shatter like glass on the ceiling

our hands they seek the end of afternoons

Perhaps it was strange that Remi wasn't with Ronin. The hunter was dying after all and had been given quite an explicit expiration date by a goddess no less. A cure hadn't been found, and Ronin's condition had been deteriorating. But Remi's time spent with his husband couldn't simply be an endless cycle of note-taking, hovering and worrying. His attempts at the levity that normally existed so easily between them was forced and a burden that he'd not place upon Ronin.

And so the alchemist found himself simply walking. It didn't matter where; his troubled thoughts were always with him and so the path he took away from them was inconsequential. Today it just so happened that the chilly Leafchange afternoon found him in the glade. Smiling faintly at a memory that made his heart clench as if suddenly filled with ice, Remi simply stopped, knelt, and laid down in the clover and wildflowers. On his back with his arms stretched out into the earth around him, he tugged in a breath and held it, trying to drown his senses in the world around him. Indeed, the buds and grasses rose up around him as his magic unconsciously surged outwards. Wanting to feel more of everything, wings spread from his back (a feat he'd only just recently learned he was capable of doing, having always had his arms become wings in hawk form. Not so with a manticore, apparently) and stretched wide as well, quickly becoming dissolved by clover and moss.

Closing his eyes, shattered and pale as they were, Remi clawed his fingers into the soil (now tipped with large claws), clenching at the earth as if he expected gravity to leave him at any moment. His white-shirt was stained with charcoal smears from his notes and now with pollen and grass stains as well, but what did it matter? The alchemist could create something from nothing, as his trade implied.

What he couldn't do, was fix Ronin.

my hands believe and move over you

Coding base by Sky!

His scars ache.

The familiar pain drives him from his den early that morning, shifting to his human form as he gazes out across the forest. Though the cold is bearable without his coating of fur, he's not particularly inclined to remain there motionless, no matter how beautiful the dapples of autumn light appear through the naked branches overhead. It is of an early enough hour that he can see his breath when he sighs, a calloused hand lifting to run the length of the scar on his chest. It's a habit he knows he cannot break, not after years of using it as a touchstone, but the freedom of movement is still new enough to him that the motion does not feel quite natural.

Turning away from the sight he begins to walk. As aimless as always. It gnaws at the young man, this uselessness he is burdened with. This land is inhabited by souls of the most independent sort, with small families and partners instead of large lands of family in all shapes and sizes. There is so little for him to do, nobody to ask it of him, and Cera...does not know how to cope with that kind of freedom. In Helovia there had always been a task, a purpose, a station to fill. There was never a question as to what he had to do - maybe not on that particular day, but with his life.

Here, there is only...choice. Free will, though of a sort he's unfamiliar with. He could live his entire life as he does now, simply feeding himself in his canine form and wandering the world he has found himself in until his weary paws drag him back to his den. But what is the purpose in that? He aches with the lack of it, and so he wanders. Back to the Spire, as he finds himself doing so often. A familiar enough action, reminiscent of the days when he would shepherd home lost and roaming souls, offering them sanctuary and knowledge. Just as Jigano had for him.

It takes most of the day, and the sun warms the earth slowly, almost reticent with the promise of winter ahead. Or at least, Cera believes it to be winter. He's not sure with the warning Deimos had given him what differences he will face with the changing of the seasons. For now, however, there are new places to explore.

Not far from where he had started, verdant fields and healthy trees loom towards the sky in resistance to the natural order. Cera can't help but be drawn into it. The serenity alone is reason enough to explore it. Perhaps it would silence his tumultuous thoughts.

What he finds instead, nearly stumbling upon the man hidden within the eagerly growing foliage, is a body. Luckily said body is alive, but the appearance startles a sound of surprise from Cera's throat nonetheless. Cheeks flush with embarrassment at being taken by surprise in his own wandering mind, and he steps back a few paces to give the man some space. He cannot help but observe in those moments though, seeing the pinch of despair on the man's brow, the hands digging deep into the earth as if reaching for the stability of the roots below.

