Something so known to me, sunlight oh sunlight // All of your love is sunlight
Verdant eyes sweep along the curves of the tower in the distance, memorizing every ominous curve. He had not wandered from its heavy gaze since he...came here. A hand reached to his breast to press his fingertips to the start of a scar he knows didn't come when his soul held a vessel like this current one. A strange, long-limbed sort of humanity that he had only recently adjusted to in previous realms. His scars are the only assurance that his memories are more than gossamer threads, chased away by his desperately reaching hands. He traces them in the quiet of pre-dawn, trying to remember. Trying to hold fast to who he used to be, to those whose faces swam in technicolor blurs through his dreams. Faces he knows, with a sinking sort of certainty that he will not find in this place. Not like last time.
When he had first arrived, disoriented and so devastatingly alone, Cera had not moved from where he had collapsed for many hours. He had curled into himself, shrinking in his grief, unfamiliar hands clawing into cold soil to try and ground himself as he'd shaken apart. For a while, he had debated not moving. Simply laying there until some various beast or bluster stole him away from this hell land he had been dropped in. Had he not given so much already? How much more could the Gods ask of him? Could he truly begin again, a foreigner in a world he couldn't even bear to gaze upon yet? Alone? As alone as he had started, when the world was bright and his soul unburdened.
As the hours drew late a curtain of twilight descended upon him, a voice had whispered in his ears, begging him to rise. This is not your end. It is not your time, we would not want you to forsake another chance at happiness. And though he knew it was at best a hallucination, a pale imitation of comfort sprung from his own mind, he had obeyed. It was a voice he had held in his mind for many long years. A compass that had never led him wrong. So Cera unclenched his cramped fingers, let the earth press into his calloused hands as he rose to his knees in supplication to whatever Gods would rule over him now, and finally lifted his eyes to the sky.
There it had been. The spire. So familiar a shape, chasing the sky into the heavens. It was not his tower, but Cera had been awash in memories nonetheless. Memories of building, shaping, resting in the shade of a monument of his creation, sand tickling his skin...for many long moments he had merely stared, body wracked with shivers as the eve came and the sun sank. Was this some sort of sign? A promise that not all was unfamiliar, that salvation lay in his given years here? With a soft sigh, Cera stood. Began to walk, aimless into the night. Guided only by his faith. Leaving behind the ghosts of his loved ones to watch him proudly as he moved from where he had fallen, observing his diminishing figure as he strode into night. He was made of steel inside, and they had never doubted that he would rise to bear the pressure of the world once more.
Morning came with an ambling slowness that Cera marveled at, a blooded dawn that welcomed him to this new land. The spire was cast in long shadows as the hum of birds and diurnal creatures created a soft chorus of sound to accompany his journey. Sweeping long golden locks from his face, Cera started down the well worn path, hoping some other soul was venturing out in the early hours. "Hallo?" He called into the forest around him, voice somehow even despite...well, everything.
It was a start, at least. And Cera...well he'd experienced enough new beginnings to not fear them any longer.
