NEVEN

He jolted out of his doze when someone prodded his brow.

Tangy flowers filled his nostrils at the simmer of an alchemist's station. A boy only slightly older than he was loomed over him with a confused, curious twist to his lips. Neven blinked out his sleep, then jolted upwards on his elbows at the change in his environment. "What!?"

"Relax, Lotayrin," Trainer Majen said to his left, in the chair beside his bed. Inside the Infirmary, with no memory of how he got there, Neven pressed the heel of his palm into his temple and shook his head. "Apparently Kemal got wind of you taking your chore for yourself after Yusari went to him about it." He snapped his book closed and gazed at him. "Mind telling me why Kemal found you curled in a corner asleep?"

It sounded like a trap, but Neven answered against his better judgment. "It was a lapse. Yusari and I could not work together, so I simply took the work. I made sure to keep track of everything, the chore got done."

"By yourself," Majen said as the older boy examined him. "Yuo, mind telling my Trainee what we call that?"

"We call that a crash and burn, Warden Majen," Yuo said and pushed a mug of water into his hands.

"What? No." Neven swung out his legs. "I am fine."

"Don't choke on your pride, Lotayrin, this is common. I was wondering when the disorientation would catch up to you." Majen raised his hand. "Now that it has, you can finally adjust. It happens to the best of us." He set both hands on his knees. "Kemal came around to check on you earlier, but I had him go to bed. He made mention that you have been getting up way earlier than you need to be, causing some inefficiency."

"Inefficiency?"

Majen raised an eyebrow. "We have our schedule and times for a reason, Lotayrin. We have days where you Trainees unwind, enjoy yourselves. You don't do any of that. You work. I'd say I'm impressed by the diligence, but quite frankly, it's exhausting to watch. I don't think even the most senior Storm Wardens push themselves to that brink as often as you do. Why did you dismiss Yusari?"

Neven hunched his shoulders and dug his nails into his pants. "We cannot get along."

Instead of needling him for the reason behind their mutual distaste, Majen asked another question, "Why do you get up long before the others? Answer honestly, Warden. I prefer not to be lied to."

"I like watching the sun rise."

Majen eyed Yuo, who nodded. "Look, I understand you've come from a place where you don't experience that sort of thing, the rise of dawn," Majen said with careful precision. "I've talked with Anaysa a little, trying to figure you out. Physically, you're ahead of the group. You were the only one who came with her. Hells, some of the Storm Wardens laughed at her for wanting to try a recruitment drive in Naveera — I was one of them." He set his hands back down in his lap and sighed. "Oftentimes we find ourselves wrong. So, here's my advice to you, Neven. If you want to get up before dawn, I won't stop you, but maybe you should try one day rising with it." He got out of the chair and indicated at the door out of the Infirmary. "Go enjoy the rest of your day. Do something else other than work. I believe some of your Unit is down at the south beach, though some might be around the citadel enjoying their freedom. You're free."

A precious, heavy word as he stood underneath the sun, wings outstretched.

Majen left his bedside, and Neven turned to the Healer named Yuo, who folded his arms. "Thank you, Healer Yuo."

"No problem, but you don't have to refer to me as that. You can just call me Yuo, I'm not a full fledged Healer yet," he replied with a dismissive wave. "You heard your Trainer. Get going, and be sure to get some rest." He nodded and cleaned up the small end table at the head of his bed.

A lapse, am I truly free?

Neven walked out of the infirmary, and rubbed the cold prickle out of his arms. Orange sparkles fell across the evening tide in the clouds, the passage of time. What do I do then? I can't disobey Trainer Majen... again. He shrank into his shoulders as he waddled to the Annex, one of Kemal's haunts, but stopped at the crack, where Kemal himself laughed with Evani and a group of his own friends. He stepped to the side and continued on, but as he closed in on the end of the corridor, heavy footfalls broke him out of his trance.

"Neven, don't you want to—?"

"Why?" he found himself asking instead of a customary, polite greeting.

"Huh?" Kemal swung to a stop. "Why what?"

Neven drove his fangs into his lips and turned around. "I do not understand you," he loathed the squeak in his voice, the childish vocalization. "The only thing I do understand about you is that you ask questions. Why? Why did you choose this?" he demanded with a harder step in Kemal's direction. "You said you would tell me. You were the one who suffered the most for your efforts. Why do you want to be my friend?"

A harder truth.

Kemal blinked, then sighed. "Really, Nev?"

"I just don't understand," Neven pointed out. "I am too different from you and yours. I say things that come across wrong, yes?" His voice broke at Yusari's rage. "I do not understand anything."

"I said I'd help you, and don't worry about Yusari—"

"Why? Everyone thinks I am this awful puffed out peacock who thinks himself above them." Neven wriggled on his knees and confronted his new reality.

"I can think for myself," Kemal said coldly.

Neven bit on his tongue.

Kemal's expression simmered when he shook his head. "Listen, Neven, you got on the wrong foot with people, and some people are stubborn to incredible amounts," he admitted. "Me included. I'm stubborn." He came closer and frowned at him. "I'm putting effort to be your friend because I don't think you're that person. Majen was right; you care so much. Awful people tend to not care." Kemal's fists clenched and a heaviness filled the browns. "I came here because I do care when others want to look away and won't ask questions. That's why I want to be a Storm Warden." Kemal nodded as if that settled his point. "So, do you want to come hang out with us?" He waved his arm towards the Annex.

Neven hugged himself, then shook his head. "I just don't see how I'm worth the effort you're putting in."

