One of the thirteen eyes watched Urs, slowly floating around him to catch his every angle.
Everything was getting worse.
Urs hadn’t any love for the nobility of Kalzasi. Mother had painted the upper city as a gleam of selfishness. He still balked at the differences, between here and there, between up and down, and how the Midden suffered in cold and wet and dark and how Kalzasi shined so bright.
But he hadn’t thought the politics of this city or any other would interrupt his own searching. War was imminent. The Prince was kidnapped and the King was dead. The little progress he’d managed in Frost was all but lost. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to ever find Imogen or Carina again.
He was beginning to lose hope.
“And yesterday? Did you -,” a gust of wind scattered Toothless, the eyes fumbling through the plants and dirt and air.
A Faerie. Young and male and two sets of wings colored like pearls. He was beautiful, was Urs’ first thought, but then he thought him rude, and then he thought -
“I don’t think that’s your business,” Urs said, the thirteen eyes of Toothless looking out from great leaves and shadows. They blinked, looking to the stranger and then to Urs and then to the stranger again. “And I was finishing up. This is my lunch break. I work here.”
Urs’ sent a spell of Semblance out and through the Fae. He felt the crispness of something quick and air and the warmth of summer. Colors leaked and melded, complex in note and flavor. “Who are you?”
The young Fae seemed taken aback when the stranger seemed to take umbrage with his intrusion. It was as if that outcome hadn't occurred to him. He tilted his head sharply to one side in a manner which, with his wings still unfurled, might have brought to mind a quizzical praying mantis.
"Well..." He seemed lost for words momentarily, before his wits caught up to him. "The garden... it cannot speak for itself. Or at least not to most humans, so..." He didn't have a conclusion to that thought and, again, he was left there in an awkward silence. Slowly he folded his wings behind his back and they slid behind slits in his tunic so they were no longer flagrantly visible. His eyes widened and his expression brightened when the man said he worked there.
"Oh! Are you a healer? When first I came to Kalzasi I was brought here and they helped to fix my leg." Although his Common was quite proficient, the Fae bore an unusual accent that suggested it was not his first or best language. All of his 'S' sounds were unvoiced, and there was a lightness to his 'Th' sound that made it sound almost like a gentle 'D'.
"I am called Destynrael Dromlach’darach de Clann na Feithidí Uisce" He replied tilting his head back in the other direction, "Or just Destyn is also fine." Noting a strange shift in the man's eyes, Destyn stepped back sharply and assumed a defensive stance with his wings spread- As if poised to block an attack or shoot up into the sky.
"What are you doing, and..." His eyes darted about, spotting other eyes that seemed focused on him. "...who are they?"
Mother had been a healer. Here, in the upper city, he’d called himself a surgeon. Another one of their words. Semblance instead of seeing. Summoning instead of calling. Scrivening instead of runework. “Yes. I heal,” he said, “I’m a healer.”
Destyn’s aura wrapped, spun, a dizzying cocoon of sudden feeling - and his wings stretched and flexed, and for a moment Urs wondered if he might fly.
Oh, no. He was only suspicious. Worried. The colors of his aura sharped with intent. Focus. His eyes, Urs realized, remembering the silver of his own magic. The mirror of his own miracle. Perspective, his, but broadcasted.
“Semblance,” Urs said, his magic spinning a weave around Destyn, “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you. There was an attack recently - did you know? A wedding. I’m not sure this city is as safe as I believed.”
True, sort of. He hadn’t imagined an attack like that, not here. All of Kalzasi seemed blessed by the sun. The Midden held all of the worst things. The Royal Family, he’d imagined, were as protected as anything could be. And then one of them died.
“It’s seeing, that’s all. Knowing. I want to be sure you won’t hurt me,” he said, as three of Toothless’ eyes floated up towards Destyn. “That you won’t hurt Toothless,” Urs gestured at the eyes, more slowly peeping from cover.
Destyn seemed comforted by the knowledge that Urs was a healer who worked in the midst of this sacred place. He took him at his word, and softened his stance- letting his wings retract abruptly- there one moment, gone the next. The back of his tunic flapped like a curtain in the wind, the only sign that there'd been wings there at all.