Without justifying his impulses, for they often led him true, Cera calls out softly in hopes of not startling or intruding upon the man's reflections. "Hello there, mind if I join you?" He stands there awkwardly in the aftermath of the question, not wanting to be a burden. Still it's a free space, so he eventually folds his legs beneath himself and sits upon the forest floor, gazing around at the beautiful scenery and rocking gently back and forth. Instinctively he wants to ask what troubles the stranger, used to providing counsel and comfort, but he should probably at least know the man's name first. He wasn't that crass yet.

Speaking of names...

"My name is Cera," he calls just as softly as before, feeling as if he could not speak above a certain level without shattering the peace of the glade.

and my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
but they can still carry you home
when you're ready to sleep

our hands they seek the end of afternoons

Despite the plethora of predators that lurk within the alchemist's skin and even after more than a year of hardships in this strange and terrifying world, still Remi is not overly aware of his surroundings. With his senses overloaded with the earth around him and his mind forced away from every darkened twist and turn that it longs to go down, Cera's soft footsteps are hardly more than a ripple in the ocean of Remi's awareness.

Not quite flinching at the sound, moreso softly relaxing as one might coming out of a trance in which their body has been made rigid, the alchemist's lashes flutter open. Eyes once the colour of sea-glass are now pale and shattered, their milky-hue all that indicates the extent of Remi's blindness. Magical attacks rarely leave scars, after all. The alchemist's wings flex in the overgrowth that has taken him over like an organic tomb. "If you like." He replies in a voice thickly accented, but kind and sweet-sounding despite the despair that Remi's body language suggests.

Sitting up, for a moment the alchemist's wings merely hover slightly outstretched at his sides. With a quiet and crookedly embarrassed smile directed toward Cera, the auburn plumage retracts and eventually disappears. There are still a smattering of pale feathers amidst the alchemist's curls—a sign of his anxiety and unease for any who know him—but a quick hand that combs against his scalp helps to reel these wayward parts of himself back in.

"Remi." The alchemist replies, long lashes fluttering as he tries to take in the man seated before him. The glade is a messy smearing of greens and yellows, like a canvas with water spilled upon it. But Cera? Gold blurs around his face but the rest of him is still quite muted. The green of his eyes begins to come through, but its vivacity is lacking. Remi isn't surprised by this of course, it is how he sees now: that which he is unfamiliar with is without colour and light sometimes, though he can make out the the chiseled jaw and broad shoulders easily enough, though the freckles and moles have not revealed themselves nor the kindness of the man's eyes.

"Pleased to meet you, Cera." Remi replies after a moment, politeness instinctual despite his depression, and though it is painful, he offers the newcomer a sunny smile.

my hands believe and move over you

Coding base by Sky!

A wash of relief settles on Cera's skin as the man goes still, but parts from his focus with more ease than fear. Some part of him regrets having interrupted at all, as the man sits up and his wings begin to withdraw, obscuring a part of his soul that Cera knows intuitively is because of his presence. They make him yearn silently from afar, watching them diminish before his eyes. There was no explanation for why his soul-shape had not returned him to the body he had been born in, but sometimes when he looks at the sky his shoulders ache so fiercely it brings him to tears. Envy is a thick, bitter emotion throttling his breaths, but he cannot help it. The heavens had been a motherly embrace, a guiding hand, an escape from the pain the earthbound world offered. To be stripped of that is a grief almost stronger than any other loss could compare to.

The crooked smile and milky eyes that turn his way as he gracefully allows Cera's presence makes the golden boy return his smile instinctively. "Your wings are quite beautiful," he says instead, honesty woven like patchwork through each word. He is careful not to let his sadness ebb into the tone he presents, instead wondering privately why the man feels the need to conceal the wings and feathers. Well...he is a stranger as of now, Cera supposes.

Calloused hands brush against his folded knees as a name is presented, a cordiality given. It is rote by now, and Cera wishes there was a better way, wishes he could see inside of people where the wounds and whispered dreams lay, that he may lay his hands on them and breathe life and love into them.

