Burnt Down To Embers

[Jinyel]

Idalos was solid. Its rules were known, from the rocks to the trees to the water and everything in between. The laws of mortalkind and their cities were less firm, but still stable, and something which could appear the same to more than one person.

The rules of Emea were like quicksilver, founded on impermanent things like ideas and emotions. A dreamer did not ‘perceive’ Emea; a dreamer had the shell of an idea and Emea rushed to fill it in. For one dreamer, the land of nightmares would be filled with disease and vermin; for another, it would be filled with a jeering audience and cruel laughter.

For him, it had been wolves and slavers. What else could it possibly be?

Strength paid for pain, and pain for strength. The escape from the Ruins had been vicious. The journey homeward had been endless.

The stag limped on three legs, and two of them shook with each step. One of his sparks pooled at the base of his skull, begging to flood his veins, while the other crawled up and down his spine in its desperation to move, go faster, tear your way from here to there.

His sparks could not understand the difference between Idalos and Emea. He wished otherwise, sometimes. He wished his sparks were living creatures which could be taught and reasoned with. He wondered if that was what they wanted him to want.

The stag sensed the path like a spider thread tied in his chest, though there were times he struggled to keep track of it. A great deal of blood had been spilled in the Ruins of Nightmare, and no doubt the floor of his room ran red with it. His living body lay quietly underneath his bed, and he could not help but wonder ― if he did not wake up, how long would it take for his uncle to notice? Would he reach him before the corpse began to smell?

Probably not. Monya would seek help first.

Close. Don’t stop now. With a lick of flame, Littlespark burned the stag’s forehead. An open sore wept between his ears from how many times the anak had done it. Littlespark wreathed his antlers in fire, but bent down every time his pace slowed. Only twice had he halted entirely, and twice Littlespark had scorched his neck until the hair was gone. Make it home. Make it home. Make it home.

He had no inkling of which dreamscape he passed through, except that it was not Gloom’s. This dreamscape was wild and damp, without a trace of mortal buildings ― Toutouye? ― and nothing in this place was lucid. It belonged to a proper dreamer, whose nightmares were harmless and to whom the stag could do no harm.

Almost. Keep going.

Forest turned to tunnel, and tunnel turned to stone. Not quite the brick and mortar of Scorpion Hall, but the earthen walls pretended to be so with all their might. It was a gestalt place shared by all who lived in that castle, but the further the stag delved, the harder it was to track which passage belonged to him.

Left. No, that one. Almost. Forward, forward, forward.

He was more or less a healer these days. If he were a man, he would have laughed at the thought. A lifetime ago, someone had demanded he use Graft to heal, and he had scorned that person for it. But there came a certain level of power where medical knowledge came as naturally as breath; the stag understood every inch of his body as the blood oozed out of him. His heart pounded like a drum, and his lungs swelled with the power of forge bellows. His legs shook because they were less important than his heart, his lungs, his brain, and so their energy was sacrificed to keep him alive. It was the sort of automatic sacrifice he could have controlled in the waking world, and the sort which would kill him if he dared try to control it here.

Here. Your place. Our place. You feel it?

The spider thread in his chest was gone. Did that mean he was home? Scorpion Hall’s passageways opened into a dark marsh, and he struggled to tell if it was his own or Toutouye’s.

No! Don’t halt! Littlespark lashed his head again. Keep go! Almost there!

Mud soaked his ankles. Crickets chorused around him. Out of the marsh, the ribs of a colossal skeleton reached toward the sky like towers. The moon hung in the air, and the stag studied it through glassy eyes.

Another lash. Don’t stop!

The wet earth dried. A blanket of fallen leaves rustled underhoof. Trees fanned to infinity all around them, and in the undergrowth stalked…

… nothing.

The shadows were empty.

This place… The stag’s thoughts were disjointed. You’re sure this is the right one?

Yes, here, the end is at the Sunrise Place. Go to the Sunrise Place and wake.

The stag did not know which direction was best, but Littlespark knew. Littlespark would not lead him astray.

The night chorus echoed all around. Birds; insects; wind through leaves; it was so familiar and yet unfamiliar. He knew the melody. Something was missing.

Tonight, no wolves howled.

Midnight softened. Darkness bled toward silver, and the stars faded above the canopy. It wasn’t because time had passed ― even for a lucid dreamer, time was more of a suggestion than a rule ― but because the stag passed from one part of himself to another.

