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Forgiven for his oversight.

With great difficulty, Damissan ignored the bait, for the moment. Perhaps it didn’t matter as much as it felt it did, or perhaps it didn’t matter at all, in the long run. But in the moment, all of it caused tight, frustrated, angry knots to bunch and roil in his chest and press hard and sharp at the tip of his tongue because how dare he say and continue to say—did he not know who he—

But no further, for now. It was all familiar, and in another time or place it might have ended in — at best — a more heated verbal response and, if persistent, a physical backlash. Though he had never fought on the battlefield, violent scuffles between rowdy peers, and otherwise, were not unfamiliar to him, and wheresoever his pride was in question even at a glance, there was opportunity for instigation of something.

He had come this far, though, for something other than that. He was trying to distance himself from it, and by God, though he had not — so far as he was aware — done anything to this particular man to ‘deserve’ to have his good will tested as such, perhaps he needed it regardless. Frustrating as it felt in the moment and unearned as he assured himself it was, it did nothing to change the fact that there was far, far worse afoot. There were those out there that would sooner kill him than let him speak his mind, and Xilarn had set himself apart from that category well before he had been offered any recompense for such action. So his words were teasing, mocking, even, or belittling, and absolutely baiting.

But they did him no harm.

Other than to his mood, and his posture, and his—

How as he meant to accomplish anything if he could not manage to be comfortable company for one objectively, arguably reasonable and ordinary man?

Forcing himself at least not to grind his already grit teeth, Damis kept on his path wordlessly. As they reached the city’s final edge, Xilarn sent Gadot on his way, and as the shadow of the beast’s wings skittered across the sand increasingly far beneath him, Damis felt a small pang of something indeterminate. Aside from Nazakai, who had been a neutral party at best thus far, somehow his ‘bodyguard’s’ dog had managed to be the only friendly energy towards him since departing from Sulburi. It was a draining, disheartening thought and he dismissed it quickly, for he had a very, very long ways to go, and it wouldn’t do to let the attitude of one man — not even always negative at that — deter him.

Even if he was his only company.

He couldn’t say how long they walked in silence. The only surety, for what had to be hours as the morning edged into day and the sun burned in the tumultuous sky, was the wind. Blustery at first, but then fiercer in bursts that slowed again after. Even in the early morning, Damis had taken note of distant clouds far to the east, but desert storms were notoriously quick and brief — or certainly could be — and he expected any that far off to die away before becoming an issue. When the winds did not die, and the roiling clouds seemed only to inch nearer like a perpetual haze overtaking the sky, Damis felt his previously mild concern creep upwards. First into a slow-building anxiety, and eventually, nearing noon when the gusts had become a steady, biting wind enough to make the sand a progressively more active concern—a small, cold twist in his gut nearer to real fear.

He looked to Xilarn.

Damissan wasn’t sure what he expected—whether he still thought Xilarn would be stubbornly silent. Grunt. Ignore the storm. Plod forward, or say something else to him. But whatever it was he feared, instead, he got closer to the most he could have hoped for. At least, in some senses of the word. While it wasn’t comforting necessarily to see that the older man was similarly concerned with their circumstances, it was at least reassuring that he wasn’t the only one, and that, better still, Xilarn seemed to have a distinct plan of action.

It wasn’t that Damis had never seen or experienced a sandstorm—he had, there was little way to avoid it after having spent one’s entire life in a desert—but ever in the past, the practical strategy was simple: get inside. Take shelter. Head to the nearest solid structure. Of which there were, unfortunately, none in the open desert.

So, he found him hastily following Xilarn’s instruction, cooperating with the wrapping of his cloak and holding it as near to his mouth and eyes as he could while still seeing. He offered no objection to turning over Nazakai’s lead — who, for his own part, had begun grunting out low, distempered mooing noises into the deep wind, scuffing his heavy hooves to the sand and lowering his great head, but fortunately, fortunately showing no signs of stopping despite his load and despite the tumult.

The press of Xilarn’s hand at his back wasn’t exactly necessary encouragement, but it certainly did no harm, and Damis readily cooperated with a quickened pace.

