[SE] Living Treasures
Hunter

Age: 31 | Height: 6'1" | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
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#1
Even in Torchline it was a bit brisk for a swim these days, but Kel hadn’t quite finished constructing the tank for the tree house’s shower yet and it was easier to take a dip in the ocean than any other option. The waves off the nearest beach could be intimidating at times, though, which was why Kellan had come to the Miana Pool today with a rough cloth towel and a clean set of clothes, along with a bar of cheap lye soap.

No one else seemed to be around, so he stripped and hopped into the water, scrubbing vigorously to remove the sweat and grime from the past few days of working on his new house. The sun shone wanly down on his dark skin, turning the shortened fall of his hair to a spill of black ink down his shoulders as he rinsed the lather away. Finally, he put the soap safely up on a rock and dunked himself, kicking strongly through the water as he sluiced himself clean in the brisk, protected tide pool. When he rose to the surface again an unfamiliar laugh spilled quietly from his lips and he pushed his hair back—

Only to freeze, eyes widening as he saw a pair of cloud mantas flying lazily nearby, a mother crooning softly to a smaller pup as they foraged across the tidal stones. He’d heard of them, but this was his first time seeing them and he was caught breathless by their graceful beauty.
Rance Grenier
Wanderer

Age: 33 | Height: 6' | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#2
With only days until the Long Night, citizens of the Grounds were escaping through the portal to Torchline in a steady stream, eager to be away from the horrors that waited for those who stayed. And while Rance had done as much as he could to prepare the town he'd begun to call home, he wasn't sticking around, either. He packed the bow Deimos had crafted for him -- sturdy, dark wood, carved and unexpectedly beautiful -- and his bag, loaded with considerably more belongings than he'd arrived with a season and a half ago, including a change of clothes and a second journal, his first filled before the season even started.

Upon arrival, Rance's first priority should have been to find housing. Some had been set up for the refugees, of course, and Rance could have stayed there. Might still, if he found nowhere else. But the idea of being crowded in with families, even if only for a week, made his skin crawl. He did not do children. So, instead of following the rest of the crowd to the main settlements, he wandered off to follow the coast, walking in and out of the treeline, avoiding people for the most part.

It was the cloud mantas that led him to the large, ocean-fed pools. The last time he'd visited to them, a giant bird had summoned people to help it 'fly'. Walking to it now was a new experience, as was seeing it so empty.

Or, rather, nearly empty. The sculpted male form that occupied the Pool drew his gaze down from the mystical creatures above them, attention instead drawn to honey-brown skin and an inky fall of hair. His back was to Rance, giving the raven attuned a delicious view indeed. A grin twisting up the corner of his lips, he strode closer to the Pool's edge, eyes raking in the unexpected, but welcome sight.

Following the supposed gaze of the handsome stranger, he looked up to the mantas. "They're pretty incredible, huh?" he announced, loud enough to be heard. "Though I think I'd still rather look at you." He kept his eyes on the mantas for a moment, ready to be amused by whatever reply his flirting garnered.
Hunter

Age: 31 | Height: 6'1" | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
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#3
He had been so lost in admiring the mantas that he had let his guard down; a dangerous state of affairs that had already gotten him in trouble before. Just because he had started his bath alone didn't mean he would remain that way, and Kel jumped at the low, rumbling voice coming from the edge of the pool, flinching as his attention was torn away from the beautiful creatures nearby.

He had started to turn, remembering too late that his knife - his clothes - were out of reach on shore, inconveniently behind whoever had showed up when the purred flirtation swept over his skin like an unwanted caress and he ducked back down into the water as he finished twisting to face the newcomer, so only his shoulders remained bared. Amber eyes glared at the rude voyeur, with his dark red hair and pale skin that proclaimed him not a local, as if the heavy pack didn't make that clear enough.

Except... except the hair was a little different, a little longer and shaggier and the body was leaner than he remembered, but he knew those cheekbones. That straight nose. The hooded eyes and the curve of that smile. Kel stared, chest tight with confusion and utter disbelief, completely in denial of what his eyes saw but his head and mind couldn't believe.

Didn't dare believe, or it would be the end of him. He'd only just begun to accept his place in this world and move forward again, but the vision - the dream, the nightmare, the beacon - on the shore threw him back into the past once more. He didn't even realize that goosebumps had broken out over his skin, or that he had wrapped his arms around himself in shock as he stared hungrily, drinking the sight of that handsome body in with as much fear that it was an illusion as hope that he was real.

