KAJ

the aurelight

Kaj was a new student to faith. Ophelia had placed the path before him, only the most meager of guidance, and from there his own trials had begun. Who to follow, firstly? How could he pick a god to follow when he knew none of them, and the only magic he had had appeared without reason, from a God he'd never known and who did not rule his lands? He was torn between the Sun that he embodied and the steady Earth that had always kept him rooted and firm, the one that ruled over the lands Kaj lead. And how to be faithful? Prayers were new to him, but they came with ease the more he practiced them. He longed to understand, to know, and though he intended to seek out Isopia it seemed that the god battles had interfered with any plans he'd had before. So his trail to piety was a wandering, stuttering thing, with no mentor and a hesitancy to devote himself to a god when he himself was so mortal and undeserving. 

His viewpoint was uncommon, or so others said. Perhaps being in nigh constant agreement with Isopia was also indicative of his irregularity. He hadn't fought in the Time God's battle, for all his stature and skill set favored war and brutality. He hadn't understood those who fought against the Moon Goddess, for all the havoc and pain she'd created within his family. If there was one thing Kaj could not stand, it was not understanding, and with nobody to ask he was left grasping for something just out of reach, trying to be faithful and religious but not knowing how to emulate the methods of those around him. He could not pray how they prayed, could not see what they saw. How could he be pious if he had no guide, no pattern to try and replicate and adapt to himself? Was his faith even beneficial to the gods, even noted?

In solitude he had wandered, beneath the warm sun that eased the ache of his leg and the deadened state of his shoulder. Kaj had no purpose, no real goal, though he migrated towards the Veins as if subconsciously. The place he'd first knelt in honest prayer, where he'd encountered Ophelia and her steadfast belief in the Sun. Perhaps his answers lay there, in the broken shrines of the Gods, for abandoned though it was it surely had to hold some lingering amount of meaning and magic. 

Dawn was rising upon his arrival, painting the sky in shades of rose and gold, promising another day of warmth and clear sunlight. Kaj was already awaiting it, the cold of the night having caused his shoulder to clench maliciously once more. He'd walked most of the night, if only to try and ease the pain, the misfiring nerves that ached to the bone and made his shoulder feel both twitchy and dead all over. A phantom sensation perhaps. His gait was stiff with the lack of mobility, but he strode onward stubbornly, across ebonite rock and the warm glow of electric blue lava. Hooves clicked on stone, the only sound to accompany him on this trek, this religious journey. The Aurelight expected no answer, for he was but a mortal man and undeserving of a private celestial visit. He sought only a resolution to his problem, perhaps through meditation, a deep soul searching that he could not achieve in the Falls.

When he came to the meeting point of all four shrines, he hesitated. It seemed impolite to pick one without having solidified which God he desired to follow, after all. At first he instinctively attempted to kneel, no matter how uncomfortable laying upon the rock would be. At least, until his shoulder gave an angry spasm, objecting loudly to the stance he'd tried to take. Frustrated tears pricked angrily behind Kaj's eyes, though he'd let them go no further. He could not even kneel to show his reverence, his respect, and he was overcome with a wash of explosive irritation and helplessness. He kicked wildly at an errant stone, gait dancing across the stone as if spooked, tail thrashing against his hocks and wings arcing in powerful, agitated display.

"What am I supposed to do?!" he cried, trying not to let the tears get the best of him, feeling foolish and broken. He calmed slowly, chest heaving with his uncharacteristic tantrum, head dropping so low his lips brushed the warm stone below. Ears and wings drooped, sagging alongside his shoulders, defeated as he stood at the crossroads of the shrines. "How do I show you my faith?" he crooned woundedly, feeling useless as his leg throbbed to ridicule him further. A broken man's faith was surely not worth as much as another's. What was he hoping to achieve?

KAJ

the aurelight

It felt like he was drowning beneath still waters, unable to break surface tension. Fully capable of reaching out and finding air once more, but held captive by the illusion of the limits above him. He sought understanding, a way to avoid falling into the pit of his own sorrow, for he'd lived in those depths for so long. It was a place Kaj never wanted to return to, because he didn't want to pity himself forever or watch everything good in his life - no matter how little - disappear into dust because he did not believe he deserved it enough to hold onto it with all he had. 