Whatever part of his mind dwelt here, it was capable of experiencing dawn.

The sun had never truly risen since he became a dreamwalker, but the further he traveled, the brighter it became. Mist curled through the trees, and eventually the stag could see his own shadow. When the trees finally ended and he stepped to open shore, pre-dawn light had painted the whole world grey.

At the edge of a pond, there was a shelter built against a hill. Not sturdy, not truly a building, but the closest he could come to building such a thing. It was built to hold two dreamers. Many times he had spent his entire night there, hoping it would serve that purpose. It had anchored into him at some point, though he could not guess why; it was the place he arrived every time he fell asleep, and it was where he had to go in order to wake up.

Bloodied and burned, at the end of his journey, the stag came home to rest.

State Of Affairs

The stag is mauled by wolf jaws. One flank is half-eaten, and there is an arrow in one shoulder. The top of the stag’s head and neck are burned. Littlespark is visible in axolotl form, perched in the antlers. Muddy and stuck with debris all over. Struggling to breathe.

[Sade Sauterne]

Shame. At the end of every road, where all paths intersected, and where everything returned to its source: you are ashamed of yourself, of what you’ve done, and of what you failed to do. Very few things could claw their way high enough to even be acknowledged by a dreamer thrown into a sea of such shame, one capable of holding his nose above the water only for as long as it takes him to realize that he’s being pulled back underneath.

He did not sleep often, this dreamer. Not often enough to become a familiar face to his own dreamscape nor as deeply as was required to visit it. And in some ways, he considered this a blessing. When his eyelids fell and his thoughts stopped spinning in circles, there was darkness. There was the faintest sense when he awoke that he must have been out for some time. There was falling asleep one trill and rising again the next, and nothing to be said for whatever half-resting state he entered in between. It was easier this way, less confrontational, whether with himself or with whoever might have wished to appear to him in dreams.

It was not until the waking world became more frightening than this – than forcing himself to confront his own dreams and whatever awaited within them – that the dreamer made the conscious decision to fall asleep, deeply, and to awaken in the bounds of what was once a great forest.

The clearing was still there, where he’d left it. The tree was still there, twisted and withered. The ground cracked beneath his feet the way it always had before, only it had spread, this dryness. Beyond the treeline which had previously encircled it, into the endless forest, farther than his eyes could reach, it spread. And where the ground had dried, all things above had begun to wither.

Shame.

He looked to the tree at the clearing’s center. He’d thought for a moment he’d caught a glimpse of something, a shadow of an orange-furred beast, but there was nothing. The perch between two twisted branches sat empty. He’d been mistaken.

Alone?

Here, he was. Now, he was. He was less fortunate in the waking world, where he was hard-pressed to find a moment to himself, let alone anywhere that felt safe.

When was the last time he’d felt safe?

When had the fear crept in, unnoticed, so unsettlingly quiet that he hadn’t even heard it arrive?

Enough of this, thought the dreamer. He stood on slender legs and four black paws near the withered tree, with his red-golden coat twitching irritably, until he had the sense to swish his bushy tail and return to the form which held him best.

Sade pushed up from hands and knees. Stood on two feet, two solid boots. He wiped the dirt from his hands and pushed his hair back from where it’d fallen forward. For the first time in a while, he was here – but he was only halfway to where he was going.

The earth cracked underfoot. With every step the cuts through the ground grew wider, spread farther, into deeper gashes through the clearing. They followed his steps past the tree and through the forest, beyond the fallen trunks, but stopped short of a patch of green land that spilled several feet out from the tunnel’s entrance. Here, the ground didn’t groan – the grass had grown and overgrown, left wild and untouched by the desolation’s spread. Wildflowers mingled in the greenery, vibrant and unapologetically alive. Their thin stalks bent as if to reach him, and swayed gently back and forth when he passed them by.

How long had it been? How many trials since he’d last stepped foot in the darkness of this tunnel and felt the shift of a cooler air touch his face? How many nights had he spent trying to pretend that it didn’t exist at all?