"R... rance?" he asked, voice cracking in a way it hadn't since he'd been fifteen. "Is that... are you... r-really him?"
Rance Grenier
Wanderer

Age: 33 | Height: 6' | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#4
He heard the splash of the stranger turning and sinking into the water, caught quick movement in his peripheral. His grin broadened, knowing that, if nothing else, the handsome, mystery man wasn't going to immediately attack him.

His plan would have been to slowly lower his gaze, to tilt his head and let his grin become a confident smirk. He definitely didn't plan on hearing his name stuttered in a voice that froze him in place. The question that followed had him whipping his head down, eyes wide, smile gone.

His skin was darker than the shade Rance had once seen beneath dappled forest light. His shoulders seemed broader and, as he'd just seen, there was considerable definition to his body now. But there was no mistaking the line of his jaw, or the color of golden eyes, framed with wet curls of black. His pack slid off his shoulder to thump unnoticed on the rocks and sand, his bow staying in place only by virtue of how it was looped across his chest.

"Fuck... Kellan?" He was breathless, confusion and possibility stealing the air from his lungs, heart pounding as hope and shock clenched tight around it. "Ghost Queen take me early -- Kel?! How... how the fuck?"

He'd accepted that he would never see anyone from his old life. That all he would have of them were memories and a few words written in his old journal. He'd even begun to make new friends, to settle in. That didn't mean the friends and family he'd left behind were gone from his heart, but he'd known he would never see them again.

Only... Kel was here.
Hunter

Age: 31 | Height: 6'1" | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
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#5
How long had it been? A year? More? Time moved strangely since he had arrived in this alien world and Torchline's eternal summer, and he suddenly found a painful panic gripping his chest that he couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd seen the ravenkin last. A couple of days at the town to the west of the Forest, near the broad river that fell quickly to rapids within the deep woods, and thence to a waterfall. It was a busy place, with boat traffic turning to head back upriver and merchants passing through as goods transferred from dock to wagon to continue their journey. Journeys Kel sometimes guided, and it was while he was there waiting for such a job that he had run into his childhood friend, filled as always with tales of the world beyond the Green Kel had always known...

Tears slipped down his cheeks, lost in the water dripping from his hair. He realized he was shivering, that he had forgotten to breathe for long moments while he'd drowned in the sight of a man he had resigned himself to never seeing again.

It was impossible. A trick. An illusion, or a spirit, or someone who only looked the same--

An illusion that knew his name. A familiar cadence of poetry and swearing that could belong to no other, and a call to a goddess as distant now as his mother.

A strangled sound, half sob, broke from the hunter's throat as he flung himself into motion, rising heedless of his nudity in the thigh-deep water and scrambling to force his way through it, frustration mounting as the water fought his every step. He had glided gracefully over the bottom before; now his feet struck against stones hidden on the sand, cut against sharp shells as he struggled to close the distance between them, terrified with each passing second that the vision on the shore would fade away before he could reach him. That he would lose his world again, a sunlit nightmare in a tropical paradise as he stumbled and fell, pushing himself back up and moving faster as the water grew shallower.

"Rance, I don't-- I thought I was the only one-- That you - that everyone - was gone and--" He drew in a ragged breath, swallowing air in his haste, and limped up the final slope of white sand until he stood in a bare inch of water, the raven almost - almost - in reach. And then he stopped, shaking and yearning to reach out and touch, to prove that this wasn't a dream...

Too afraid, now, to quite complete the motion, in case doing so broke the spell.
Rance Grenier
Wanderer

Age: 33 | Height: 6' | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#6
Rance took a half step back when Kel began to run forward, an automatic reaction then and now. Only the hope fluttering frantically in his chest kept his from changing shapes and taking to the air. A voice in the back of his mind, detached from his shock, noted that Kellan was as fit from the front as he was from the back. The rest of his thoughts were a tangle of half-formed questions: was this a hallucination? A mirage? Had walking through the portal from the Grounds, had he once again slipped through to another world?

...Was he home?

His fist rose to his mouth and he bit his thumb hard, trying to ground himself with the pain as watched the illusion in the shape of his oldest friend splash through the Pool while he stood frozen, muscles tight with indecision and confusion. What would he do if a hallucination was all it was?

What would he do if this was real?

He dared not step forward, even to help when Kellan tripped, but he physically couldn't turn away. When the apparition began speaking again, it was as if something squeezed tight around his throat. He released his thumb, hand dropping to his side, and sucked in a rattling breath.

