Rocks & Trees

@cianrock

“Aye, Cian– It’s throwin’ cobbler’s knives out there. Shit’s already floodin’.”

“You don’t say?” Cian murmured, looking over at his younger brother from where he was stood on a chair, trying to fix a leak.  “Do you mind pulling yourself away from the window for a tick and helping me?  Otherwise it mgiht be flooding in here soon too.”

      Cold coffee. He had spent the last hour waiting for the guide with whom his workplace promised to provide him. Still no show, ‘twas akin to a game now. When will the mailman come? Wait no, not the mailman. The guide. Tick - tock. Time was meaningless now, just another way to waste away eternity, a concept that humans have been trying to conquer for quite some time now. Fruitlessly of course, for nature is a willful, capricious dame who only sat down to spin the yarn of life when she so wished, rather than when the masses demanded. Now, who is the selfish one - humans who have everything yet demand even more, or nature? One does truly wonder… 

        Upon deliberating all sorts of thought-provoking, borderline philosophical topics Graham had completely failed to notice someone towering over him, probably for some time now, most likely wanting something other than to simply block his view of the rest of the cafe. ❝Can I help you?❞ 

Cian had made it all the way out to the excavation site before he realised he had left his phone back at the cafe he had been in at lunch.  It had taken far longer than he wished to organise him popping back to see if it was still there and he knew that he would probably earn more disapproving looks fromother customers at his dirt stained clothes and the smudge he had tried to rub off his cheeks.

He knew it was a long shot and had probably been picked up by the staff cleaning the table - if someone hadn’t nabbed it first, but Cian thought he would double check where he had been sitting first just in case.  Walking up to the table he pardoned himself, only to receive no response.  The terramancer didn’t want to be rude - what if the gentleman at the table was deaf and he just stood there waving his hands like an idiot?  And so he simply waited, clearing his throat after a few moments until the other finally looked up.

“Ah, yes.  Sorry to bother you, but you didn’t happen to see a phone left on the table, did you?”

The laugh that Sean gave in response was dry, almost exhausted. He hadn’t wanted to tell Cian that at all, as some part of him still wanted him to think that he was an innocent boy, that he was just struck with misfortune at a terrible time. 

But the reaction he ad received was not one he expected. Prepared to be bitter, prepared to defend himself, he felt suddenly disappointed in himself. He shouldn’t have to defend himself against Cian, against the one person who had always stood for him and with him, and Sean shook his head. He looked down, running a hand through his hair.

“You’re gonna make me cry again,” he laughed quietly. “It’s just…what I do well, I guess. You’ve got your rocks, I’ve got…this bullshite.”

“Well we don’t want that again do we?” Cian posed with a small smile.  No, tears weren’t something to be wasted anymore.  “Surely it can’t be all bad, right?  If there’s anything I know about magic it’s that it always has the bad and the good.  Both ying and yang.  I mean, technically I could destroy this building - bring it crumbling to the ground.  I could kill an entire forest.  Just because I don’t, and don’t want to, doesn’t mean I don’t have the ability to.”

Gazing at the beads of perspiration that had started to form on the sides of his glass, he chewed on his lip in debate, before looking back up at his brother.  “So what happens from here?  Do you want to see mum and dad?  I’d really like to be able to introduce you to Lucy, I think you’d really like her.”

He didn’t want to think about that, the sort of forces that could be at play on the island. There was a child that he cared for, a human that he was meant to protect, and Achilles had already nearly failed him once. Surely God hadn’t turned his back on them?

“Sean’s here?” Standing a little straighter, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, Achilles blinked at the other man. “Really? When did that happen?”

“Sean’s here,” he repeated the words, though as confirmation rather than a question.  Of course, Cian had told Achilles all about his past, all about Sean and their separation.  Achilles, Skylar, and Lucy.  Those were the three people outside of his family that knew the whole truth.

“A few days ago.  Came right on into my office, you should have seen him in that moment - here was nothing of the shy, uncertain Sean in him,” he started, sighing softly.  “He said he’s been here for a whole year.”

“If I didn’t eat every time I was close to a breakthrough I’d starve.” She grinned pulling up one of the chairs. “Thanks. it’s like one right? Because Beth’s gonna kill me if I miss this meeting later.” 

“Well it’s a good thing you have me to keep you fed,” he said with a grin, placing it down in an empty space.  Then, pulling up another chair he began to unpack it, holding one container out for her as he glanced at his watch.  “Quarter past.  Please tell me you have time to dine with me.”

Sean wet his lips. Surely the truth would upset him, surely it was nothing that their parents would have wanted for the younger. There were worse things he could be, he supposed, but the mere idea of taking someone’s life felt dirty in Cian’s presence, no matter how accustomed he was to it.

He let out a slow sigh, hands tangling in his own hair and giving a toss to it.

“I work at the bounty hunter’s office. As…a bounty hunter.”

“At the bounty... hunter’s... wait, there’s a bounty hunter’s office on Tartarus?” Cian asked, his brow furrowing.  How had he lived here for eight years and never known that?  Though, he supposed, there were certain parts of the islands and the island before that on particular types of people frequented.  And Cian was not that type.

Letting out a sigh, he nodded, clasping his hands together.  “I see, well I can see why you didn’t want to tell me,” he replied, looking at his brother softly.  “It’s okay Sean, I get it, I do.  Being a soul eater I understand you have a different nature from me, from our parents.  I just always wanted to protect you from getting hurt, I never hated what you are or do.”