Somehow it felt longer and shorter than he remembered. Breaks could have passed as he walked through, yet it felt as if he’d just stepped inside by the time the air shifted again, and he became all too aware that he was no longer in the confines of his own dream. The tunnel stretched ahead into somewhere warmer, somewhere… that begged for familiarity, but that had changed too much in the time since he’d last seen it. At the threshold where the tunnel turned to cave, he faltered. His eyes dragged slowly across the structure that had been built there.

Anxious to look. Nervous to be seen.

His throat was as dry as the dreamscape he’d left behind him. Maybe more. He was too aware of himself: every stray lock of hair, every scar he’d earned, every injury that he hadn’t. The thief’s eyes swirled a range of colors too muddled to shine through clearly. And the restless feeling building in his heels warned that if he didn’t step any closer now, it would be carrying him all the way back to the wrong end of the tunnel.

“...Hunter?”

Shame. Seeping through his voice, poisoning his intention. Weakening his will. He didn’t feel like himself like this, not at all. He felt like a child returning to its mother with bruises, waiting for punishment. He lifted his head, straightened his shoulders, and forced his eyes to raise above the very bottom of the structure.

Standing around never helped anything. So Sade went forward, stepping cautiously into a space he didn’t deserve to come back to, and came to a halt when his eyes fell on the dreamscape’s owner.

Injured, like him, but more visibly so. More dangerously so.

“Hunter? What–” Sade rushed forward, caution and wisdom be damned. Let the stag gore him, if that was what he wished. Sade had run away enough.

“What happened to you?” What can I do?

What could he do? He was no healer. He hardly knew if any help would be accepted if he had any to give. He paused before he reached the stag, one hand extended out, and said, “You’re hurt. What can I do?”

[Jinyel]

The dreamscape did not react to its visitor. There was no shift of self-protection, and certainly no prowling wolves to mark that anyone had intruded. If there were footsteps, the stag did not hear them. It wasn’t until a dark figure emerged from the shelter that stag and spirit realized together that they weren’t alone, and even then, their first shared thought was that We were followed?

Sparks flared across antlers. The stag’s head snapped up, his hooves planted into the earth, and his heart returned to its marathon. He waited for the snap of teeth or the rattle of metal from a hunting party ready to close in.

There was no rattle or call. Stag and visitor watched one another.

Hunter.

No Emeyan had ever called him that. No shade of his own dreamscape had ever called him that. Not even his uncle used that name, here or anywhere else. The name rattled through the forest, where the leaves examined the sound between themselves like a birdsong they had not heard in arcs.

The visitor rushed forward. Hand extended. Name and questions on his tongue, What happened? What can I do?

If there had been a strike, the stag would have known what to do. A shout, a blade, inexplicable powers bent toward harm ― those things, he knew. He was ready to flinch, ready to fight or flee if that hand fell against him, but it didn’t. It stayed.

It was here and it stayed.

The stag lifted a hoof, unsure if he meant to step closer or further. His two good legs shuddered too much to choose, and he set the hoof down. Lifted it again, struggled to keep balance, and put it down.

You…? Another thought which began but did not end. The stag wondered for a moment if he had wandered from Kielik’s land into that of Jesine, but even Emeyan phantoms turned toward joy could not be mistaken for dreamers.

You are… here.

No stop. Keep go. Wake! Littlespark crawled down the stag’s neck, claws digging through fur.

No, thought the stag.

Go to the Waking Place!

I will not move. He could not move.

Littlespark bit him. He stood still. Littlespark scratched him. He stood still. Not until Littlespark turned its fiery frustration upon their visitor did the stag resist: when the anak scuttled forward, the bond between spirit and soul dried instantly of ephemera.

No! Do not stop, you going to―! The anak’s protest faded as the anak did. Not harmed, but banished from this dreamscape until they met again in the waking world.

And then stag and visitor were alone.

Sade, said the stag, in the voiceless way of dreams. You…

Came back. Wanted to come back. Thought of me. Need something from me. Want to touch. To help. To hold. To give all the things I wished for as I waited at this door.

Left. Wanted to leave. Didn’t explain. Didn’t want to. Didn’t need anything at all from me. Didn’t want to touch, to sit beside, to have any of the things I thought we wanted.

When one sweet thought rose, a bitter one followed. Did it doom the stag that the sweet ones always came first?