"The pleasure is all mine, especially considering I interrupted your moment of peace," he laughs softly, arms moving behind him to brace against the earth and turning his face to the sky. It's a rare, beautiful day, and the pale wash of sun on his cheeks settles his breathing. Only then does one eye peak open at Remi once more. "Forgive my boldness, but...are you okay?" The words falter uncertainly at the end, not sure how to communicate his thoughts. That while Remi's smile was kind and flawless, Cera could not forget the way he had grasped so desperately at the earth in supplication. A flush of self-consciousness coats his cheeks and he ducks his head, returning his hands to fiddle with a blade of grass in his lap. "Ah sorry I just...I hate to see people in pain," he mumbles pathetically, the blade of grass snapping in his fidgeting fingers.

and my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
but they can still carry you home
when you're ready to sleep

our hands they seek the end of afternoons

"Thank you, they are.." For a moment Remi's smile falters, but only because the words escape him. He was about to say new, but that's misleading. He's always had wings, just not ones that came from his back. As a hawk, they always relied on his arm and shoulder muscles. As a manticore (not that he properly knew the word yet), his anatomy was something different entirely. "..I do not normally have them like that." He adds after a moment, shrugging self-consciously. His awkwardness is quite genuine too, not merely the posed uneasiness of some; though the alchemist boasts an abundance of talents, he is at his core, a mere commoner undeserving of all he has been given.

As Cera settles, somehow so easy and graceful despite the sense Remi has that the man is new here, Remi tries to see him in more detail. Collarbones reveal themselves, a graceful neck, and features that reveal themselves to be shallowly effeminate and lovely. The alchemist starts to shake his head, to indicate that the apology isn't necessary when the man's words nearly catch his breath. With a smile still slightly dimpling his cheeks, Remi instead shakes his head no with a boyish sort of ease, the honesty like a second skin. "No. I am fair from okay." He says with a gentle smile, his eyes lowering for a moment as a feather appears in his hand. Dexterously he twirls it between two fingers as he pulls in a breath.

Not seeming to notice or mind the dirt beneath his nails where his claws had been, or the moss and clover still coating his clothing, Remi folded his ankles across one another as he too directed his gaze towards the sky. "My husband is dying of the blight." The alchemist explains in a voice that is steady until the very end, where it dips. Remi's lips curl upwards as if he might somehow hold onto the pitch and timbre of his voice, but of course grief simply doesn't work like that, and the words fall to the ground anyways. "He has been given a season to live. Well," Remi corrects himself with a hollow laugh, "less than that now, I suppose."

my hands believe and move over you

Coding base by Sky!

Cera cannot tear his eyes from the man and his rugged, beautiful face. The crackle of his marble-silver eyes, like gossamer threads. Clearly he has some form of sight for how he pinpoints Cera's face so easily, but Cera is as taken by his features as he is the self-conscious shrug of his shoulders, the fawnlike shy smile on his lips. Perhaps it is their similar souls calling out to the golden man, but it puts him at ease, loosens his tongue and his body in turn. His own smile trickles like water from there, passage eased with comfort as time goes by without negative consequences for his imposition.

"I'm sure nobody would complain if you did, they're quite the sight to behold," he assures, legs splaying out in the grass to shift to a more comfortable position. Cera ponders on the shyness, the reclusiveness of the Attuned man. Is it self-imposed? Trauma? A genetic trait of introversion inherited and unquestioned? Perhaps he is being too bold then, and so he presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth and says no more. He'd not want to compliment the man into a tizzy after all. It wouldn't be the first time - many men took offense at Cera's...appreciation of them. For whatever reason.

His ease dissipates like clouds beneath the sun as Remi's smile turns bitter, a subtle change that tinges the edges of his lips with pressure and pain that Cera can read like the change of the wind. Frowning softly as words follow and confirm his suspicions, Cera rises to his knees and moves closer, drawn like a moth to the flame of Remi's anguish. He does not move too close - enough to touch if either party desired, but not enough to press into Remi's personal space. While the man turns his sea-glass eyes to the sky, Cera cannot look away from his face and the emotions that play over it like light through the ocean's waters. Shifting, ephemeral, beautiful, and easy to be drawn into despite the threat of drowning.

