[P] bone to rune; skull to dust

[Turhan]

“ bone to rune ”

Turhan has never seen the sea but he has encountered it a great many times in his life.  Enough to know the ebb and flow of the tides - to know that they are controlled by the moon, the sun, and the rotation against the pressure of space.  He knows its power, that it can destroy things or take them away permanently.  The sea is forever.  It is cyclic and unending.  The sea can be frozen or evaporated but it will never fully disappear, the sun will release it or the clouds will rain and rain and rain until the basins it leaves behind fill up again.


Terminus was a name he knew from a long - long time ago, because it had been a fitting one from the beginning.  Now, much older and wiser, Turhan returns to the same shores he once came to for healing and cleansing.  How many mothers and their children had he healed here?  How many warriors had he baptized in the blood of the wolf in these sands?  How many enemies did he curse before he sent them into the waves to face their fears -- to face Vespera's final judgment?


Too many, 


Then again, Turhan is good at intentionally forgetting things.  The ghosts linger here on these solemn beaches and he intends to leave them here.  He does not care to recollect on a broken and painful past for his people however.  He does not want to bring his blood to a boil or to corrupt his mind with the anger he knows he will always feel for how his people were treated.  Turhan has gone too long on the winding path of healing and spirituality to look back behind him now and wonder - what if?


Though,


What if .. what?


Would there have be more of them if he chose to be a warrior instead of a medicine man - to be one of the men who walked out into the sea and prayed to Vespera for strength and courage to defeat the enemies that stood against them?  The thoughts worm at the edges of his already half-faded sanity, a blind eye has an all-seeing mind, and Turhan knows how savage an angry spirit can be.  The Elder certainly knows how savage his own had been in his younger days.


He will not become that today.  Today he is here to heal.  To reconcile with his Goddess Vespera.  To remember her spirit and to honor it as his travels abroad bring him back to home at long last.  Turhan wonders what it will be like to meet these new people who have filled the ancient lands.  He wonders when and how he'll come to know them - under what circumstances that it will have to be before he is seen by them.  Will they capture him?  Are they anything like the hunters that razed his family to the ground simply because they were different - because they were in the way?


In the evening like this, when the wind is chilly and the air clings to a stormy notion, Turhan is encouraged to take his time crossing the beach.  His finely tuned senses suggest to him that he is alone and that is fine with him, he has been alone for quite some time now - searching for his lost ones, avoiding everyone else.  Though he wonders why he avoids crossing the path of a stranger - perhaps he has lost his faith in new minds and their ability to grasp old ideas.  Quite often, they can't see past the horns, the hair, and the grease paint, the strange and ancient language he has spent his whole life speaking, and quite comfortably at that.


The winds shift, the ruffle the wild mane of hair and beyond the heavy medicinal scent of his own body lies a secret.  He has been followed - or perhaps close to being encountered - he cannot decide which of the two circumstances it might be.  Turhan hopes, for the stranger's luck, that it is just coincidence and not conspiracy.  The mystic stops dead in the sand and listens to the ground beneath his feet.  He listens to the wind which carries more information to him, someone is downwind of him, steadily pushing through the sand themselves.  The horns tilt as he looks down off to his right to get a good snort of the air.  


"Ndani ali kunj uko?"


Who follows me?  Who is here? .. he doesn't remember how to say these things in a much simpler way.  The jungle of ancient words comes out like liquid gold from his shark-toothed mouth.  The sneer he gives is something terrifying, two rows top and bottom of long, sharp-sharp teeth.  When nothing attacks he releases his hostility back into the wind and waits quietly.  Too old to fight and too old to run, he supposes it is Vespera's way that a stranger should happen to happen his way.


"Speak your name, mlendo."  Brusque, he forgets the common words for 'Other' and places it with his own instead.





@Silas  Go easy on the old man <3  We are still working on this muse, this post is a mess but ILY so write with me c:
 

T U R H A N
skull to dust