#anyway my song for lonely dragon yussa is 13 angels standing guard 'round the side of your bed by silver mt zion

[seafleece]

essek keeps it in the back of his head— caleb’s strong, even if he’s the only one that sees it. caleb tells him about growing up, about being an only child, about how work was work and studies were studies, and he blinks and thinks dreamily of retiring to somewhere in whatever the empire will be after all of this— empty fields, under the sun, perhaps— and growing something, in the earth. creating something, plain and uncorrupted.

something to hold onto, he tells himself, even if the others don’t quite trust him yet. even if the end of a war might mean nothing at all.

he and caleb go to meet the mage in nicodranas, once between excursions. the others run off immediately, fjord and caduceus to their mother’s lighthouse, beau and jester to see jester’s mother and veth tagging along to see her family. yasha stays for a moment, says something quiet to caleb, and ducks out again— after jester and beau, he thinks.

and they do talk business, for a while, talk of the tenuous nature of peace. the end to the war has not tipped the balance into the positive, you see. trust is tangible, a positive, and war a negative. but this? this halt of combat, it’s just. nothingness. so easily tipped to either side.

caleb has been missing a teacher, essek thinks. not just since— well, since before all of this— but his whole life, someone who believed in him properly, not just belief in what he could do for them. it makes him sad, to think he can’t quite be that for caleb, but, well, he can do other things for caleb. he can see the spark in caleb’s eyes, speaking to yussa about what he’s learned since last they spoke, and, not wanting to interrupt, retires to the corner.

essek watches yussa for a long time— he shows his age in ways caleb likely does not recognize. it’s hard for anyone to know, and yussa is not kryn, but essek knows he was the teacher of oremid hass, and spends a time trying to guess how old he is.

he gets nowhere.

the information seems to be conflicting— he doesn’t have many wrinkles, slight as they would appear, to his face, only a few around the eyes. nothing there.

from his ears, though, essek would guess older than that— they’re especially long, and curl back against his head.

and yussa’s eyes, well— they seem ancient. it’s rare essek would call something truly golden, but it seems appropriate, here. he regards essek almost the way that leylas does, that his mother did. as someone who, until further notice, finds him so comparatively small, so young, that they expect nothing new of him, nothing of magnitude. yussa hides it well, at least, better than an umavi. at the very least, essek thinks, he feels a reason to hide contempt. it still makes his skin crawl.

what has yussa errenis done, he wonders, to warrant such a look to his eyes? how long has he lived?— and is about to ask him this, tunes in to the conversation again.

“—ja, well, i got a late start, i suppose. blumenthal is not exactly a place of higher learning. i grew up tending fields.”

“caleb’s very strong,” he says, surprising himself. “stronger than you, i’m sure. it wasn’t a waste.”

caleb flushes immediately, bright pink down to his open collar. “um— i—”

he expects yussa to be nonplussed, to seem scandalized. to admit it, at best. this, he can gauge.

but yussa errenis tips back his head and laughs, loud and sudden. he looks over at essek with those ancient eyes, and then to caleb, and rolls up the sleeve of his robe, the arm beneath thin and unassuming. a caster’s arm, not a worker’s. perhaps that of an old man.

“well, then, shadowhand. care to make a wager?”

there are things that do not fade with age— not until the very end, at least, or when otherwise stolen. the mind, the tongue.

strength, though. strength leaves you years, decades, centuries early. especially if one is not— and he looks at yussa for another moment— in constant upkeep.

“a secret,” he says. “if caleb wins, i may ask you a question you must answer truthfully. if you win, the same from caleb. or me.”

“deal,” says yussa. “dangerous, don’t you think?”

“only dangerous if i believe caleb will lose. i do not, though.”

caleb has said nothing this entire time, but the color drains from his cheeks again. this, too, is some guard in this matter— caleb knows what he has to lose, and will do almost anything to keep him from losing it. his eyebrows pull even lower over his eyes as he looks at essek, and essek just nods.

caleb takes a breath, and then flattens the fingers of his right hand into his palm until the knuckles pop. it is intensely alluring.

yussa has a smaller table, and they take either side of it, hands clasped in the middle. essek needs to be sure— he takes a moment and casts, expands his sight, sees the careful nothingness of caleb that originates from the amulet. it had been his bane, in previous months, trying to ascertain where they were, less directly, trying to look in on these people he wished to know so badly, but now, knowing the danger caleb has always been in, that he is in even in this peaceful moment, he finds it comforting.

yussa, though, glows entirely with a thin sheen of transmutative magic. he racks his brain— it seems innate, somehow, certainly not put on for this moment. he decides to save it for his question, when caleb wins.

essek reaches out to hold both of theirs, steady them in the middle. they’re both holding loosely, for the moment, but he finds himself more focused on where his fingers meet caleb’s than on who seems to be stronger, in this moment.

“ready?”

they both nod. yussa’s posture is relaxed, but caleb is all tension, all fear, some confusion as to why this has happened.

“begin,” essek says, smoothly, and releases their hands.

he almost doesn’t see it, it is so quick. there’s a momentary— truly momentary— motion to his side from caleb, and then caleb’s hand is flat against the table, forearm twisted back, with a loud thunk.

there’s a moment of silence. caleb looks absolutely horrified, and yussa just smiles, a lazy thing. it feels as though the floor has fallen from under essek.

“well, that’s that,” yussa says breezily, and releases caleb. “my question, shadowhand—“

the moment feels sluggish, suspended— not warm, or friendly, anymore, more like the time essek’s first advanced tutor had used time stop in their room and spent his created eternity flicking essek’s forehead with a grin while essek tried to blink.

“—how are you enjoying the city? i have never truly grown accustomed to the majesty of the sea when she balances the sun, not in my many years here.”

he knows, essek thinks. first, what essek had meant to ask, and everything he had wagered to try and ask it.

then, everything clears in his head.

the robes, the tower, the eyes, the strength, the magic covering him like a second skin— it had looked for all the world like scales. that phrase— ‘the sea when she balances the sun’— it’s from a book. a fable, well-written enough to be considered a classic, about a kingdom of islands, and the great gold dragon that ruled it.

he looks at caleb, who is young enough to still show confusion the moment he feels it, and thinks that caleb has perhaps stumbled upon the best teacher there may be anywhere. he has never met a gold dragon, but one this reserved is old indeed, old enough to have outgrown his greed, his ostentatiousness. he wonders if he and leylas have met, him only slightly younger and leylas someone else entirely. he wonders if his mother has met this dragon.

“i love it here,” essek says, and moves to press his side against caleb’s shoulder. “and yes, the sun in the morning. it turns the entire ocean gold.”

yussa’s grin widens. the glint to his eyes, it changes in that moment, from politely hidden contempt to genuine, muted surprise. delight. essek wonders if anyone in this city knows. if anyone in the world knows.

he must be lonely, essek thinks. a loneliness he at once feels in his bones and cannot fathom. yussa asks them to stay for dinner, and caleb says he needs to check on the others, wants to see how veth is doing, and kisses essek in the foyer before he goes, brief— “we’ll talk, later,” he says, and essek knows he will not tell him. he might lend him the fable book, though, the worn copy he keeps in his vault.

“i’d be glad to stay,” he says, and yussa’s face breaks, for a moment, into something fragile, something genuine. something mortal.

there is much to talk about.

(for the shadowgast discord server, love y’all)