Whether it is sympathy or empathy, Cera can't muddle through the details of the hurt that lances through his breast at the revelation Remi shares so freely. He has lost so many loved ones, many he had intended to give his heart to, and though Cera was seemingly cursed to never have reciprocated feelings for another it is a tragedy he can hardly stomach to hear. Without being able to help himself, and scarcely thinking of the action, his hand reaches forward to try and alight on Remi's nearest shoulder. Leans forward, golden hair falling from behind his ears to frame his glassy eyes.

"There aren't words in this language to express how sorry I am to hear that," he speaks softly in the space between them, a phrase only for Remi's ears, to be swallowed by the beautiful scenery around them. It gives him strength, the power to shoulder the weight of such grief and to open his heart to accept it and mourn alongside. There is so little to say. Nothing, even. Perhaps that was what Remi had been searching for in the glade. Silence, freedom from the stifling knowledge of impending death that he is helpless to stop. Cera knows little of the Blight, only secondhand knowledge from the Medical College and Phoebe's passing comments, but he knows the odds are slim and daunting.

Calloused hand drops to Remi's forearm, needing to touch. Keep open the link it gives him, the natural ease it brings Cera. "I have been where you are, and there is nothing I can say - as a stranger at that - to bring you any comfort. But is there anything I can do?" Kind emerald eyes flicker over Remi's face, cataloging the boyish charm and structure of his features at such a closeness. "It would be presumptuous to assume I can take your mind off it, but if that's what you need I will try my hardest. And though the Gods here are not my own, I hope you will accept my prayers that a solution will be found." A gentle squeeze of his fingers, and he rocks back onto his knees, withdrawing his hands once more to his lap.

and my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
but they can still carry you home
when you're ready to sleep

our hands they seek the end of afternoons

Once upon a time in a world so very, very different from the one in which the pair find themselves, it only took a fleeting glance from another man to send the alchemist into a tail-spin. A touch was eternally hard to bare, and many who knew the kind-eyed alchemist could attest to this fact, having seen him quite literally fly away under the duress of repressed need. But that was a world where marriage and relationships were strictly for procreation, and the alchemist's abhorrent preferences were punishable by death. Now the ruffling of feathers—both literal and metaphorical—simply had to do with a degradated sense of worth. The gods were a sight to behold, the starwhales that flew over the Greatwood were a sight to behold. Remi's wings? They were a bit of plumage that he had absolutely no right to; a shift he hadn't earned, a gift mistakenly given.

His peripheral vision is enough to let him know that Cera is moving closer. Simultaneously his heart twitters and starts in his chest, having come here to be alone after all. But the boy's presence is unobtrusive, if not soothing somehow, and so as Remi's gaze slowly lowers back down it is with ease, if not unsettled confidence.

But then it all changes, the equilibrium shifting and Remi is set adrift in a sea of his own making. Thoughts pulse and froth in the back of his mind, the nearness and whispered words like sea foam sprayed by intangible winds, soaking an already freezing body. The touch on his shoulder is like a lightning strike, awakening and simultaneously numbing his senses. It is all he can feel, all he can think of, until the hand slips lower against his skin.

Cera's presence for the alchemist at least approximates what his own might be like for everyone else: heart-breakingly sweet, a generosity and genuineness of soul that is undeserved, sunlight contained in coral lips that Remi can practically feel the warmth of. It is then that the alchemist truly notices the verdant shade of Cera's eyes, and something in his frayed soul immediately shifts and yields. The men in his life, all of them up until now, have had the most arresting blue eyes. Blue is a colour wrought with anguish and regret for the alchemist, much as love, but green?

Green is new. Green he can abide.

Exhaling a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, cheeks flushed with colour, the alchemist offers the boy a crooked smile, lashes fluttering softly closed in appreciation. "Thank you." Remi whispers, too distracted by the moment to know what he is saying, or even what he is thanking Cera for, but feeling compelled to offer the words nonetheless. Without noticing that he has, one of his hands softly rubs the place Cera's has just left as Remi pulls in a shivery breath.