"Yes..." His expression grew grave at the mention of the attack. "I was only just praying about that." He confessed, casting his eyes down to the grass at his feet. "When my clan was massacred to the South of here, I was rescued by a... cloud ship?" He knew it was called something along those lines, at least. "It was Talon, the Shinsei, who saved me. I am very, very sad that he was abducted, and so I was praying and wishing him health and good fortune. The plans were applying their intention to my own, until you-..." He glanced up, met the man's eyes, and then looked bashful as he amended his statement, "...until they were distracted." With that less accusatory statement lodged, he bit the corner of his lip and looked to the approaching eyes.
"Hullo, Toothless." Destyn said, seeming more curious than perturbed by the entity. After meeting the strange gaze for a few moments, he returned his attention to the human.
"And who are you, though?" Destyn realised, belatedly, that he'd offered his own name, requested that of Toothless, but hadn't actually made the acquaintance of the person he'd descended from on high to chastise. Something he now rather regretted.
"I am sorry I was mean to you before. I was only startled."
Destyn, if he was quick enough, might count thirteen. The eyes were mismatched, of varying colors and sizes, and they moved like fish. They darted and swam around, in air instead of water. They stared and blinked and inside, if he managed to see it, was his reflection - caught and held.
“...that’s fine. I get that,” he said, thinking back to his first interactions with Kala. His first meeting with Sivan. Instinct and reactions bit him both times and he wouldn’t be one to judge someone else for the same mistakes he’d made.
“I’m sorry about the Shinsei,” Urs said, coolly, but the deep wash of sincerity from Destyn’s aura broke his chill.
The Prince had done nothing to him. Nothing to Mother. “I - I’m sorry. It sounds very hard, everything. I lost my - someone who I called Mother. I hope your prayer reaches him.”
She wasn’t his mother, but she was Mother. Everything was so different. The more he learned the more he was left with questions. He’d tried, recently, to distinguish mother from Mother, even in his mind. He’d been her apprentice. She’d never called him son.
“I’m Urs. Urs Wardell,” he said, “I’m not from here either. Not from here, Kalzasi, I mean. I grew up in the Midden. A place below.”
Destyn's two eyes darted all over as he noted the sudden motion of sundry of Toothless' eyes. His head snapped in this direction and that in sharp, almost bird-like motion as he tried to catch sight of the whole of Toothless- albeit not all at once. He adopted a childlike grin and held his hand out palm up, very slowly and gently toward the nearest eye. It was the sort of gesture a person might have made toward an anxious alley cat or a wounded squealmouse.
"I believe he will be all right." Destyn said of the Shinsei, "And I pray, for I do not know how else to help." He was no great warrior or potent archmage. The best he could think to do was send intention toward Talon and hope that it might accord him some sort of power or comfort.
"I am sorry that you lost someone who you called Mother." The phrasing had been unusual enough that Destyn recognised it was probably not his actual mother, which led to the rather strange wording of his reply. He didn't wish to give further offence than he had at the outset of their conversation, and he was nervous about putting the other man off.
"It is nice to meet you, Urs Urs Wardell." Destyn replied with a broad grin, "I have heard of the Midden. I have been in Kalzasi nearly a year now. First I was hosted by a noble house who took pity on me, but now I live with my best friends. They both have houses and I go from one to the other. One is named Torin and he is a human, like you are, but the other one is an elf and he is named Sivan." Now that he was comfortable, the velocity of Destyn's speech seemed to have increased significantly.
"Is it very different ,where you grew up, from here, Urs Urs Wardell?"
Mother used to tell him stories of people who took too much air and became more bird than anything else. They wrapped themselves in freedom and wind and feathers sprouted and they fell away from the Earth entirely.
Destyn reminded him of those stories.
“Sometimes all we can do is pray,” Urs said, trying his best to sound certain even if he wasn’t. Mother warned him against the gods and religion and nobles wreathed in gold that could be better placed. Reliance was a sort of disease, she’d whispered, a weakness that can be seen. He wasn’t sure, now, if that was true.
But the gods hadn’t yet shown interest in Urs and so he hadn’t any to offer them in turn.