Kemal's eyes lifted to the ceiling, before training on him once more. "Let people make that distinction, Nev," he said simply. "If you don't want to come talk to us, that's fine. I'll see you in the barracks tonight." He turned his back on him and rushed back into the Annex, and he stood there alone, with a song on his heart. Sat upon a windowsil overlooking a half-buried city, strumming a tune through his soul. He wound around the storage rooms, on the hunt for something intangible. Another answer. With no time to waste, he checked the ledgers and moved on when he couldn't find the reply. Until he came to a dusty room, and found it.

Instruments wrapped in boxes, unused.

The hope in his song, a melody to the flowers.

He grabbed the Naveeran style lute and ran his fingers down the strings. He checked the pegs before hugging it against his chest and leaving the storage behind, marking down his use on the empty page without anyone's signature. Stars twinkled at the break of dusk, and the moon shed silver light across the grass, a cold inferno when he wandered the grounds and the sun departed. No less of a wondrous light, he gazed at the moon, before walking into the garden, where the languages mixed into a cohesive song.

Sing.

Navei'al.

Neven avoided the beds of snowroses to stand in front of the obsidian runestone, full of names. Names unforgotten. He mouthed each of the departed on his lips, a reminder of his words and truth. He sat cross-legged in front of it, checking the out of tune notes to bring them into a gentle pull. His feathers caught the wind of the new notes, and he rested the side of his head against the pegs. Past the reflection in the glass, a mirage of a golden-feathered wyvern with his own weary sapphire eyes. His wyvern soul, who came at his sole desire to protect the star itself. In the face of a Derelict, it gave him wings and expected him to know how to fly.

Atoran Lotayrin, his ancestor's name, where a silver necklace took the centerpiece of his family shrine.

Sing.

He rested his thumb across the fingerboards and followed the pages of the world. An ancient song of love drifted past his lips in the language of wyverns as he shared it to the old Storm Wardens long gone to Avae'londu. Unable to raise his voice past an insistent chord, he followed the passage of time and space. As the wind whistled in his ears and reverberated through his vocal chords, a quiet melody against the roar of fatal reality. In the shadows, Derelicts slavered, but he continued to hum and sway against the constant current they brought in their depraved despair. Glory shone across the generations of his name, but he found himself crushed underneath the weight it bore.

Fly free. Fly high.

Twin notes of Naveera's tempo.

Snowroses whispered along, using the wind to dance to the tune of his humming voice and his icy memories.

He slid into the next chord and slowed to a stop at the shape through the obsidian glass of names. Words halted, he rested the lute deeper in his lap and trained his attention on the name and the way the moon glittered at the peak. Though I have never met you... I will remember you. He hooked his elbow around the neck of the lute and hunched his shoulders at his sudden, unwanted audience. "What do you want?" he asked through his fangs, listening to the notes fade on the breeze.

"Have you really never seen the sun before?" Yusari asked a single question, and though her voice held a sense of calm neutrality, he flinched at the layer of accusation he continuously heard in the past.

He returned his attention to the names and stood vigil at the tomb, with no other weapon but his voice. "No," he answered. He let it pass over his shoulders, then let the child go free when her footsteps came closer. "You came out here in the middle of night to ask that?"

"Just like you came out here in the middle of the night to sing?" Yusari threw back.

He held his tongue and met her steel gaze when she reached his side, arms no longer folded in defensive offense. On his feet, he hugged the lute closer to his chest, a shield for his soul. He examined her for a trick, prepared for another fight, but the silence stretched on. "What do you want?" he repeated, lowering his voice into the smallest notes.

"Kemal laughed at me."

Neven squinted at her.

Yusari drew her shoulders against her neck with a grimace. "You told me you had never seen the sun. You told me that because of a noble's actions a woman paid the price," she reiterated.

"Yes. You asked, but didn't want to know." Feathers folded against his ears, he faced the stone for answers to life's sorrowful question, hooking his fingers against the board and resisted the urge to scream out his song. "You do not need to start this pretense now." He sidled and put distance between them, not out of proprietary, not out of hate, but out of uncertainty. Uncertainty in his actions. In his words. In his own voice. "Kemal—"

"Laughed and asked me how in the Infernal Hells I managed to piss you off to that point after I told him what happened," Yusari finished.

Neven remained silent and refused to lift his voice for freedom.

Birds chirped along the peaks, while hippogryphs cooed their own to sleep.

"I'm sorry."

Neven glanced at her, but held his tongue.

Yusari hunched once more into her own chest, then scowled down at the grass instead of him. "Kemal made it a point to impress upon me that people don't walk into this for the fun of it. They walk into it because they have seen, felt something was wrong," she replied. "It is an active choice, a choice not many will ever get the opportunity to choose when the Derelicts steal everything from them, and a choice not many will take and maybe actively shun." Her entire posture slumped, and she eyed him. "So, I don't expect forgiveness from you, but I am sorry."

Neven gazed at her.

"That's all I came out here to say," she said flatly.

In the continued silence, she walked away from him.

"I am a shield shining bright," he whispered his family's words and Yusari stopped. "I am a sword in the darkness."

A silver necklace with wyvern clutching onto the star for its life.

The truth of a song.

Yusari remained silent, then replied, "I'm sorry for disturbing you."

Neven loosened his grip on the lute and faced her in full. "You didn't." He pressed his cheek against the lute in lieu of his mother's warm embrace before twisting back to the audience of memories etched across black glass, with Yusari's reflection gazing at him with drained out rage directed at him, but not the source.

"If you say so," Yusari said with a more uncertain frown, cracking the stone facade. "See you at training, Neven."

The power in a single name, a whispered note.

"Have a good rest, Yusari." Neven sat back down with the lute in his lap. "I am sorry as well."

Yusari hesitated underneath the arch, but disappeared around the marble bend.

The power in multiple names, a rising sunlit chorus.