When Sade vanished over the horizon, the stag had felt everything over time. The nights of doubt built slowly upon each other. Zida drew into Cylus and then Cylus to Ashan. The smoke of anger, tamped bitterly with He told me it wouldn’t end well, it was my choice to continue anyway. The dismay of knowing he had done something wrong, and that he wasn’t entitled to so much as an explanation. The all-consuming hollowness every time he sat in this doorway, listening for footsteps, and how many times he had betrayed his own beliefs to sit at the other end of that tunnel just to hear more silence.

Now the thoughts all came at once, relief and terror and amazement and nausea. All the thoughts he’d had, fantasies and dreads alike, crawled up his throat and rooted there.

He stretched forward. His muzzle almost brushed Sade’s hand. He stopped just before hair met skin. Retreated an inch. Trembled with the effort of keeping upright.

Is it… His breath shortened. His heart pounded. It was the sort of question he’d rather fight a hundred wolves than ask out loud, and every muscle of his body was ready to run. He could not survive a touch if this was just one last pass before they never spoke again. He could not endure gentleness if it was the last he would ever have. Are you ― is this ― is this the last time? Are you gone after this? Did you come to ― are you here to say goodbye?

[Sade Sauterne]

The stag’s antlers didn’t gore him. The spirit of fire made visible in this dream didn’t reach him, snuffed out as it was by the dreamer’s reluctance. There was the thought in the invading dreamwalker’s mind to lower his hand and retreat before any more damage was done, but he had never been any good at minimizing harm. Not when it was someone else getting hurt. And so he stayed, frozen where he was while he watched the stag move forward and away again.

It was Sade’s own fault for this. All of it. The way it felt like an accusation, to be asked by someone that he’d spoken so carelessly of love with if he meant for this to be goodbye. The awful, piercing feeling in his chest that gripped its cold claws around his heart and scolded, You always leave. You always have. If he wants you to go, what’s the difference? You left him behind already.

Doesn’t he have the right to leave you behind too?

It was too much to try and meet the stag’s eyes. Sade’s fell to the indecisive hooves that held up the great beast’s shaking, injured legs. To the blood that dripped and matted fur, and the burns that scorched it. For a few trills he couldn’t find it in himself to speak. He struggled to swallow against his dry throat instead, and forced himself to think, for once, before he opened the mouth that knew better how to lie than to consider the truth.

Is that what you want?

His hands moved. His eyes lifted. His throat thanked him, even in dreams; it still ached where his late father’s hands had nearly crushed it.

The stag had retreated, and so Sade took a step closer. Raised his hand again, extended, and slowly brought his palm to touch the other dreamer’s cheek. The touch was brief – his fingers fell away a moment after – but the thief remained where he stood, silver-eyed and still.

I did not– his fingers paused. A line creased between his brows. Mean – to leave.

It felt like a lie, even if it wasn't. Not completely. It was the closest to the truth that he could get. Sade frowned, gritted his teeth.

You. Hunter. I want to help. How to help?

[Jinyel]

The stag was no master of words. Mortalkind had a rhythm of conversation that he had simply never learned, but he tried to read this one anyway. He watched the other dreamer, eyes flicking hesitantly between face and body. It was a weightless sort of terror, to ask a life-or-death question and stand waiting for an answer. Moments passed like days, and Sade rolled the answer in his mind. The stag saw it, but for all his strength and magic, could not see whether it was going to kill him or save him.

Sade hesitated, but he did not move back. His hands moved, and words took shape upon them. Why did he not speak? Was he hurt? The stag wanted him to say I didn’t mean to, he wanted all this to be over and alright again so he could touch Sade’s throat and see why it failed him. He wanted Sade here, in the living, breathing world so he could stitch away everything that hurt.

That thought came so soon before the response, and the response was so similar to the thought, that the stag wondered for a moment if he had imagined it.

What I want? He wanted everything. He wanted all his wishes to come true, and of this to have all been a misunderstanding. He wanted Sade to have come here simply because he wanted to, and for him to have left against his will. He wanted Sade to pick a spot inside the shelter so blankets could be laid there, and to dream with him tomorrow night and the night after that.

He wanted Sade’s absence to be unintentional.

Soft fingers brushed the fur of his cheek. They did not settle there; it was one touch and then gone again. The stag leaned forward again, sooner and more desperate than any wise person would lean into a touch, and brought his cheek back to those fingers.

Sade said the absence was unintentional.

