#i don't love how this came out but i think that's bc i see kpp'ar as a fundamentally

[raayllum]

For Day Three of Snake Boi Callum Week: Magic / Mirrors Summary: Callum and Kpp'Ar have a conversation after he's released from the coin. Word Count: 2k

ORPHEUS: How will you remember? EURYDICE: That I love you? ORPHEUS: Yes. EURYDICE: That’s easy. I can’t help it.

—Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl

The initial confusion—the hazy gold imprisonment and bone-deep ache that had been equally familiar in death as it had been in life, the harrowing first few coughs as his lungs learned to work again, hand grasping for a cane that wasn’t there—had faded overall quickly, mostly because too much of his circumstances didn’t make sense.

The walls around him had been a shimmering white and purple, unlike anything he’d ever read of in the Pentarchy, loud elven voices echoing off of walls that didn’t seem to be able to make an echo arguing over something that didn’t make any sense. 

Only one thing truly stuck, in the aftermath: a young man looking over him with a shadowed face, swoopy hair, trimmings of a High Mage tunic fluttering round his knees, and the burst of emotion brought forth at the reality that Viren was here, that Viren had both trapped and freed him, and that Kpp’Ar still—

Throat hoarse, and lips cracking from disuse, parted to form his name. “Viren?”

But the mage reared back in disgust (still not unlike his protegé), throwing a younger, tanner face into the light, a fresh white lock of hair falling over glinting green—not gray—eyes.

“I am not Viren,” he said tersely, looking vaguely familiar for a different reason, hands shaky as he bent down to help Kpp’Ar up into a sitting position. He handed him a crystalline cup of water and then rose unsteadily to his feet.