Welcome to Gaia! ::

“But I want to go and see—and see—and see the sun from outside!” Eqniz was a small boy, portly in the face with a beady, round nose and large eyes that seemed always to stare extra brightly at whatever they were fixated upon. Five years old and adopted by the Sanctum only several months prior to the given date, he was a new charge, carefully watched and cared for. At the moment, he was under Zekiel’s temporary care and clinging with impressive grip to the tail of Ze’s coat. “I want to go—to go—to go and…the sun’s warm.”

“It is warm,” Zekiel agreed, smiling and dipping as he reached to fit his fingers into Eqniz’s clasp instead of this clothes. Eqniz seemed amenable to this adjustment, and clutched just as fast to Ze’s hand as his coat. “And the sun is wondrous, but we will not go long, for you’ll be expected back here. You do not want anyone to miss you, do you?”

Eqniz’s nose crinkled, eyes squinching so that his cheeks all but made them disappear during his session of ‘deep thought’ on the question.

“Would you like to see some birds?”

Immediately, Eqniz’s gaze was on him. “I do! I do—I do! I want—I want—I want to see birds!”

Ze’s smile warmed, matching the dancing excitement and hopefulness in Eqniz’s gaze. “Then we shall find some for you to see,” he said, taking a step and guiding Eqniz along as a hatchling might follow the mother. “Keep your roll with you,” he added. “And I will show you how to find birds.”

They couldn’t stray long, Ze knew, as Eqniz would need to be back within the Sanctum itself before sundown for evening activities with other younglings newly indoctrinated. But for now, it was mid-evening, they both had a spare moment, and as they crossed the outer threshold, passed the walls and onto the steps facing and leading out into the city proper, he saw no harm in taking a moment to encourage the small boy to sit with him, showing him how to pluck very small pieces off of his roll — that he had adamantly insisted earlier that he ‘didn’t want, didn’t want, didn’t want’ — and toss them to catch the eye and attention of local city fowl.

In no time, they had a small flock.

To say that the appearance of the small, emaciated interloper was unexpected would have been an understatement.

One moment, Zekiel was seated at the top front of the church steps, Eqniz at his side, the child’s pudgy little fingers plucking at portions of his food and — as per Zekiel’s initial instruction and example — tossing small, manageable bits to their fowl friends. Though easily startled any time the birds drew too close, Eqniz was visibly excited by them, bouncing in place on several occasions when one would ruffle and stretch its feathers or cooo before pecking at the starchy offerings scattered about the stone steps.

“Do they—do they—do they always like bread?” he asked. “I—”

And then, the next moment, the entire flock was aflutter. A rush of battering feathers and wings, fleeing birds, distempered chirps and squawked calls—and a boy amidst the rush, like a lanky stone cast into a pool and frightening away all the fishes. He looked almost feral, dangerously skinny, hair messy as the nests the birds might have inhabited and face marred with scars. And he was taking the bread off the streets and into his mouth.

Zekiel stared, and for a moment, all his focus was on the boy. He needed to eat, evidently, and that seemed the most pressing concern. He was halfway into rising when Eqniz burst into tears. Ze’s gaze snapped that way.

“Oh—no, shhhhh-shhhhhh-shhhh,” he murmured, shaking his head and smiling encouragingly at the blubbering youngling. “It’s all well, it’s all well…” He touched a hand to the boy’s cheek, brushing away the starts of his tears and at least bringing them down to a whining simper before glancing again to their new company.

“You needn’t—do you know the steps are very dirty?” he asked, rising and taking what remained of Eqniz’s roll. The child fortunately did not object, instead immediately substituting Zekiel’s coattails again to cling to with his small fists. “There is better food than that for the birds…are you hungry?” He lifted out the hand with the roll a fraction, as one might offer food to a wild animal, but with less hesitation. “If it would please you, there is more not thrown to the stones and earth…”

Zekiel stared, blinking at the boy before him and drinking in the details, from his posture, to his filth, to the scars, to his visible bones under the skin, as though thin wet cloth had been layered atop them with nothing in between to hide their definition. He wasn’t unfamiliar with such a state. Ottolo had been famished when he came into the protection of the church and Zekiel’s care, the persons within Tacrith’s halls for medical attention were often in various stages of poor condition, and, though he did not think on it often, in his youth he had seen similarly hungry faces, gaunt from lack of nutrition and care.