A low whine came from his chest, though it sounded more wolf than deer. The stag leaned in further, running his head beneath Sade’s palm. He knew his legs would not hold him; he knew he had waited too long and leaned too far, but rain had come back to the desert and he dared not close his eyes in case he missed a single drop.

Not yet.

He took a step forward. It didn’t hold him, but he took it anyway, just enough to catch the hand against his chin.

Don’t help me yet.

He sank to his knees, and after a moment’s groan brought his bloodied hindquarters down after.

Just stay here. Sit here with me. Be here with me. He dragged hooves underneath himself in a falsehood of comfort and pressed his head to Sade’s hands. As long as you can. Please. Here. Do anything. Say anything. Please just be here and don’t wake up yet.

[Sade Sauterne]

Warmth returned to Sade’s hand in the form of the stag’s cheek, his head, his misplaced trust. It was all that he could do to keep his fingers there, this time, and turn his palm to lie more comfortably upon the injured beast. He held his breath, as if even the slightest disruption of the air might spook and remind the stag that his hands had done more harm than any good.

How it must have hurt, to finally bring his shaking legs down. To push his head forward into Sade’s touch when it was bloodied and burned enough. Sade knew that it must have hurt – he could read it in the weary thing’s face and hear it in his groan. But he moved closer, and he asked him to stay, and that was all that mattered now.

“Oh, my dear Hunter…”

The thief drew in a breath that shook with – what? Emotion, one that he felt with more intensity than he could remember feeling anything in a long time. Since the last time he’d seen Hunter. But which one, he didn’t care to figure out.

Sade lowered to his knees slowly. Smoothed his hand down from the stag’s head to his neck, avoiding the dark matting of bloodied fur wherever he was able. He didn’t think – he’d never been any good at that – he just leaned forward and embraced the other dreamer.

I am sorry, he wrote into the stag’s shoulder, while his silver eyes closed and blocked out the pale beginnings of dawn light that stretched over this part of Hunter’s dream. Will stay. Long as I can.

Was this enough? This couldn’t be enough. Being here, staying here, was that all that Hunter wanted? After everything Sade had done?

His head shifted, face turning into the stag’s neck as if he could hide from the light there.

You, he signed. Real you. Please?

“I’ve missed your face.” The thief spoke low enough that the words didn’t strain his throat, his tone lightly scolding. “What happened to you? Are you somewhere safe, in-- the waking world, wherever you are?”

[Jinyel]

Once he was down, the stag knew he could not rise again without help. Littlespark had known the same as soon as they saw their visitor, he suspected. A few more steps into the shelter, and he would be in place to wake, but he dared not ask for such help from Sade. Not when he had been so long without him and so briefly with him.

Sade joined him upon the grass. The ground seemed softer with him there. Softer still were the thief’s hands across his hide, then around his neck. The hurt did not feel like hurt when his burns were roughed, nor when Sade’s weight bore against him. He leaned into it, as glad for the pain as for the embrace which caused it. Pain proved this was real. He would rather a painful Sade that was real than a hundred painless ones that weren’t.

Far to the east ― or whatever passed for ‘east’ in his dreamscape ― the silver horizon faded into pink.

He needed a moment to remember what the apology was for. Tonight, he had his thief, which so overwhelmed all the nights before that it was easy to forget how much grief they held. Even Kielik’s ruins felt like trials ago instead of breaks.

Thank you for coming, he replied, with a tone halfway toward forgiveness.

It was easy to forgive with his head in Sade’s arms, with so much proof that the other dreamer did want the bond between them. His greatest misery now was not over what had happened, but what was going to happen. He had never understood those rules between people which no one spoke aloud, and when things went wrong with no explanation, it was a quick assumption he had misunderstood, and that he should have done something different. But Sade had apologized, and that had to mean fewer mistakes belonged to the stag than he had believed.

The animal lay his head across Sade’s knees and huffed, I’m alright. A ludicrous lie on the outside, but one he fully believed. I’m safe. My body is safe. There is a place in the dreamscapes that I... that someone was taken to. I looked for them. I did not find them. But I’ll be alright as soon as I wake. I have magic enough to fix this a dozen times over. Later. All later.

He did as Sade asked, though he could not meet his eye. Without magic, there was no way to hide his own mess; fur and antler vanished, but the wounds remained. Clothes torn, face blackened around one side, open skin which oozed slowly onto everything it touched ― this was the worst Jinyel had looked in front of Sade, and he hated it. But it was what Sade had asked for.