“There is,” he said, shooting a squinted glance from beneath his hood to Nazakai’s burden—a well-organized (now) and narrowed-down (now) supply of goods, but still a great many more things to look through than Damis was especially prepared to attempt in a disaster situation. But, of course, one could never choose ideal times for such things. “Do we—ought we—?”

His gaze moved from Xilarn and Nazakai out in the direction Xil had adjusted them towards heading, and admittedly he couldn’t be sure how useful the rock would be, or how large the pillars actually were, but anything other than endless sand, large enough to leave a solid needle of earth jutting up from it wall was promising in its solidity alone.

“There is a tent,” he repeated, voice rising to compensate for the wind and cloth over his mouth, “but I’m not sure…exactly where…” It was not, admittedly, the most pleasant thing to have to admit in the moment, but honesty would surely serve them better than false hope. “Do you want to look for it?”

Reasonable, reasonable, reasonable, reasonable…

All of Xilarn’s initial train of speech made perfect sense and was in line with Damis personally wanted to do in that moment, that being: get away from the storm and into some solid crevice or behind a shield of anything more durable than fabric or flesh. Thus, he was fully ready to and did quicken his pace, on board with—

Then, Xilarn managed to look—was he teasing?

It wasn’t as though Damis had a great lot of thought to spare for interpreting the expression, but he could have sworn—and then the man’s hand was at his back and—I will not let anything hurt you—everything from that moment out managed to be far more confusing than his mind was ready to immediately grapple with, so he cooperated wordlessly. The pounding of his pulse was entirely due to a healthy level of instinctive fear and it was the middle of a desert at noon so of course everything was naturally overheated.

They pushed forward through the sand. Damis heard the words that followed, barely, over the storm and for a moment he debated, but then let the thought go. One pivotal goal at a time seemed to be more than enough and if and when they made it to safety — ‘God be with us…’ — he could take that time to appreciate and pick apart the words with more care. It felt like an eternity. A wild, chaotic hell of increasingly thick sand threatening to swallow or grind them away in bursts, fierce enough to physically lurch them off course or attempt to. Fortunately, Nazakai was a very heavy beast, like a great anchor of meat in the sand, and Xilarn somehow managed to seem just as doggedly persistent and stable, so Damis, in good company, fared as well as he could have possibly hoped, most likely.

And then somehow, all but clawing against the winds by that point, their ‘destination’ was their location, a great, thick spire of rock. Rounding to the leeward side of it was like stepping within the wake of a shield — which, in this case, Damis supposed was quite literally the case — and for though the winds still howled and the sand battered, his ears rung in what almost felt like quiet by comparison. Then, the crevice became apparent. Not large, but large enough, and Damis didn’t feel the immediate need to ask if they ought to seek out that further shelter. Pushing to it and then ducking around the edge of it and in was like slipping from one violent stage of a dream and into a muted new phase.

After nearly tripping on a rock in the darkness within the first half second, Damis grimaced and pressed his back to the inner wall of it, and shut his eyes. It took him a moment to realize that the odd, hoarse scratching sound suddenly audible was his breath. Swallowing, he worked to quiet it. When it managed, at least, to not be wildly distracting to his ears, he spoke.

“Do you…only ever apologize when the possibility of death is on the horizon? Not that I don’t appreciate it, I do. And I am grateful you probably won’t assault me, I’m just…curious.”

Nazakai, who seemed only able to fit most of his head through the crevice, gave a low mooing grunt and snort. Damis squinted in the near blackness, and — in exhaustion inspired by relief — allowed his legs to bend, and his body to sink to a sit, back to the wall.

“Have you…dealt with a sandstorm before, while not near shelter?”

Under other circumstances, Damis might have said something in defense of his nation. Anything, really. Home to him all his life, he felt a protective attachment to it. Be it patriotism or a simple factor of familiarity and personal identity, it was his homeland.

In this moment, however, with the sands of his ‘homeland’ quite literally filling his ears, and his clothes, and leaving him with the still-lingering sense that he could have suffocated within it, the urge to be immediately defensive was dampened. So, instead, he listened as Xilarn spoke and moved, hearing more than seeing, since Xilarn’s presence was more of a black shape than anything, thanks half to the blanketing effect of the outside sands and half to the shadowy nature of their chosen nook. The sudden thhhp of weight in his lap was enough to make him start, body jerking in his surprise, but relaxing again as he identified the source, and he blinked moments later, glancing after his ‘guard’ as the other man sank against the opposite wall.