After the roll was snatched and vanished behind the boy’s lips, Ze let his hand fall to his side and nodded.

“There is,” he said. “If you wait a moment, I will fetch you some.”

Zekiel knew the church did not feed the city at large. Pajore’s citizens came from all ranks of wealth, from those akin to Warrek’s family — prosperous, with everything they could want for, more rooms in their home than could be counted on two hands, and access at their fingertips — to those with nothing, who used the streets as shelter and ate, as this boy did, from the steps of the better off if that was where they found food. The church did not take it upon itself to solve that problem. Those without were often understood as deserving it in some way, just punishment by the gods, and if Zekiel had said why he needed more food for the morning, he may well have been denied.

But he did not. He moved quickly, gathering up Eqniz’s hand despite his blubbering and encouraging him along to come back inside. “But I don’t want—I only got to see the sun for a little while!”

“I will bring you again,” Zekiel said, giving a squeeze to the smaller boy’s hand as he pouted. “I promise you, and we will stay as long as you are permitted and it please you.”

There were other token complaints voiced — ‘Where are we going? Why are we leaving? What are we doing?’ — but Zekiel walked despite them, moving to the kitchens and making his request. After he had a small basket full, Eqniz eyed him and it, his crying having ceased by then, but his brow still furrowed with suspicion.

“Why do you—do you—do you got so many? Are we going to feed the birds all of them?”

“I am going to feed most to the boy on the steps, and give you back to Miss Keisa, I should think. Unless you would like to continue accompanying me.” It might perhaps ought to have occurred to Zekiel that a feral, starving child was not the best thing to expose a youngling to—but it didn’t. To him, the hungry were part of the world the gods had made and the boy on the steps must only have been a decade older than Eqniz at most. He was part of what there was in the world to brighten and thus, part of what ought to be understood and seen. “Do you wish to come with me to give him biscuits?”

Eqniz eyed him, round cheeks puffed, and lips pursed until the moment he spoke. “I don’t want to go back to Miss Keisa.”

Zekiel smiled. “You may follow me, then,” he said, and thus, still had a begrudging tag along holding to his coat tail as he made it back out of the Sanctum grounds and to the outer steps. He couldn’t know how many the boy would want, but at least now he had a supply to offer that would hopefully hold him and be sufficient to please him.

Zekiel blinked, already reaching to take one of the biscuits out, then smiling mid-motion, finishing the gesture and holding it out to the boy.

“Ten,” he said, “and I have everything I want, though I do suppose I would want for them to please you since you look as though you would do well with food. I am Zekiel. Do you…?”

There, though, Zekiel’s words trailed off, distracted as his gaze fell to the lone pendant hanging from the street boy’s neck. The boy wasn’t wearing much, so he couldn’t say how he hadn’t noticed before other than that, in the flurried rush for food and frightening off of the birds, his attention had been on other things initially. Now, however, with the boy perched before him, holding still, staring at and facing him, it was impossible not to be reminded of an all-but-identical pendant he had seen on someone else.

A number of times now, Zekiel had met with Tacrith, and now that his mind was there, there was no mistaking it. And with that detail in place, he noticed others: the similarities in their face, despite the differences carved by malnutrition, scars, and age difference, but also even more obviously—the matching black crystal patterns just above his right eyebrow and at his throat.

He had intended to ask if the boy had a name. Instead, the words came:

“Do you know of Tacrith also?”

The recognition was immediately apparent in the other boy’s face, coupled with raw and open surprise.

“That was my brother's name, before he died.”

‘Oh,’ came close to Zekiel’s lips, but didn’t make it farther than a circle of his mouth with no verbal utterance before the surprise shifted. In the span of moments, the other boy’s body language changed, evolving from open and startled, to stiff. Closed off—and on the retreat. Zekiel had never heard the name before — ‘Llyr’ — but it seemed evident that whoever the man was, this boy was not fond of him.