These answers eluded him, as he tried to find faith in a breast meant for battle and black-and-white. How could a man of blood become a man of blessings and faith? He was broken and useless to immortal, powerful beings like the Helovian gods. What did they care for him? He could offer them nothing, and surely they did not live off faith itself. How could he be so presumptuous as to assume his own importance in the scheme of their infinite lives? His heart was a tangle of thorns, and no matter what direction he tried to take he scored and sliced himself to pieces. 

At first, as he sensed that he was no longer alone, his heart gave a lurch of hope that perhaps he'd been answered after all. Somehow. But when he turned his head to find the prickling source of disturbance, he found only a burned and brindled mare, familiar in her exoticism but far from what he'd been praying so desperately for. We ask for change, but the change that comes is sometimes not what we anticipate, whispered into his head, and though she'd never spoken the words, it sounded oddly like Evangeline. Was this his sign? Was she the one who would place her tender hands upon his battered soul and show him the light to salvation?

And he remembered her, standing in the snowy landscape inside his borders, eyes fluttering in pleased rapture as he dragged the vat of tea to her for the enjoyment of the crowd. The priestess of the Dragon's Throat, the one that had mistakenly wandered into the birth of Aylin's son. "Miss Maren," he rumbled with croaking, rasping voice, trying so hard to pull upon some sort of strength. Turn himself into a fully functioning leader, when it was so far from his grasp. Until she spoke, and he felt his efforts buckle beneath the echo of old understanding that he saw in her coin gold eyes. 

His eyes turned listlessly towards the shrines, not sure how to phrase what he needed to say. So full of faith was she, how could she understand the plight of a soldier so far removed from the glow of heavenly grace? 

"I am but a mortal soul, with nothing to give that would mean anything to a God. What does my faith mean to them?" Throat is thick with old wounds and too many nights left lonely and barren in a time when all he'd needed was a reminder that he had a greater purpose. If he even had one in the first place. Mighty golden head shook, eyes like turmoil and war-torn skies that haunted him nightly. "There is nobody to advise me, and no Gods to give me answers. I can't traverse this path alone, when I don't even know how to rely on a God that I believe would see nothing in me." He could learn to trust them, to trust in fate and a higher power. But he could not trust in himself, in believing that they would support him, because he did not deserve it. 

"I'm trying to pray?" he finally answered lamely, not really sure what he was doing but only knowing the why's. Until he turned and regarded her, and the burns across her beautiful hide, and his face fell. "I've done you a great disservice, Miss Maren," he said, heartfelt but solemn. "I am very close with the Earth Medic of my home, I know of salves for those burns even if I've no magic to undo it immediately. May I tend to you?" He could not learn what he so sought, could not protect himself or learn to love the soul inside the shell he'd been born into. But above all else he knew how to heal, to protect, to shield. His own integrity and purpose could crumble, but he'd stand strong forever on the ideal that he was capable of helping those around him.

KAJ

the aurelight

Lips twist into a smile as his title falls to give way to his name. He'd never been one for official things such as that, had always told his people plainly that he was one of them. No better than them, simply because he'd been elected to rule. He would fall and falter and fail just as any other mortal would, and he'd never used titles when visiting other herds either. Always names, for names held power but also emotion. She did not know him so intimately as to understand or even be aware of that philosophy, but it pleased him nonetheless. A spark of light in his dark horizon. Her presence alone soothed the ache of loneliness and depression, the gentle beast thriving off her unintentionally proffered aura and spirit. Maybe a stranger was what he'd needed all along. Someone ignorant to his multitude of sins. 

Her smile was like a flower on a barren coastline, a single measure of persistence and beauty, and he could not help but feel the corners of his mouth twisting up in response to her ironic amusement. Laughed deep and soft in his chest, baby blues peering up at her boyishly from their distance. "Your lack of an answer is far more comforting than I had anticipated," he confessed, stray threads of gratitude lifting from the noose around his throat to trace the features of his face, displaying it to her in glimpses. 

She was the first to speak that name, that twisted title that had once been something far more destructive. Storm Bringer. He had summoned enough of them in his years, and destruction was all they had ever wrought upon his life. Never had they helped, aided, or comforted. Always he had been a beacon of agony. The new title had been aware in his consciousness only on the fringes, where whispers and rumors and soft-spoken words lingered. He'd been afraid to believe, to think that maybe...maybe how he was portrayed and how others saw him had changed. Aurelight. And it filled his chest with warmth and tender, tentative purpose, proffered by this strange introspective mare. 

