< I Like You | Sol Invictus Logs | My Heart is Stupid >
Lucent Lucent spent twenty minutes looking at the entrance to his tomb. Without moving. Without speaking. Not a word. Not a single word. His eyes wide, his lips never closing. That lasted twenty minutes. A second more, and he turned, without a word, and told them to go back.
Lucent And now he was with Zahara on the oasis of death, an archeologist of his own history, picking the bits and pieces of his own friends. All around them he made pieces rise from the sand, cleaning them from afar with the skill of a virtuoso. He did not speak of his own tomb. "Those crafting skills you imbued us with certainly do come in hand, Zahara." He said, as he moved sand out of the inlays of a Daiklave's pieces with surgical precision.
zahara rocks back on her heels watching him, and then picks up a shard of a crystalline object. "I'm glad you're enjoying them. It is good to do constructive things." She watches him a moment more. "I however, have to touch what I build."
Lucent "Yes, this is such a convenience." He closes his eyes, the sand coming out of the pieces of armor, an amulet, and magical material-laced bones, colored sand now, due to so long with those things, spinning close to Zahara's face. "Touching everything." He grins, "Do not worry, I am keeping my hands out of you. I have no desire of making Cerin angry at me." He winks.
zahara "Cerin is not the only one who would be angry with you," she says archly, and plucks one of the objects out of the air.
Lucent "I know. Do not worry, it would be like touching my mother." He shakes his head as she picks a piece of an starmetal feathered serpent-shaped chakram. "I have been thinking about Cerin, though. It is like he is always so... distant from me. I want to shorten our distance, but nothing I do works..."
zahara smiles a little. "He is quiet. Reserved. But he does consider you a friend." She spins the crystal on her fingertip.
Lucent "Does he? How can you tell?" On the crystal, she sees time, past and present.
zahara rubs her thumb across the facet depicting the desert near where they stand. "How?" She looks out across the present day desert thoughtfully. "In his manner. In the respect he gives you. In his eyes."
Lucent "So you would tell me to... lock my eyes with his' under the moonlight?" He blinks in mock disbelief for a moment, an image playing like a mirage over the sands, "While that would cause such a stir amon the girls of the Sunlands, I believe it WOULD get me thrown into the White Room in short order..."
zahara smirks and looks sideways at him. "Or you could trust my word. Unless you'd like to visit."
Lucent "I will trust your word, then." He bows, "It must be good to see such minute signs..." He looks in the direction Cerin and Varanim were into, and sighs. "I... imagine I can just assume Cerin does trust and respect me in the future, then? Even if he does not show it?"
zahara "Believe me, if he does not trust you, you will know it before long." She gives him a crooked smile, then her gaze drops down to the armor he wears and it fades a bit.
Lucent "There is no need to be very perceptive to see you are uncomfortable..."
zahara nods slowly. "I am concerned, Lucent, to see you wearing all the things you wore in the First Age. Especially after Markuran..."
Lucent does not smile. "Grim Reminder."
zahara winces a little at the name. "Yes. Even balanced by the orichalcum armor he made, it was..." She looks down at the crystal, tilting it to see the golden lines through her face. "It seemed more a harbinger of things to come, than a reminder that he must overcome the past."
Lucent closes his eyes... and then, in a moment, letting out a breath, all the sand blows away, all corpses of the dead appearing, all the pieces that could be salvaged in the air. All at once. "Zahara. I understand your worries, but I control this power. It does not contro..." He stops mid-sentence, as the sand leaves and the objects float.
zahara raises her arm to shield her eyes from the sand as it blows away, then as he cuts off, she looks again at him, at the corpses, at the broken, shattered past.
Lucent The Coronal formed seven baskets, into which he places all the items. And then, Lucent looked at Zahara, his eyes shaking. "... I AM in control?" He asked, looking at the corpses, as if looking for his own. "The Tomb..."
zahara walks over to Lucent and puts her hands on his shoulders, looking into his eyes. "You must stay in control, or you must stop wearing it. Do not go back to the darkness. The Primordials - both Yozi and Malfaens - are our enemies. Remember that."
Lucent is shaking, looking into Zahara's eyes... and then looking away. "I will. I promise."
zahara "Look into my eyes when you promise. I have to see the truth."
Lucent looks into her eyes, the golden pools murky, uncertain. "How can I? You saw the tomb."
Lucent "I may not be REAL! If Lucent was buried there, then WHO AM I?"
zahara "You are who you are NOW. You are the one who enabled me to save you."
Lucent "I enabled you to save Helios. And Lucent. Who may be on that tomb. And I may not be that."
zahara "Then perhaps it is time for you to take a new name." Her hand slips into her pocket and closes around a gold and copper medal and her voice drops to a whisper. "Time to Rend the Seven Veils, and live in the present, not the past."
Lucent takes a deep breath, and it is like the falling sunlight shatters on his face. "... it is only me, now." That changed him, placed him at ease again... and he held her hands, obscuring the medal. "... wait. Let me know first. Let me know. Then, let us do it."
zahara nods, and squeezes his hands. "Swear to me that you will control your power at least until then."
Lucent closes his eyes. "I swear that, as long as I am Lucent Copper Haze, I will hold to my convictions, I will naysay the Primordial, I will not betray my friends."
zahara The world seems to ripple around them as the Zahara seals his Oath. "And don't go being anyone else to get out of it!" she says with a grin.
Lucent taps the medal. "You can always snap me out of it." He winks.
zahara smiles and impulsively gives him a hug. "Whoever you are, you are my friend. And that is true."
Lucent hugs her, so very tight. "And I will always be."
Stryck Wiki