Renaud gave a polite smile and a nod to Cera, grateful for the stranger's kindness and efforts. When Cera offered his arm, Renaud took it against a desire to appear independent and competent. Truth was, consciousness was beginning to run away from his grasp. It was all he could do to lean on Cera's shoulder and hobble to the shade of the trees without collapsing. He wasn't sure he could muster any words for that time, so he didn't try.
When they reached the shade, Renaud essentially crashed against the trunk of the tree and slid to the ground. His vision was cloudy and his insides felt as if they might catch on fire at any moment. The liquid seeping from his wound would be especially warm, almost hot, to the touch. Still, his feeling was improving with every second they spent in the shade. The instinct in the back of his mind, previously a blaring alarm, had mostly subsided. Renaud wouldn't notice for some time, but he wasn't breathing. An affect of his deeper transformation of which he was not yet aware.
He seemed to calm, and allowed his eyes to truly survey the surrounding territory for the first time since he had arrived. The spire, now some distance away, climbed into the air until it was hidden from his vision by the beginnings of his tree's canopy. Black dust coated most of the ground around it, at least up until the beginnings of the forest. Just before him was Cera, a kind and soft presence despite undeniably masculine features. Cera did not match the conventions of his time, but Renaud's usual prejudices were buried away for respect of the stranger's generosity and kindness. Cera reminded Renaud of those pristine marble statues he had seen in the capital of his home country - they had always possessed an otherworldly beauty, Renaud had thought, and Cera did too. Of course, the little Cornet wouldn't have quite put it that way, but I've done it for him.
Then Cera spoke further, and tore Renaud from his dreamy thoughts about statues and beauty. Cera confirmed the most essential facts of what the previous stranger had told him - confirmed that Renaud himself was a man out of time, stripped from his own destiny and life and thrust into a new one in this Caido. His eyes flickered down to the ring on his left hand. The little band of gold had never meant much to Renaud, but all at once it seemed to symbolize much more than his loveless marriage. The ring seemed to hold in it everything he had ever known - all his friends, his enemies, his parents and siblings. He even missed his wife, cold though their romance was. Tears welled in his eyes, the same liquid that oozed from the wound in his leg and at the same temperature. If Renaud could feel pain, he likely would have slapped the tears away as the heated liquid fell from his eyes and touched his cheeks. But he couldn't, and so he allowed himself to cry slow little solitary tears in the shade.
Noticing that Cera was waiting to begin tending to his wound, Renaud gave him a polite but distracted nod. His gaze had floated up towards the leaves in the trees as his fingers absentmindedly fiddled with his wedding ring.
"Caido." He repeated the name quietly, turning it over against his teeth. His new home.
"Caido." Renaud sniffed, and wiped a tear from his face. It had already been long enough in the shade that he was feeling mostly good as new. Even the wound in his leg was no bother, but he knew that logically it would be best to handle a gash like that even if he couldn't actively feel it. And Cera was here, apparently happy and willing to give him aid, so he had no desire to say no. The cornet spoke as his leg was tended to.
"I suspect at any moment I shall awake in my bed and give my wife a terrible fright. Or in paradise, perhaps." He gave a sad little laugh, his sharpened canines briefly flashing out from behind his chapped lips. "Or perhaps this is paradise." Or purgatory. It made more sense than any theory Renaud could find. He had arrived here through unknown means, feeling no pain despite a wound on his leg, and without his weapons. Cartier figured it might as well be the afterlife, and Cera might as well be an angel sent to guide him through to rest. Something told him this wasn't the case.
"What about this place changes the senses?" Renaud dropped his head to look at Cera, attempting to catch his eye if the stranger wasn't too busy with his work. "My wound, I cannot feel it. None of your work so far as elicited even a tinge of pain or irritation. Why is that? I have been wounded before, much lighter wounds than this, and even they stung in the healing. Even the grass beneath my hand, I feel nothing, no tickle of the blades against my palm. What causes this?" He spoke with a sense of calmness which he had not possessed since arriving. His tone was almost that of a man condemned. His voice had the low, slow melancholy of one who knew death had come to claim him. He spoke steady, but lifeless. He waited for Cera to speak.