Embarassment. It tilted his fingers as he shifted in Sade’s arms, trying his best to keep his mess off the other dreamer. I am… not good to be seen. I didn’t know you would… He trailed off. Hid his face against the thief’s clothes. “Sade.” He swallowed. It hurt. “I…” I did it. The thing you wanted. He didn’t know the sign for ‘annulment.’ I came back. You were gone.

He folded around Sade, not brave enough to look at him but terrified the wrong question would send him running. He hooked shaking fingers into his shirt, set weight atop his legs, anything to keep him there.

“Where did you go?” The words became so small when they left his mouth, he wrote it with his hands to make sure they didn’t disappear. Why couldn’t I come?

[Sade Sauterne]

It felt like ages had passed since he’d held someone like this. Since he’d been held like this, the way that Hunter clung to him now. Never in his life had he felt so sincerely needed, or been half as ashamed of himself for having left. Regardless of circumstance, of habit, of whether he’d had a real choice in the matter of leaving or not – he should have turned around sooner. He should have come here sooner.

He hadn’t expected for Hunter to want him back.

Beast turned to man, and in his arms, Hunter simultaneously tried to hold him close and hold himself away. As if blood and injury had ever scared Sade off. He turned, moving his body to sit more comfortably in the grass of Hunter’s dream, and afterwards adjusted his arms to pull the injured dreamer more securely into them.

The only acknowledgement he gave to Hunter’s claim of being not good to be seen was a scoff over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to reject that claim, but silenced himself just as quickly at the sound of his name.

Sade.

How he’d missed the sound of Hunter’s voice. The warmth of his body. The comfort that this brought him, just being close, that he’d never experienced from such closeness with anyone else before. Words became signs, and while he concentrated on making sense of them, Sade combed his fingers through the hunter’s hair and guided it away from his hidden face.

I…

Another slow, deep breath. It shook just as much as the rest despite his effort to calm it.

He tried to swallow, but found that he couldn’t. Guilt, shame, embarrassment, regret – all of it coalesced and threatened to close his throat completely. Unable to keep his eyes open any longer, he let his head fall to rest against Hunter’s, and tried still to hold him closer.

I am sorry, he signed again. He had never apologized so much in his life, and certainly had never meant it when he had. I did not mean to leave you.

Blood seeped slowly into the fabric of his clothes. He didn’t care. It was Hunter, and he would take any part of him that he could.

What explanation could make any of it better? He couldn’t even admit it all to himself. He couldn’t say the words out loud. Another breath, and he forced his head up. As gently as he could, he guided Hunter to face him too.

“You’re perfectly appealing to look at,” he scolded softly. “Even like this. Blood red looks beautiful on you.”

For the first time, the thief cracked a smile, slanted though it was.

“I…” He paused. The smile fell slowly from his face the longer he gazed at his hunter.

You told him to fix it. You made it worse.

You told him not to harm your father. You murdered him yourself.

You always wanted him to stay, to take him with you, and you left.

His eyes fell.

I killed–

He couldn’t say it. But he didn’t have the words, the signs to do anything else.

“My father,” he whispered. Tried to swallow, but still couldn’t. “I… I killed him. That night, after… you left. I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t mean to, but I–”

Did anything matter, after that? I didn’t mean to hurt you, but. I didn’t mean to leave you, but. Sade had heard it all before, over and over, and it never made it hurt less to hear the reasons why. The ways that someone could justify leaving someone that they loved behind.

Sade shook his head. “I’m sorry, Hunter. I’m sorry that I left.”

[Jinyel]

As Sade’s hand ran through Jinyel’s damp hair, Jinyel wondered if the relief might kill him. He had spent so long holding himself together through spite and willpower, it felt like he might fall apart as soon as he relaxed. Something about touch on his head skipped past all the worry and self-preservation. He would stay forever, if Sade combed through his hair forever. Would it kill him to never move again?

He did not linger on the question for long. Not when Sade called him beautiful.

Pretty blood, he twitched into the thief’s shirt. Yay.

The true answer ― the one Jinyel needed and dreaded in equal measure ― came more slowly. It hesitated behind the thief’s teeth, then again on his hands. Again came that twist in Jinyel's chest which suspected he had said the wrong thing. His fingers tightened in the fabric. His good leg locked behind the other dreamer’s waist, to slow things down if it came down to run and chase, or at least milk every last touch that he could.