"Distract me...Tell me...something not of this world." The alchemist suggests, a spark of interest appearing in the depths of his shattered stare as he raises his eyes.

my hands believe and move over you

Coding base by Sky!

The man's eyes are...charming is not the word Cera reaches for, but it's all he can settle upon. They remind him of an old friend, one entirely blind, who had trusted him to lead her forth into the world whenever they were together. They are like fractured seafoam, frozen in time as they split into fractals. He does not let himself stare long, too concerned by the sudden stillness that takes over Remi's entire body at his touch. It's not enough to withdraw his hand, to sever the connection he forms between them, and his touch is not roughly shrugged off or drawn away from. Still, he can't help but inspect the lines and dips of Remi's features, handsome and rugged in ways his own cannot mimic, searching for any signs of discomfort or denial. Nothing is more important to him in this moment than Remi's comfort, but no such emotions are forthcoming. His emotions are well-concealed. Not that Cera can fault him for such a thing with all he is going through.

As he sits back on his shins, fingertips disengaging last from the warmth of the man's body, the younger man cannot help his smile at the color that suffuses scruff-lined cheeks. The demure tilt of his face, the flutter of his lashes like butterfly wings on a backdrop of starlight, softens the edges of his own anxiety. People here are so reticent to reach out, to embrace. Are they unaware of the healing nature of it all? The way it disperses the burden of life to another set of shoulders, makes breathing easier? And yet, Remi had allowed him close. Even in his moment of weakness, of solitude, he did not push Cera away or request he depart.

Instead, he offers his thanks, his low voice wrapping around Cetra like a blanket that settles his nerves and draws them into a little cocoon of privacy in this vast, empty space. And just as Cera had offered, he bids distraction, delusion, a brief interlude of fantasy and faraway lands that will take his mind away from the horrors of the life they have to live. Cera hums thoughtfully, closes his eyes and sways to the wind that brushes past him, chilled but warm enough to bear a few hours longer.

"In my homeland, magic was as plentiful as the air we breathe. There were no Abandoned; the Gods would accept any to their shrines, though you could easily piss them off in person," he adds with an impish grin, remembering such things being commonplace for the less 'polite' individuals. "Fantastical things happened every day, and questioning it was useless. Our Gods would walk the earth, visit the lands they held power over. Sometimes their magical disciples would come to you if they could not. When I was a child, I was nearly killed, and I went to the shrine of the God I was raised to worship. Instead of his arrival, a giant talking turtle came to me!" There is little room for sorrow in his memories of his old friend. The Earth Turtle would not have wanted him to mourn, he'd spent enough time at his side absorbing his teachings to know that.

Gesturing with his arms dramatically, he declares, "He was much, much larger than a normal turtle! He had an entire forest growing from his shell, and a voice like the sound of brooks and birds in the trees. He came to me and helped ease the worries in my heart. And when the nights grew colder and snow touched the earth, he would come and sing a song, and everyone across the land heard it no matter how far. When they arrived, he would give them gifts, and we would all gather in harmony and celebrate the season." A warm smile pulls at his mouth, eyes bright with better memories, trying his best to spin a tale that will make Remi feel better. While there were many things he could speak of that were dangerous, enticing, adventurous - battling sickly Gods from another realm, the Moon Goddess' murders and the detective spree that followed, the shaping of an entire land by the newly revealed Time God - not all of them were pleasant stories.

"And once, an entire island took form in the sky overnight. We had wings there, many of us, but even those earthbound were magically brought safely to the island when they approached. It was beautiful - cherry blossom trees, the brightest waters you've ever seen. We had no idea how it was created, but it was like nothing could reach you there. The world looked so...so small, from that high." It's dreamily spoken, perhaps sorrowfully at the end. The prince misses his wings, the power of flight. At times he was restless, wondering why his soul had not taken the form of a bird. The sky seemed so far away these days...

Turning to Remi he tries to gauge the reception of his story, fully prepared to speak further if the man had no commentary to provide about his homeland.

and my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
but they can still carry you home
when you're ready to sleep