Ze tipped his head as he shook it, smile still in place but pinched with a touch of new confusion. “I am only Zekiel,” he said, a repetition of sorts, though it felt different now. “I know no one by the name of Llyr, and I have not been sent here by anyone…except I suppose the sister watching over the younglings.” When he ventured a glance to Eqniz, he found the boy’s attention locked warily on Finn as one might inspect a strange new specimen. “But it must be some other Tacrith,” Ze clarified, “for the one I know is very much alive. Or.” He tipped his head, considering. “He was the last I saw him, which was only some day or so ago, so I would imagine he is still alive, though it is possible the gods have taken him in the time between. I do hope not, as he was very kind and young yet, but it is not my place to know when or why the gods choose to take those they do when they do…”

After trailing off for a moment, however, he shook his head, mentally putting himself back ‘on’ track and smiling anew.

“But I am sure your brother is safe in their hands also. I only thought you might know of him since he — the Tacrith I know, that is — has a pendant like yours and so when I saw yours, I thought of him. His crystals, too, like on your face and neck, have that pattern. But I meant nothing unpleasant by it…you may have another biscuit if you like, and if it displeases you to, we won’t speak of him?”

If initially the boy before him didn’t seem to put much weight in Zekiel’s words, such was the case as it was and it didn’t feel of particular concern to Ze. The boy didn’t have to care or believe or like what he said and was free to care about and believe and like whatever pleased him—though Ze did hope not to upset him too much, since that felt unnecessary. But, thanks to the boy’s initial indifference, the sudden lurch of a shift to clasping at Zekiel’s arms and pressing in with a flurry of interest—

Well, that caught him very slightly off guard.

Zekiel blinked, meeting the boy’s near-crazed look with a head tilt of startled curiosity, and then a peculiar and puzzled smile. “I suppose that by, ‘he had a pendant like yours’ I meant that he had a pendant quite like yours. That is, that it looks as yours looks, in that shape and that way of being, and that he carries about his neck as you do, and it exists with those colors that yours is, and that mark upon it and the beads…now that I am thinking of it I might say that they could be quite the same pendant if not that you are wearing yours and he his so they cannot be the same object…”

The boy’s hands really were quite filthy.

“Perhaps he is having a bath,” Ze said, smile broadening. “Though perhaps not. I haven’t seen him in several days, so I couldn’t be sure where exactly he is now and he might be doing any manner of things as the gods intend. Do you think you would like to meet him? I can tell him you had a brother by his name and I am sure he would be pleased to hear of you.”

“You can’t go!”

Faced with the strange, hungry boy’s antics, Zekiel had actually near forgotten Eqniz’s presence entirely. Now, however, at the prospect of being ‘abandoned’ on the front steps he supposed, the small, puff cheeked boy piped back up with renewed insistence, making himself known again and tugging at Zekiel’s coat tail for emphasis.

“He can’t go,” Eqniz repeated, managing to somehow sound half blustery and half terrified as a child might, his eyes fixed wide and wary on the stranger. “You…go away, you don’t—you don’t—you don’t belong here and…”

Zekiel reached, touching a hand to Eqniz’s shoulder and then shaking his head.

“Oh, he needn’t leave but…” Ze looked momentarily uncertain, torn between conflicts of interest. “Though I do wish to take you—I would take you, if it please you, I cannot this moment. I have Eqniz and I am to look after him. I must at least see him back to his watcher if I’m to go anywhere of distance. Is it quite urgent?”

Admittedly, the boy did seem to be riled more than the average street goer, but perhaps he was simply an especially excitable sort and did everything quickly—including breadcrumb scrambling.

If possible, Eqniz’s already large and stare-prone eyes managed to blow even wider in fixated terror on the stranger when he snapped his response at him. Evidently, he hadn’t anticipated back talk. Zekiel, however, remained unfazed — Eqniz was in no observable danger, and after a moment, the small wily one seemed to consider it in his best interest to focus on Ze besides.

“Then I shall do that!” Ze answered with a nod, chipperly giving his charge’s hand a gentle tug.

It did not take much to get Eqniz scurrying, and in a surprisingly short while, Zekiel returned, alone, hands folded behind himself and smiling. He gave a small dip of a bow in greeting upon re-arrival. “Shall we walk together now then?” he asked. “Will those clothes suit you despite the cold? If you’ve been hurt yourself at all, Tacrith is a wondrous physician,” he said. “I am sure he would see to you even if he does not know your brother.”