When aether looks at the span of the great prairie through the eyes of an Erasmus that was, it does not just see his memories of the Wilds reflected back like a snowglobe in november. When that gold pupil rests on the dusty places between the brush, the grey-green, the gold-green, the browns and the wide blue above, it sees red as well. It sees three memories at once: what was, what is, what became. Indeed, Eluetheria glares back at him without much love in its heart, because it does not trust the way the wind breathes when it winds through the empty places of him. There are the images cast by the boy: The Wilds, vast and sprawling with a lack of saturation like ill earth. There are the images cast by the thing: The Wilds, vast and sprawling with a trail of bodies bloodied and crippled by a cruel, hapless predator. And there is the image what is: Eluetheria, vast and sprawling with life, with promise, no doubt boundless with the same presence of magic that he has sensed in every scrape of Novus he has touched yet.
Each one blends, but the recognition is nothing tragic or traumatic. If anything it is comforting, knowing that of all the shards and pieces of the Erasmus-That-Was that can't seem to fit and cut the thing that has become him with their jagged, misplaced edges, most seem to fit here. Not well. But when he thinks of how that Erasmus and this both realize that The Wilds held nothing of worth to them, it all fits just well enough. It thinks, it thinks, something of worth is here, though. If I wait, as most mortals wait, will something not come? Is that not their common adage, that good things come? But it is not familiar with waiting. It is familiar with the constant revolution of life, never ceasing, even past the end – it all continues on, on, on, an endlessly spiraling staircase.
Of all the grasses, dusts, flowers, antelope, bison, and even the framing of distant mountains that coexist in the blended realities of What-Was and What-Is in the Wilds and Novus, there is only one thing that is out of place. And it thinks, is this it? But it is not a meteor or a wild, galloping sun, though it eclipses as it passes overhead and his curiosity is piqued by the semblance. The shadow passes over him, a black hole suspended in a sea of dusty greens, and when the sun returns it sparks against the gold in his flesh like wildfire. In the distance, the asteroid sets – not with a crash of swallowing heat, but a plume of plains-dirt that are swept up beneath the gust of feathers, sifting out from the tall gold-green grasses that almost engulf the thing.
Erasmus does not move to greet it, though aether drifts from his pores toward it like shifting smoke, hovering questionably over his crown like a languishing snake in the hot sun. It stirs, it hums, and he hums with it in thought as he watches.
It knows the outline of bison because the Erasmus-That-Was had known their odd shapes in The Wilds. But they did not know them as bison, then. They were srreptu, the wise ones, and many of the clans regarded them as sacred beings who led to the finer parts of the great, deadened terra. Where they lingered, fresh green was always nearby. It knows they are more than the wise ones now. It knows they are not sacred, mythical creatures who to children seem like titans on the horizon at dusk, great lumbering things that always know when and where to move. It knows they are bison, and it knows that they are meat, flesh, bone. But it also knows, when it watches the asteroid – which, sheathing its wings reveals that it is not some divine asteroid at all but some odd flighted hybrid of his own fellow – approaches those bison, that it is doing it all wrong.
There were tales in the Wilds that elders told to children in firelight that the srreptu were once equines the same as they were, and there was once a great lake. But the lake was beginning to dry up, the plains becoming hotter because of sleeping dragons and their careless night-breaths. They knew that when the lake dried, it could mean death, as rain was scarce. So they decided they would drink, and drink, and drink, and drink, until almost all the lake was drained. And now they carry the water of that great lake on their backs, and the scalding, merciless heat of the Wilds no longer troubled them.
Erasmus had always thought it was a crock. But questioning the elders was useless, and often led to punishments. When the aether brought him to the library in Delumine, it had been one of the many questioned subjects it cared to explore. This was why it knew that approaching a buffalo the way she was, being the only solitary thing that lingered above the grasses and took sole view of its sideways gaze, was a terrible way to sneak on one. She was either a fool or a terrible predator, or a starving desperate one, or all one in the same. It heard the gruff warnings from others in the distance, and then a harsh huff from the one she gallivanted toward.
Then, the srreptu breaks.
There is a flurry of dust, fur, and feathers, and he watches its horns catch the flank of the mare before she flings herself into the air. The acrobatics are, though mesmerizing, brief and late – and when she perches nearby and Erasmus moves in her direction to examine her better, he sees a trickle from the pinched hole its horn had left. In the distance are low, heavy brays, and he does not entirely doubt that the sounds coming from the bison are not unlike laughter and small triumph. Erasmus does not laugh, though he feels the string of humor drawing in his throat and the line across his mouth, but it doesn't reach his eyes.
When he approaches her, it is mindfully, but he cannot help the way his gait is smooth and lacquered, it hitches here and there like an uncoordinated error, like he is still trying to remember all the ways in which he must be Erasmus. It is getting better all the time – and the movement is almost effortless, wraith-like, perhaps even more graceful than the Erasmus-That-Was could ever hope his posture to be. Despite its dignified appearance, there always lingers something feral in his outline and his eyes, and it does not know to disguise this. He is more disheveled than Erasmus could have ever wanted to be – but he has washed the blood and dirt from his coat, and most the knots have been broken from his mane. Still, the only gleam in his coat is the gold cracks when they catch the passing of sunlight, and they grin malevolently to her.
When he reaches her, the aether falls to his own shadow – it hangs beneath his mane, tangles behind him like nestling vipers, coiling in the hollows of his muscle, waiting, waiting. He does not know how to greet women who un-gracefully bother bison, but he does know that she escaped without much injury, so his grin unwinds to say, "well done," but it is without sarcasm or cruelty. Only the low, hollow drawl of his voice, not too warm and not too cold. But then he sees the blood trickling down her thigh, and o, the hunger starts. His fangs knit against his lips, his tongue dryly rolled in his mouth. "You've been cut." he states casually, absently, and with a deep inhale looks back to her eyes (as is proper, he learned, if not a little unnerving for others).
"What were you trying to do?"
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