He remembers the day it all changed.

He remembers the darkness and its end, remembers how brilliant the sun was as it rose for the first time in his life.  How the waves continued to crash against the Ischian shore, but how it was suddenly as if they were lit from within: sparkling, radiant, magical.  He remembers being mesmerized by them.  Before, he had only heard them.  He hadn’t really seen the ruby and citrine feathers of the parrots or the fibrous fuzz of the coconuts.  The voices of his family were all familiar, from the deep growls of his parents to the shrieks and shrills of his sisters and brother, but their faces were always in shadow.  He had missed so much, Before.

When the sun rose that first day, it was like he was born again to a new world.

Every look was in wonder, every moment was charged with meaning.  While his family was practicing hunting, he would sit for hours watching puddles grow in the seasonal rain.  It was fascinating seeing each individual raindrop fall and disappear, absorbed and made invisible by the rest.  He wondered if that was how the world worked and vowed not to let it happen to him.  His twin would openly tease him, and if she was feeling particularly fiery (which was often), she would run full tilt through his puddles, splashing him with thick muck.  Arrowe’s taunts, as barbed and pointed as they increasingly became, did not bother him.  He knew he was different, as much as the earth had been once-eclipsed.

A sunrise would come for him, too.

And that came in the form of his brother who had helped bring back the light.  Volos had been as wild as all of the other children before he disappeared in the middle of the night.  But after, there was a new set to his shoulders and scars to cover them.  He found Castor some time later by the shifting shoreline.  For hours, they shared stories and secrets, fears and fables.  At the end, he told his brother that he was scared he would never fit in like those raindrops had in the puddle as the rain fell.  Volos had tousled his forelock, shrugged, and said, “then don’t.”

And Castor was reborn for the third time.

~

Pop

He blinks against the bright light of his own unwitting creation.  Fairly quickly, he assesses that he has no idea where he is or how he got here.  A heartbeat before, he had been dreamily staring at the lake in the Field and wondering if it had currents underneath its’ surface like the ocean.  There had been a school of muddy brown fish near the bank where he stood with autumnal leaf litter crunching under his feet.  He had thought about trying to become one of the same fish to quell his own curiosity, when he appeared somewhere else.  Somewhere like here, a land with its own lake encircled by jutting mountains.  It is far grander than the humble Field, far more dramatic than anywhere he’s been yet, and he’s curious to see more.

The water draws him down to its shoreline.  It is pebbly and less forgiving than the one back home, but it carries its own beauty, too – everything does in his eyes.  Everything has a place and a purpose, and he supposes he is simply meant to be here now.  Castor reaches down and noses the rocks gingerly with his muzzle, entranced by all their colors and textures.  He picks one up experimentally in his mouth and tastes the salt and grit of the land on his tongue.  It speaks to something deep in his core, this mountainous earth, but he doesn’t know why.

He’s so caught up in his observations that he doesn’t hear the sound of another’s approach.  When he finally does, it surprises him, and he turns and raises his head up to eye level quickly.  He’s not quite able to hide the stone that falls from his mouth to clack on the rocks below.  “This isn’t what it looks like.”

Her white light is a beacon that draws his attention towards her as he drops the stone.  A sheepish grin grabs and lifts the corners of his mouth once he realizes he’s been caught in the act.  Though in the act of what, even he’s not sure.  The woman who finds him is otherworldly, seemingly dripped in the very stars and borrowing the glow of the moon.  He is abashed, at first, until he sees a smile reflecting on her face.   
 
“Oh, I didn’t say it wasn’t weird.”  There is still the land’s grittiness grinding between his teeth, though it is not altogether unpleasant.  In each little grain of earth, he is reminded of the puddles of his youth: of all the raindrops that made them up just like each speck of dirt builds the mountains.  There is a power in apparent insignificance, he thinks, often hidden in plain sight.  He is reminded how mountains are broken down into bolders, how bolders shatter into stones, and how stones dissolve into grains of earth.  He tastes the passage of all that time on his tongue, tastes the energy released from each breakdown, while he tries to think of the best way to put that into words.

“The best way to learn about a place is to taste it.”  He gestures to the lake behind him and the mountains even further behind him and shrugs.  “Not as salty as Ischia or as savory as the meadow, I’m afraid.”  Not at all like his home island in any way.  It is quieter without the breaking surf or constant chatter of the macaws.  Instead, he hears the occasional chirp of a songbird and the soft shushing of leaves against each other in the breeze.  It is peaceful, pleasant.  And its greeter seems much the same.

Castor’s own naïve warmth is drawn to something similar in this stranger.  There is a vague kinship that pulls at his bones, tells him that he has found someone of value.  But he pushes the feeling away in place of discovering for himself. After all, he is drawn to almost everyone for some reason or another; they all have their mysteries that he is eager to learn. 

“I’m Castor,” he says, dipping his head gently before finding her dark eyes once more.  “This must be…Hyaline?”  He thinks it must be, but with the way their world keeps shifting, one can never be too sure.  He wants to see as many lands as he can before they slip into the sea, as they are prone to doing.  So far, he has not managed to cross many off of his list.  But his accidental adventure today is fortuitous, perhaps in more ways than one.  “Is it your Home?”  The word is said with some degree of reverence, as if it is a sacred, delicate question he has asked.  There are those that simply live within a place and others that carry that place within them, always.  He has no such allegiance to any one place, not yet anyway, but he is curious to see if she belongs to Hyaline or if it belongs to her.