"No, I... I tripped and there was the -- the fuckin' portal! I didn't think anyone else could... would...!" His jaw clicked shut, face pulling into a brief, frustrated snarl. The snarl loosened a beat later and his expression shifted to wary hope, even as part of him prepared to mourn another cruel joke of this world. "Is this... are you really here?" He murmured the question, his voice an emotion-roughened counterpoint to the sounds of the surf behind him. One arm rose, fist loosening as it did, reaching out, but just as afraid that the man before him would turn to mist.
Hunter

Age: 31 | Height: 6'1" | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
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#7
He saw Rance – was it really Rance? – step back and his heart leapt into his throat, afraid that the other man would flee and leave him alone once more. That panic sent him splashing down into the water, but it didn’t stop him. Part of him knew that he had to slow down, stop frightening his friend (was he really his friend?), but the rest of him was too scared that he would be too late if he didn’t run as fast as he could. The water resisted him as if it were a nightmare, running as fast as he could but held back by a force beyond his control.

He finally gained the shore, trembling as the water streamed from brown skin and black hair and down his naked body. Words tumbled from his throat, broken and pleading his confusion, amber eyes locked on Rance with hope and fear in equal measure. He heard his friend’s words, so close to his own – his own experience, his own thoughts and fears and resignation – but the snarl that twisted the raven’s features made him flinch back, hand rising to curl over his heart, and he didn’t know whether or not he dared trust the shift a moment later from anger to hope.

A nod, wary and slow, as he clenched his fingers against his skin. Kel swallowed hard, trying to push back the lump in his throat that kept him silent. The sound of Rance’s voice was so familiar it brought tears to his eyes, but though he opened his mouth his own voice couldn’t make it past the emotions that choked him. He saw the hand stretched out to him, reached for it slowly with shaking fingers—

And hesitated, less than an inch away. ”Rance…” he managed, a broken plea whispered beneath the croon of the cloud manta behind him ”Please, don’t… go…” And even as he reached the final distance he expected to touch only air as he his fingers sought the comforting warmth of his friend’s hand.
Rance Grenier
Wanderer

Age: 33 | Height: 6' | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#8
Seeing fear and wariness on Kel's face should have moved him into action, if he hadn't been fighting his own share of oppressive emotions. Some escaped on a shaking breath, released after Kel's nod. Some lay in the fingers of his outstretched hand. But then the apparition-that-wasn't spoke again and reached out for him.

"Fuck," Rance breathed. As he did, he clasped their hands together, grip tight. Without waiting to see what reaction he got, he used the grip to pull Kel close, stepping forward as he did to meet in the middle. The move trapped their clasped hands between them and Rance wrapped his other arm around Kel's back in an impulsive, fierce embrace.

"Fuck," he repeated with more emphasis. He closed his eyes, feeling the solidity and warmth of the body against him, his mind chanting 'he's real, he's real'. The fact that his clothes were getting soaked was of little importance compared to everything else. He wanted to ask questions, shout gratitude to gods who couldn't hear him, laugh and cry. Instead, what escaped the chaos of his thoughts was an emotion-thick, "You cut your hair."
Hunter

Age: 31 | Height: 6'1" | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 2 - Strg: 15 - Dext: 14 - Endr: 15 - Luck: 6 - Int:
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#9
Not smoke, but flesh.

Not illusion, but reality.

Kel felt himself pulled and moved with the sudden tug, stepping forward to half-collapse into Rance's embrace and returning it with his own free arm. A sob threatened and he buried his face against his old friend's neck, inhaling a scent he had already begun to forget until it was all around him again, wrapping around his heart like a well-worn blanket. "Fuck," he agreed, shaking voice muffled by the raven's hair.

He didn't care that he was naked, or that he was getting Rance wet. All that mattered was the strong body supporting him, leaner than he remembered but also more toned. The voice was the same though, and so was the swearing. He felt laughter - more than a little hysterical, but mostly relieved - bubbling up in his throat at the unexpected question as he held his friend more tightly, determined not to lose him again. "Didn't want to. A prank got out of hand and the sap wouldn't come out so..." Hardly the first time he'd been bullied by other Hidden, or even some of the crueler dryads in the Grove. It had been a particularly painful one this time, though, striking straight at his vanity and confidence even before he'd stumbled through the portal.