“It’s just Urs -.”
Sivan. Blue and gold and a halo that cut against the dark of night.
“I know Sivan,” he said, focusing his magic against Destyn’s aura. He felt like light and yellow, the taste of flowers. Like happiness. It was all he felt, it seemed - at least then and there. His aura was dappled and swam and bloomed, a forever ebb and flow that pushed and pulled against the world.
“...and yeah. It is. There wasn’t the sun, there. Or warmth. But it was my home for a long time,” he said, somber. The Midden was home until it wasn’t. Mother protected him and when she was gone, he’d fled. There wasn’t safety there.
“There weren’t colors, or jeweled-tone roofs, or anything much, even if it’s only a bit below where we are now. It was different,” he said, and he thought that he was different, too. He thought about how the Midden was here because he was. He wondered if Mother knew he’d never escape.
“And - you?” Urs asks, trying to keep the conversation happier. “Have you liked Kalzasi? You’ve been here a while already.”
Destyn pursed his lips and furrowed his brow, looking more troubled than consoled by the saying Urs uttered. It may have been cliche to some, but it Destyn had never heard it and found the implications rather ominous.
"Well... maybe, but I hope not." He hoped there would be more he could do. If not now, then at some point down the line. He'd already lost his entire clan to senseless violence and had poorly handled his grief. How could he rebound if the very soul who saved his life from that same slaughter was himself slaughtered? In a world where gods could bleed, what hope was there for a lone Fae without a clan of his own.
Urs correction of his repetition drew him out of this reverie and back to the present moment.
"Oh. I am sorry. I thought you said it was Urs Urs Wardell. I must have misheard." He shrugged somewhat apologetically, but he was also pretty sure he'd heard correctly. He had very keen senses, after all.
"You know Sivan?!" Brightening to the point of beaming, his tunic puffed out as the excitement seemed to make his wings straighten under the textile. "Sivan is very nice to me. He is quiet, but he does not get cross when I am not. He has a lovely garden, and takes good care of it and there is a tree there that used to be a Fae. He also has a scary metal monster, but it is always asleep so it is less frightening to me now." Again, the words poured out quickly. He must have been quite practised in his second tongue to be able to turn thought to word so swiftly.
He settled back on his heels and his tunic deflated as his wings settled with Urs' description of the Midden.
"You will forgive me for speaking ill, Urs, of your home, but that sounds very awful. Cities are mostly, to me, cold places for I was born and raised in the forest and along the stream. But that part sounds especially cold. I cannot imagine living someplace where there is no sun... Well, other than in the nighttime. I live there every day, I guess, but then the sun comes back out, so..." He trailed off, seeming uncharacteristically unsure what to say just then.
Destyn’s aura was light and air, staggered. Fractures warped his understanding. It felt like using a stained looking glass to see. Faith, he’d learned, was like fire-spun candy. Sweet and pretty, but fragile. Colors ebbed and flowed behind the broken veil, distorted by a covering of gold and soft. A made-up separation between the world and his past.
Curiosity seeped through.
“Sivan is very nice.”
Among other things. He kept that thought to himself. Destyn seemed a bit like a child. He was young, obviously, but younger than Urs guessed. Like a bird, he remembered. His feelings felt like feathers, delicate. He talked about the garden and the tree and some monster and his aura reacted and felt every word and light-colored the air around him.
“You’re only saying what you think,” he shrugged, “And I learned that isn’t something to ever hide.”
Mother had lived boldly and loudly. Urs should do the same, she’d written. No apprentice of hers should ever be cowed by anything - no mortal, no god, nothing. Freedom, she’d told him, was the only thing worth living for, and she would die to keep him no one’s.
“The Midden is dark and cold and wet,” he said, thinking of a story he knew.
It wasn’t always that way - once, it held the treasures of the world. It gleamed and glowed so brightly that the gods were jealous. And so they took that shine for themselves. Urs knew that wasn’t a true story, but he did know that gold and diamonds and wealth came from the earth. And he knew that gilded Kalzasi shone with every color under the rainbow.
And that the Midden was still dark and cold and wet.
“But it was my home. And I wouldn’t be who I was if it was different.”