Sade had killed his father.

Jinyel blinked, hands paused in bewilderment. Sade had killed his father, the bitter old… no, that was not the proper way to think of that man. That was not how Sade wanted anyone to think of him. But Sade had killed that man.

The plain reality was easy enough to understand: the wedding had been public, a son had killed his father, and Scalvoris was a place of laws and punishments. The son would naturally wish to leave such a thing behind, and couldn’t afford to wait for a lover already en route to a different city.

But it was Sade. And he had killed Pirvek. After he’d delivered the old Biqaj a bride and a wedding, an entire ship, an audience, fine clothes and food, all while the old Biqaj refused to give so much as a drop of blood to save his son’s life. Sade had given everything, done everything, loved in every way a son could possibly be expected to love a father.

And then had killed his father.

I…

Were condolences warranted? Encouragement? Jinyel certainly wouldn’t shed tears over the loss, but Sade was important, and Pirvek had been important to him. It was difficult to gauge from tone whether the thief was pained or relieved. It was difficult to gauge anything through the rasp in his voice.

“I am sorry you had to do that.”

He brushed dream fingers against dream skin, right where reality stopped. Real enough to feel. Real enough to believe. But not real enough to heal.

“You are hurt.” I wish I could undo it. “Did he do this to you? I don’t…” I don’t know any good words for this. I don’t know what to say to make things better. “Your father… we weren’t married. The recordkeepers said it was never real, since…” Hesitation. Unsure if I’ve done you wrong. “It’s… not my name. Hunter. The one on the paper.” The words tripped on their way out. “They said the marriage was never real.” I don’t know if that helps. “I’m sorry how it all happened. I wish I was with you. I wish I could unhurt it all. But if Scalvoris would have harmed you, then you were right to leave. If it might still harm you, then you are right to stay away."

[Sade Sauterne]

You are hurt, said his hunter, while he bled onto the grass and bruises blossomed like dark flowers underneath his skin. Sade huffed, or laughed – breathed out something that existed perfectly in-between amusement and disbelief.

He had healed as much as he could from the destruction that his father’s hands had wrought. Long enough had passed that all the knicks and scrapes and bruises had faded out of his skin completely, and the deeper wounds wove thicker tissue in pale silver scars. They dotted his throat, cut across his face. Left the curve of an old man’s jaw in his arm. Sade tucked in his chin subconsciously, as if he could hide whatever had been done to his voice, as if Hunter couldn’t hear it. He rested there, at Hunter’s shoulder, and closed his eyes while he listened to him speak.

“...we weren’t married. The recordkeepers said it was never real, since…”

Signs against his skin. The thief furrowed his brows, following a word or two behind each sign the hunter made. He’d mostly sussed it out when Hunter–

–not Hunter?–

–told him why.

Sade didn’t react, not visibly. His mouth remained fixed in a contemplative frown, his hands stayed planted where they were in Not-Hunter’s hair and around his waist. He didn’t pull away from him, though there was a part of him that almost did out of surprise alone. He waited until Not-Hunter had gone quiet again to do anything at all, and when he did, his response came slowly.

His fingers traced the hunter’s back. No wrong, he signed. Then he was silent again for a while, uncertain, while he let his fingertips draw slow circles into Not-Hunter’s skin. He didn’t know the hunter’s name – he wouldn’t fault him for not handing it out to a stranger the first night they’d met. And he wanted to ask why he hadn’t trusted him enough to share it in all the time since, but it felt ridiculous, questioning him when Sade had never proven himself a man worthy of trust.

As for leaving and staying gone, he no longer had a choice in the matter.

Eventually, another laugh escaped him. What else could he do but laugh? Of course this was the way everything had happened, and of course he had sent Not-Hunter away over a marriage that was never even real.

“Well. At least we don’t have to worry about you being married to my father, then, do we?” Sade laughed, and he pulled back just enough to look at the hunter’s face again. “Tell me you haven’t found someone else, or I might just kill them too.”

A joke, of course. Although it did not feel like one.

The thief leaned in close enough to kiss the hunter’s forehead, and then asked, “Do you want to stay Hunter? Or will you tell me your name?”