Kel drew a shuddering breath, then a second as his laughter faded and he let himself start to believe that maybe things would be okay. "You haven't been eating well enough." A gentle chiding, not the first time he'd made the accusation against his wandering friend, usually right before buying him a large meal at the local tavern. It was almost a rote part of their greeting by now, and the familiarity of it steadied him as he let his friend's hug warm the fear from his heart.
Rance Grenier
Wanderer

Age: 33 | Height: 6' | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 2 - Strg: 13 - Dext: 15 - Endr: 15 - Luck: 12 - Int:
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#10
With Kel's head ducked down, Rance turned his to dark hair. Salt water and sunlight disguised almost any other scent there could have been, but the warmth of his body was real enough. The beginnings of a smile curved his lips as Kel's explicit agreement to Rance's exclamations. It got a little wider as familiar laughter -- gods, he hadn't thought about how much he missed the sound of it -- shook the body against him.

Kel's explanation had his own huffs of shaky laughter passing his lips. "Rude fuckin' twigs," he murmured, commiserating with his friend's loss in the only way her could manage in the moment. Once he calmed down, the loss of Kel's river of hair, something that had been a point of pride for the half-fae man, would hit him harder. But in the moment, it was a drop of disappointment in an ocean of relief. "I don't miss the elitist attitude."

His laughter had petered out by the time by the time the recrimination came, starting a fresh round of chuckles to shake his chest. He didn't even feel the tears that fell from his eyes, the achingly familiar words loosening some knot that had been tangled around his heart. "Shit, ha, yeah, I've uh.... I've been busy. Might have forgotten a meal or two."  He tightened his one-armed embrace briefly, adding, "At least I haven't bothered with a carrion meal in forever." As a raven, such a meal had never felt inappropriate. It was in his nature. But whether it was the change to his biological makeup or the animals of the Grounds, his one attempt to scavenge the remains of a deer corpse had left him sick for a day and a night.
Hunter

Age: 31 | Height: 6'1" | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
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#11
He couldn't see Rance's smile, but he could feel the warmth of his arm, and the puff of laughter that stirred his wet hair. A hiccup of a laugh escaped at the derogatory name calling, but the murmured assurance a moment later silenced his humor. Alina had been just as elitist as the Hidden purebloods, and he'd run into more than his share of sneers at 'Outlanders' among the native Torchliners. Even Jiao had warned him that his magic would mark him as Abandoned by the gods here...

Rance might miss the elitist attitudes of their homeworld, but Kel had yet to escape them. They had only changed shape and terms, not the disdain, the othering at their core.

But Rance, as far as he knew, had only ever heard of such things second-hand from his own experiences. A true fae, he had always lived in a different world from the halfbreed. A dear friend, but as far out of Kel's reach as his mother so often was.

Hell, he'd seen them about as often once they'd grown up and apart.

None of that mattered now, though. Rance was here and Kel's heart was full to bursting with relief and a growing joy as the fear receded. He burrowed into the brief tightening of the hug, his fingers, flexing against his friend's back as he finally drew a full, deep breath and raised his head enough to rest his temple against Rance's as they spoke. "Thought your breath didn't smell as bad as usual," he tried to tease half-heartedly, not knowing if the wetness against his cheek was from Rance's tears, or his own, or the sea. "How long... how long have you been here?" How long had Kel walked the beach or the ocean or the streets of the Port and only just missed seeing a familiar red head and confident smirk? How often had they almost met, but for the shift of a crowd or the passing of moments?
Rance Grenier
Wanderer

Age: 33 | Height: 6' | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#12
Rance hadn't been this physically close to anyone since his arrival. Not really. Oh, he'd had sex, but that couldn't be compared to the warmth to be felt in a friend's embrace. He'd never been swift to trust and those few he felt he could call 'friends' now he had still only known for a season at most. No one he would have trusted enough for affectionate contact. No one like those he'd be forced to leave behind.

Kel had been one of those, his oldest friend, and though they'd seen each other less often as adults, those days and nights spent in each other's company had always been times that Rance treasured. Like so many parts of his old life, he'd resigned himself to never seeing Kel again. Seeing him now and here was a relief he couldn't even describe and a ache he'd never expected to be filled.

He chuckled laughed again at the teasing, the sound noticeably shaky, not that he cared in the moment that he sounded a little hysterical. The question that came afterwards calmed the sound, though there was a faint, lopsided smile clinging to his lips. "Torchline? Just arrived, a couple hours ago. Visited once or twice, too, but never more than a few hours." He squeeze the hand he'd trapped between them. "Been on Caido for months, though. Gods... two and a half seasons, I think? Since Longheat -- er-- s-summer." It was almost difficult to call the season by the name he'd grown up using after months of using the local names. The word felt weird on his tongue and he stumbled over it.
Hunter

Age: 31 | Height: 6'1" | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
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#13
Just being with Rance brought memories of home flooding back, the ones he'd tried so hard to repress and ignore for so long. Childhood games of hide-and-seek and wrestling like pups across the sun-dappled meadows hidden within the Forest's depths; nights spent lying head-to-head on the tallest branches that would hold them, drawing pictures in the stars and sharing boasts about the adventures they would have when they were grown; youthful tempers flaring only for hurt feelings to be soothed and mended before the day was out, their friendship too strong to be shaken for long.

