False Light

Midnight, noon, dawn or dusk, it didn't matter. Viator had seen all the days colors, from so many places on the globe. He knew each sunset and sunrise like it was a lover, all the stars and constellations were his companions and he could call them by name. Within the shroud of shadows or the mantle of light, he was comfortable so long as he had a wind at his back and a fair current.

Now, with his feet tied to the earth, he felt a stranger to time. With vague warnings and paranoid delusions of ghosts more living than dead, he was awkward at all times. Wendy's revelations and probing, the lack of ocean and ship, the absence of bobbing and shifting of a deck... Viator was a sailor without sea, a fish without water. A man--a woman living as a man.

Watching false dawn rise over the river that surrounded Surwood, lying barefoot just away from the shore, he couldn't help but wish he were at peace and able to enjoy the beauty. Golden-green grass waved about him gently, muted colors of the early morning drawing everything in pastels and grey, soft illumination blunting the hard edges of his sailor's frame and hiding the lines of a hard life. Viator's shirt was undone to midchest and he fingered the button holes at his collar. The thin strips of linen binding his chest were cool with perspiration against his skin, and tighter than the skin they covered. Absently, he traced the line from the middle of his chest to the tops of his trousers, the path leaving a trail of goosebumps behind it, resting at the drawstring of the weathered pants.

A sigh escaped dry, chapped lips, and turning away from the burgeoning daylight, he picked at the weedy blades of grass that tickled him even through clothing, always musing. It was difficult to pinpoint the moment when he went from simply being 'him,' to 'him when Wendy's not around,' to finally 'Viator's a girl, underneath it all.' He had been Viator for so long, without a thought to the girl he had been, the broken thing that had crawled out into the snow of Brunnhold.

Adalare was well and truly dead. He couldn't ever be her again, she was gone. She had died with the last of the fading bruises, the final echo of monite in her ears. Innocence, sweetness, self-sacrifice... that which had formed her was gone, replaced by sterner workings, fit for a life of effort. However, the lingering feelings of femininity drawn by Wendy's need wouldn’t quit. They had been sisters, Adalare and the girl. Memories, clear as the day they were formed, told him as much. Each time he saw her face it rang again how true it was.

Yet he had abandoned her. The creeping thought worked it's way in to his blood, making his skin tight and his brow furrow. He'd run away without her, merely because it would have been to difficult to-- no, that wasn't true. Adalare was protecting her. She'd never anticipated actually making it out alive. Even as he'd almost revealed to Tristaan, she'd never imagined life beyond the abuses and horrors of Brunnhold because it was all she knew. The escape was her suicide. Waking up in the cold, far outside the stacks, had been nothing short of a rebirth. Baptized by snow and laid to rest by mud, Adalare passed on to the earth, leaving Viator to inherit the purity she had been denied. So it seemed, ten years later. Here, from his vantage of freedom and strength, he still wondered if he would have the courage to repeat what she did. Doubt etched itself across his pensive features, revealing his own uncertainties.

Suddenly anxious and warm, Viator half sat, and with over-quick fingers grabbed at his shirt, pulling the faded linen over his muscle-and-bone shoulders. The restlessness, however, was not sated, and with confused panting, he pulled off his boots as well, then leggings and socks. He sat on the unforgiving ground in nothing but his under things and the wrapping. Viator's body was littered with long scars, healing but deep. On one shoulder was his passive tattoo, on the other a stylized 'M' in tribal circles. His skin was a testament to his life as a sailor, his life as a man. Yet he still felt overheated and burning at the seams, even without the layers. With a high grating keen, he pulled the rest of his clothing off and with one fluid run, fell into the embrace of the shallows.

When water touched dark, weather-burned skin, Viator began to shake uncontrollably. Tears began to well in his eyes, and with almost arthritic spasms, grabbed a handful of river mud and began scrubbing at his skin. He continued this crying and cleansing, rubbing at his skin until it was pink, then red, and finally finished when scarlet welts and blood showed. With a strangled sob, he collapsed into the flowing water, wanting nothing more than to let it carry him away, away to his beloved ocean. To his grave, where Makaio waited for him, and there would be no other coming to take his place.

True Light

The sun peaked out in the distance, pale yellow and peach lighting the sky. With the rise of the sun, so came the rise of his soul. Withdrawing from the water, Viator eased to this clothes, sitting on the scratchy grass but ignoring it’s coarse touch on his thighs.

He was a she. One look at his nude form confirmed it, should there be any doubt. And she had been... horridly, terribly maligned. He allowed himself the admission, a denial he had kept from expressing for so long. Viator... wasn't a man. Not a woman, either. He was something between the two, something made. Stronger than either, weaker than both combined. Wendy wanted to see Adalare. Well, she was there... but she had changed. She was Viator, just as he was. Viator wasn't a mask, as he had been created, or the person as he'd convinced himself. Viator was the creation and progeny of a battered, dying girl and the world she had to survive in.

Viator was the child of Adalare’s fears and… Crius.

He had surpassed both of them, left them far behind.

Slowly getting a hold of himself, Viator relaxed into the sunlight, and without a sound began to dress himself. Deft, steady hands retied the bandage at his chest, drawing the linen tight about him with each layer, the happy pressure at his ribs once again. Yes, he was a strange creation. He wasn't a he, nor was he a she. Nothing made sense... and yet there it was.

He was Viator.

That was all that mattered. He was who the world had made him, who the past had made him. Gender was meaningless. Let Tristaan and Jerzy and Wendy care for the parts beneath the cloth; he wouldn't. Not anymore.