He lay himself beneath her wisdom, eyes quiet and attentive, a child beneath her tutelage. The words washed over him like a soothing balm, quieting his mind. Hush, child. Stepped slowly closer to her, drawn in by her words, the soft foreign cadence of her voice hooking into the noose and both tugging him nearer and giving him room to breathe. Your despair has purpose, then. Trust without sight. Like the wind when you fly. And he could understand that philosophy, even though it was hard. It was so different, so far from what he'd ever known. But he'd never tried to be faithful, either. Was this his first trial?

"I never thought of it that way," confessed from his lips, a contemplative look drawing soft across his visage. "Though, I am horribly new to this, so of course I did not." Eyes danced with cyan laughter, poking and prodding at his own insecurities, trying to find the light that seemed to fill her bones. Was that a gift the Throat denizens were blessed with? She seemed radiant in her certainty and he envied it of her. Smile faded away, eyes cast to the horizon as if his answers lay in the dawn light painted there. "Purpose...it is what I have been looking for. Maybe this is my hurdle, and they will guide me where I must be." Sighed deep, as if trying to expel all his doubts and demons in his exhale. Turned to the mare beside him with a weary but grateful smile. And he found her advancing, offering her soft velveteen muzzle, and he felt his heart stutter with emotion. That she would reach out to him when he most needed comfort - whether she was aware of that was unknown - even when she did not know him well...he stretched forward and down to meet her, bumping and brushing gently, eyes liquid pools of beryl that were soft around the edges with the magnitude of his appreciation for her. Her presence, her wisdom, her physical comfort. "Thank you," he murmured in a soft whuff of breath against her skin, reluctantly pulling away from her and the pillar of light and hope she embodied. 

He stood, appraising her quietly. Uncertain whether he wanted to break the atmosphere they'd created, the bubble of tentative hope inside his ribcage that was bolstered by the physical comfort she had offered. Found only useless words to offer her, in the quiet of the void between one action and the next. 

"Your philosophies are much easier to understand than the others who have attempted to aid me on this path," Kaj noted, wondering if she would take it as the compliment he intended it to be. If it even held weight in her world, with how little they knew of each other. "Though I may have to submit myself to your tutelage far more often," accompanied by a smile, a hopeful glance, an insinuated message. Would you allow me to seek you out? Imagined himself showing up at the Throat borders and trying to explain to Gaucho that he was there not on business, but to have the tiny Priestess scold him and teach him how to be a better man of faith. It was hard not to find it impossibly amusing. 

Though he had been innocent in his offer, he could see something shutter and tighten in her coin-like gems, and felt immediately regretful. In so few moments she had offered him both peace and hope, comfort and temporary serenity. That he had in turn disturbed her somehow made him ache with sorrow, but he could not guess at what he'd done to discomfort her. Therefore he dipped his head, and took himself away on swift hooves to find the herbs he needed. Resplendence had only taught him the basics, but he lived and breathed with her almost eternally at his side - he picked things up as they gravitated around each other. Aloe Vera, he told himself, hunting along the warm crevices. It was the must abundant in this hot, rocky landscape, and best for the itching. They were thick, easy to grasp in his teeth at least, and he tucked them beneath the tight inside of his left wing before hurrying back to Maren. It was rude to leave company unattended, he could hear his mother chiding sharply in his head. 

"It might be a little messy," he bowed his head, embarrassed that he would have to become so intimate with her body even though it was entirely medical. Kaj had always been raised a very chaste gentleman. Wing opened to drop the plant to the stone, one hoof immediately stamping down and grinding to create the thick greenish paste that Resplendence herself had used on him after their spar when Valiance had burned his neck and cropped his mane into spikes. Dipped his head and smeared it onto his muzzle, advancing upon Maren's side and depositing it upon her burns as gently and swiftly as he could manage. It took a few turns, back to the paste and then once more to her hide, but he kept quiet and tried not to disturb her beyond that, retreated as soon as he was satisfied with the treatment. His pale muzzle was surely stained a light green, and he grinned at her as he faced her. "Silly, right?" Kaj hoped it would at least make her laugh, anything to wipe away the tense look on her face.