But then... Rance had fledged, and his family had begun to travel again, and their games had grown rarer. The younger halfbreed had been unable to follow where the ravenkin had gone, just as he was too weak to travel with his mother. He was used to it, but still, he had missed the young man who had once defended him from bullies, laughed with him, shared sorrow and joy, and braided wildflowers all throughout a young Kel's long dark mane. Every meeting, rare as they were, became precious, held carefully in memory and eagerly awaited when the chance for another approached.

He had cried for Rance, mourning the loss of him along with the rest of Kel's family the night he had lit the Ghost Queen's candle for mhamo Rowan. Warm arms and a friendly smirk he would never see again. Rough voice rumbling low and reassuring across the tavern table, and late into the night as they shared drink after drink, just to avoid going to sleep and missing a minute of their too-brief time together. Time he had thought lost forever...

Found again, and suddenly all the hardship and trials that Kel had endured since passing through his own portal paled in comparison to having this piece of his heart back again, safe and sound and laughing with him once more.

At first the words didn't make sense, not until the end, and then Kel huffed a rough little laugh of his own as he nodded understanding, brushing skin against skin and squeezing his friend's hand in return just to feel the warmth of it. "I'm not... the seasons here are all kinda... they run together," he admitted, a little roughly as he tried to calculate and came up short. "M-maybe... a couple months for me? Four or... five?" Hesitant and uncertain, the number seemed far too large when confronted with it. But if Rance had only just arrived in Torchline... "Where were you?" The question was soft, not accusing but lost as his fingers caught in the fabric of his friend's shirt, gripping tighter in case the other man started to disappear again.

The cloud mantas floated closer, the mother crooning softly to her offspring as they fed and the two strange humans on the shore seemed lost in their own world, no threat to the gentle herbivores.
Rance Grenier
Wanderer

Age: 33 | Height: 6' | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 2 - Strg: 13 - Dext: 15 - Endr: 15 - Luck: 12 - Int:
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#14
He had never seen Kel as ‘just a half-breed’. Just anything, really. He was the boy who lifted a young bird on enchanted winds like a kite with no string and the man who laughed at Rance’s filthy stories. Rance had mourned everything he’d lost the night he lit a candle for Morgana. The friends he’d met on the road, his easy lifestyle, the family who were still alive who he would never see again. Kel had been in his thoughts then, too. Memories of helping him clean up the messes his winds made of the raven family’s house, of laughing when Rance’s father and mother tried to scold them. Of bringing a young Morgana with them to play in the forest and leaving her in the care of a dryad so they could escape to explore on their own. Of their meetings as adults, how Kel had mourned his sister’s death with him when they’d finally bumped into each other after the accident. The long talks as they tried to pack in weeks of time spent apart into a single night or day. Asking after each other’s families, or telling each other stories about the people they met on the road. Kel might not have traveled as much as Rance, but the folk he guided through the forest were equally as interesting to the raven.

And now he was here, in a far away world where everything was foreign and strange. A lantern in a storm.

Four or five months? Then all the times Rance had visited, every gathering he’d gone to on the beach.... He sucked in a breath, shaken, and focused on answering Kel’s question first. ”The Hollowed Grounds, another kingdom on this world. It’s... well, it’s not great. A lot of fields and forests, but they’ve all got somethin’ off about them. Probably because of... well, what that place went through. It’s a long story.” Kel didn’t need the full history of the Grounds, not right now at least. And Rance was well aware that he was rambling. He could feel all the words he wanted to say crowding up in the back of his throat. “I’ve been stayin’ in the main settlement, mostly.”

He didn’t try to pull away from Kel’s hold, he own just as desperate, fingers spread to touch as much of his friend’s warm back as possible. “But, shit, Kel... All this time, we were so close. Did you travel through the portals at all?” At thought struck him and his eyes were wide. “The lantern festival, on the beach -- were you there?” If he'd been there and they’d missed each other....

For Rance, the cloud mantas might have become part of the waves. All of their mystical beauty was nothing in the face of finding out that he wasn’t alone. To finding his friend all over again.


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