Straia;

[Castile]

and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was

The kingdoms of my time were alive.

What Straia says resonates within him, piquing his curiosity as their eyes meet. These are the kingdoms he has known since childhood; nonetheless, they are parcels of land. There’s life within them, wavering on a spectrum between thriving and struggling. Other animals survive alongside them and voices thicken the air. Castile regards her first then narrows his eyes onto the distant summit acting as a wall to Hyaline. A slow, inward breath fills him with thoughts and questions, but he doesn’t look at her until he has sifted through them all. The simplest stands out and fans across his tongue, needing to be heard. ”Alive,” he echoes, ”How so?” Perhaps ignorant, but when he listens to Loess, it brims with life. She must hear it too, but obviously, there was something more – something deeper – in the lands of old.

Castile’s visions lie in the future, but he willingly pays homage to Beqanna’s past, to the generations long before him that forged their paths and tales. Simply by looking at her, talking to her, he knows Straia is in those history books. There is a significance to her and even to her arrival back among the living. What, he cannot yet fathom, or even why.

(To help us soar)

It’s so simple for her to tempt him, throwing him occasional pieces of meat to ensure his attention and cooperation. She wants to know what desires burn inside him, aside from retrieving Taiga, and Castile considers it for a long moment underneath the sweltering sun. ”A legacy,” he finally states, lifting his chin and surveying their surroundings. ”I can gain all the power I want, but it can change the second I step down. A legacy to help the next leader after me,” he pauses briefly because although he cares for the Loessian family he has, there remains a selfishness about him, ”and to be in the historic tales like I’m sure you already are.” A lopsided grin tugs at his lips humorously, and his eyes catch the light, flickering like the fire inside him.

But then a tendril of thought drifts across his mind when she mentions death. It gives him pause as he recollects everything he has ever heard, every monumental being that has roamed Beqanna. ”To be a legend,” he begins in a distant tone as though in a trance and as though she is no longer at his side, ”must one always die?” Each one – each figure of history – has come and gone, their bones bleached or already disintegrated in the dirt. Castile, for the first time, senses a fleeting sense of fear rush through him, but he pushes it deep into the crypts of his mind. Although he doesn’t say it, he realizes immortality will one day fail him like it has countless others.

castile