The Fae'ethalan drifted over the moss and grass like an early morning mist, silent and ethereal.
Since that first wild spirit that had come to him on the road, leading him to Flower, the creature had been strange. Sivan wasn't the sort to take in strays, not really; he wasn't good with people. Perhaps it was that Flower barely spoke, was a broken thing, but the responsibility had felt like another thing tying him here along with Master Tavári'nar's last wishes and bequest where he was concerned. It didn't seem odd that Flower paid them no mind. He had already explained things to Laurevere, and the noble elf was, well, noble about it. A Val'Hytori who deigned to befriend and train an errant half-breed was surely generous enough of spirit to show compassion to a broken thing.
While his first encounter with Wolf had made him entirely a golden wolf, he could only manage memories of that form. He changed his nose—the inner, functional parts, at least—so that he could smell as Wolf did. He scented Laurevere's perspiration, already dry, as well as the fine, subtle cologne he wore, and the specific elven scent of him. He smelled the honey in the hive. He smelled the squealmouse who made itself scarce when metal was singing or if Sivan invoked anything of Wolf. He smelled the flowers and the leaves and the loamy soil and then he could focus on the floral, fey scent of Flower themself.
He knew that wolves could smell some illnesses, some changes in the body that presaged strokes or other medical emergencies.
But all he got was what he already knew from his Sembling: a wrongness.
The thought that he might learn Affliction if only to become a curse-breaker still hung in the back of his mind. He didn't voice it often anymore, though. Laurevere had reacted quite poorly when he brought it up. The Val'Hytori was correct: he would risk his soul only for the
chance that he might be able to break whatever curse assailed the preternatural creature he housed and succored. And Laurevere lauded him for it. To his mind, if the nobly born elves owed
noblesse oblige to the common born, it also behooved any elf to show the same for the younger races. The thought made him uncomfortable, but he couldn't deny it outright. The Hytori were the eldest of races, had been favored by the Goddess of Wisdom for ages untold. Now, they had survived the
peripeteia they had earned, whether through hubris or
hamartia.
Sivan hoped they were the wiser for it, and the more compassionate.
Then again, he had always been strange, and had befriended a Lysanrin who was down on his luck. Sivan, at least, didn't carry forward that racial hatred for the race that had mastered them.
"
Anthos," he murmured in Mythrasi, concerned. Flower's movement was arrested when Sivan put gentle hands upon him, but his eyes were dreaming as one might imagine the Phoenix King's. It wasn't a lack of intelligence in those eyes, but rather a quality of
other. Flower's body was there, but Flower was somewhere else.
Brow furrowed, he relaxed his grip and Flower only paused a moment before moving again, pulling off the clothes borrowed from Sivan—too large for him by far—and curled up within the embrace of the Living Grave's roots, resting his head against the bole of the tree.
Laurevere made a thoughtful sound. It made him focus momentarily on his scent, which had shifted. That coincided with a change in his line of thinking, though Sivan wasn't reading his mind but only aligning what his Wolf nose told him with what it meant. He knelt down beside Flower, who was whimpering, pulling down on his hair as if to veil him from the world. But his eyes were closed. Nothing was assailing him. The curse shifted around him, but Sivan didn't know what it meant. There had been hope that his awakening would lead to a breaking of the curse, a healing, and getting to know who this person was. Sivan was his caretaker and he didn't know the first thing about him, really.
"Shh," he murmured, brushing Flower's hair back, caressing his face as one might a child in the throes of a nightmare. He bent down, kissed his brow, and began to hum a lullaby. It wasn't a song he knew from his own childhood, but one he had heard from Flower, perhaps even from the spirits who had led him to find the wilting bloom of a Fae'ethalan.
He smelled Laurevere's surprise when he felt Exael coalescing. The celestial spirit was cold light, then cold light made flesh of sorts. He was vaguely humanoid, but otherwise uncanny valley. There were parts of him that reminded Sivan of IX or one of the more ancient elven constructs he had studied—elegant, organic.
The fey child is not ready for the world, he warned.
Sivan sighed, and then Laurevere was over his other shoulder.
"I know you want to help him. Even if you
do learn the dark art of soul-cursing, it would take time for you to study, to research, before you would have a chance of helping." It was gentle coming from him. Sivan was used to him being hard, but that was when they were dueling. The elder elf wanted him to be skilled with blades to help prevent death by assassin, even if he didn't want Sivan skilled in any magic that warped his soul.
The Living Grave will hold him again, hold the curse at bay.
"I know," he mumbled, feeling miserable for all that they were right. He couldn't force Flower to be ready, and he only had so much time to spare in the seeking of an answer when he had to support himself. Torin was paying him too much, so he knew he couldn't continue working at Kilvin's Forge for too long.
He picked up the clothes Flower had doffed, and tucked them around him like a blanket as if the tree wouldn't keep him warm or, if it didn't, warmth wouldn't exactly matter in that arboreal stasis.
"Until next time," he said to his somnolent friend.
Even as he stood and stepped back, the trunk of the tree began to split, sucking the sleeping body within, and closing up behind him.
Laurevere put a hand on his shoulder. Exael, following his lead, did the same.
"Sweet dreams, Flower."
fin.