Fair or not, he had at some point decided not to expect gestures of kindness from his assigned company, and — though appreciated — it took him a moment to process. At the question, he flushed, frowning in the darkness.

“Massive amounts of fun,” he said. But then, after a pause and as he reached to lift the canteen, the surrounding winds providing a — dare he think it — almost soothing backdrop to the scene, something in him relaxed, and his expression eased. “I suppose it was exciting. More now, in retrospect. It wasn’t all bad…the first tale to tell my grandchildren of my adventures, many decades in the future?”

His fingers flicked over the canteen top, unfastening it and then lifting as his gaze caught on and followed the path Xilarn’s own hand traced along his skin—and at some point, far be it from Damis to pinpoint when exactly, the canteen paused in its journey because there was a ripple and pluck of magic. And then fire.

Admittedly, it wasn’t the most impressive of spells — nothing that he hadn’t, technically, seen before — and Damis quickly blinked and diverted his gaze down to drink the moment he realized he was staring. But more than it was ‘impressive’, the action was simply entirely unexpected, and after his first hasty swallow—which dragged quickly into a more drawn out, savoring gulp because by God, he was thirsty—he forced the canteen down so as not to be greedy, and looked again to the fire, and then Xilarn’s face.

“You can cast.” It wasn’t, perhaps, the most innovative of observations he’d ever made, and after it Damis cleared his throat, taking another, smaller, sip before capping the canteen and passing it. “I was…briefly concerned,” he admitted. “I’d never—I hadn’t ever actually been in one, other than from within the safety of the palace walls. I know people have died in them…but…” Eyeing Xilarn’s grin, Damis’ lips curved up into a smile of his own in spite of himself. “I suppose it’s good one of us wasn’t worried, and I do appreciate the effort…”

At Xilarn’s latter answer, though, Damis blinked—surprised, though perhaps he oughtn’t have been. “You…handled it with a great deal of confidence for someone with no experience…it’s—” Impressive? Damis rubbed at the back of his neck, attention then jerking towards Nazakai as the quhar — previously still struggling with the entrance — finally gave a distempered grunt of concession and dropped to his personal version of a ‘lay’ on the ground, still wedged in the entrance, and a snort of disgruntled surrender puffing from his nostrils. Damis took to shaking out his clothes, or what of them he could, before stretching out his legs. “Well. I was grateful for your company, and am thankful for your dedication to keeping me breathing. Not that I couldn’t have found some method on my own, I’m sure, put to the test…”

Despite everything that preceded it — which Damissan had been listening to, for the record — his mind caught and hung on the middle part of Xilarn’s commentary as surely as hitting a snag. Allowed to have children. For a moment, he could only frown, eyes narrowing to a squint while he processed the words.

“Allowed?” he repeated, unfortunately, before they finished processing. “Of course I am allowed to have—I wasn’t charged and institutionalized for mental deficiencies, it’s not illega—” And then, it occurred to him what the man meant, and he blinked, flushed, and cleared his throat. ‘Dedication,’ indeed. “Oh, you—that. Er, well, I’m…it isn’t…”

He slouched back a fraction against the stone behind him.

“I certainly don’t intend to engage in such things any time soon,” he admitted. “Part of the goal in this all is an endeavor to…better myself, I suppose, in the process of spreading what I’ve discovered. But…no, I don’t believe that my God forbids me to one day, at the appropriate time, take a wife and rear children. Just…it would be at some point in the very far future. I don’t believe that has anything to do with dedication or lack thereof. Separate from that…casual rendezvous purely for carnal entertainment aren’t particularly self-bettering, so…I suppose I intend to abstain from pursuits of those sort.”

He listened, watching as the other man spoke of being taught what to do, and at length, shrugged. “There is always that, yes. It just tends to be a touch different in practice than in theory, but…it doesn’t hurt to know. And regardless, I’m in no position to complain about the results.” After curling his toes in his boots and then shaking one, tapping it to dislodge more sand, the corner of his mouth edged up, curving towards amusement as he spared his company another glance. “I don’t suppose you’d like to join me in thanking God for His mercy in seeing us to safety?”