"So have any of the Knights ever... not learned bull Jumping?" He swallowed nervously, and felt a large rough hand thump him roughly on the shoulders. Compared to his father, towering and dark haired, he felt fragile, small, and... and wholly unprepared for the role people looked for him to take. Ianthe even would have been better. She was a couple years older than him, but he'd seen her practicing with wooden mounts, and training her black calf.

"No." His fathers voice, even when not on the practice field training others, boomed and carried, and made him feel smaller. "No, the bulls are an important part of Kairatos, and so the Knight of Kairatos needs to represent them as well as he can. They're strong brave beasts, and raised well, yours will be a dauntless companion in battle, as brave as any warrior.

"But Ianthe..."

"Ianthe is not destined to take on the title, as skilled as she is, her path will take her elsewhere."

"But she's better than me."

"Skills come to her more easily, but it just means you'll have to try harder. the people of Kairatos... of Mars...of the universe will respect you as much, if no more, for the skills you have struggled for than if you could do what was asked of you easily. Train Asterion, rise from the falls, show them that we do not give up simply because we cannot put on a skill like a new garment. We are too bold, too proud, to give in so easily."

---

Kairatos blinked, blinked again sleepily, and sat up slowly. He'd been searching through the ruins, trying to find... well.. he wasn't sure what he had been trying to find. Anything really. He was just trying to put pieces together, and he wasn't sure which option was less depressing. Looking through the version of a life where everyone was so long gone that there was nothing but dust... or trying to pick through the pieces where you knew there were people still alive that remembered who you had been... but who would not recognize you, and who you, in turn, were unable to recognize.

...

OK maybe both options were depressing, but otherwise he was wandering around blind, trying to even remember what his favorite brands of beer were. And rediscovering that he wasn't too keen on straight Whiskey. Fireballs were questionable and should only be had once in a night, probably... and Zombie's, for a 'fruity drink', were arguably more dangerous than anything more 'manly' just because they didn't try and rip your digestive tract out and hit you with it.

At least not until the next day. That, combined with the nightmares, hadn't been helping, and he'd arrived here in a state so tired he might well have still been slightly drunk.

He hadn't even noticed that he'd been drifting off when he sat down to examine some items from around the stables, old dry leather harnesses which still clinked with what appeared to be gold coins. Horn brasses. Brushes so old that many of the bristles had come out when he'd moved them, the ties and glue disintegrating. But this was what he had to work with, pieces of the past, and the far past, which he could look at, but never fully connect with again.