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.”