“I’ve seen strong covens, we don’t have a large enough concentration on the island, even if they found a catalyst or something.” Staring past his knuckles at the other man, dark eyes wide, Achilles lost the desire to speak for a moment. Instead, he could only stare at the other man before scoffing, words muffled against his skin. “Not supposed to agree with me.”

“My door’s always open, you know that right?”

“No, you’re right.  It took every single witch on this island to bring back the Morrigans and splitting an island is something else altogether,” he agreed.  No, the split was a result of some foreign, probably ancient magic.  But, things had been calmer since.  “Something will happen soon though, Tartarus is never settled for long.”

“And you would have known if it was yours,” Dark brows furrowing, the angel slowly frowned, knuckles of one hand bruising against his mouth. There was nothing but trouble in his thoughts then, dark and dirty waters that pulled at him like the Styx, and he swallowed against them. “Some days, I fear this place is nothing more than a Hell gate.”

“You’ve stopped living here? Cian, I was joking?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t a terramancer’s work.  I mean, I don’t know curses, they’re a soul eater’s department so it could have been them.  But, I don’t think so.  Splitting a whole island in two is powerful stuff, something only a whole coven could manage and only just,” he explained.  He could see the trouble etched on the angel’s face.  In truth it bothered Cian too, though after eight years on the island it was just another part of life.  “Maybe that’s what this is.”

This was real. It was all so difficult to comprehend, no matter how not ready he’d been. He’d found Cian regardless, and here he was, with the one person he’d spent years kicking himself for leaving. He’d missed his parents, sure, missed friends and missed old teachers and neighbours, but above anyone else, he missed Cian. He’d missed having someone to talk to pointlessly, he’d missed someone who didn’t ask him to talk, who could sit in silence with him and be unbothered by his simple need for quiet company. He’d missed having a brother.

And it was hard now to think that Cian was still here, still real, and he was staying. 

“Oh! No, no, that’s not a good question. Don’t ask me that. You don’t want that answer.” Waving his hand, Sean’s face blanched, and he tried in vain to scramble for a better question. “Do you like it here? I mean, you’ve been here for eight years, but do you like it?”

It was so hard to fathom and Cian was still half thinking that he would soon wake and this would all be a dream.  Eight years was such a long time for a mortal; when they had parted ways he was barely out of childhood himself, a scraggly youth of twenty just on the cusp of adulthood.  He wondered how different he must look to Sean, siting opposite him unchanged, how much older.  He was slimmer then, and just as baby faced.  Now he wore facial hair halfway between stubble and a proper beard, he was a fully fledged geologist, owned a house, and had been in a relationship for the past six years.

Cian frowned as he watched the boy react to his question.  Clearly he was doing something unsavoury, something he didn’t want to admit.  But Cian wasn’t a kid anymore and things had changed in Sean’s absence.  “Yeah, I do; I mean I have my entire life here.  What about you?” he played along, taking another mouthful of his water before he focused on his little brother again.

“Sean... you can tell me what you do, it’s okay.”

“Can I help you?”

“That depends on whether you’ve got time for some food, or if you’re too close to a breakthrough,” he said, holding up a bag.  “Got veggie stew for you.”

“Your kind of magic, or mine?” 

Carefully setting the piece he held back down in its spot, he watched as excitement made the younger man quick with his movements. Achilles couldn’t stop his smile then even if he wanted to, swept up momentarily in his friends joy.

“Cian, have you even gone home since these came in?”

Cian shrugged with his question.  “Honestly I’m not sure.  I mean I doubt it’s your kind of magic given the devastation it caused.  But it was definitely some kind.”

Looking up, he furrowed his brow slightly.  Did he really look that scruffy?  “Of course Achilles, Lucy’s back so I’ve stopped living here.”

Dark eyes watchful, Achilles took the piece when it was offered to him, turning it over in his hands. The stone was smoother than he’d expected, cool to the touch, and the angel stared at it for a moment before looking back at the teramancer. 

“You get anything else cool from the split?”

“Uh yeah, yeah we did,” he answered, turning around and moving back to the table.  His hands hovered over the collection as his blue eyes searched for what he wanted.  Then, he beckoned Achilles over and pointed to a section.

“Those ones there.  They’re from the origin of the split.  It might be able to tell us something if the magic wasn’t too strange.”

Hands in his pockets, slowly, Achilles followed the other. A bemused smile pulled at his lips, brows rising, and his words were spoken with a quiet laugh. 

“I’ll bite then, what have you learned so far from these new rocks?”

“Well, so far we’ve learnt that the island is actually hundreds of thousands of years old.  It obviously hasn’t been inhabited for that long, but,” he explained, moving over to pick up one of the specimens and show it to angel.  “This shows that it was likely formed from an underwater volcano causing the earth to shift upwards.  Kinda like a reverse Pompeii.”

@cianrock

“What am I even looking at right now?”

Cian tried to hide his excitement, though failed terribly as he moved towards what looked like a mini display that had taken over the research room.  “You are looking at the first samples of Tartarus from the island split.  In fact, it’s the first time we’ve been able to take such deep samples from the middle of the island.  This is going to give us great insight into the geological history of this place.”