Dialogue Sands, part two ~ (Volks Lucas, F-17) [img heavy, light m/m, mild nudity]

preceded by Sands, part one

This is story #22 in the Back Garden series. Start reading from the beginning?




Days ran together in the warm sunlight. We spoke of many things, both grand and mundane. Iollas copied the words of poets and philosophers onto fresh scrolls, and under the shade of the date palms, I basked in his company.




Siris: Will you tell me of yourself? How did you come to be here?




Iollas: In truth, there isn't much to tell. I was little more than a babe when the priests found me in a basket on the temple steps. They took me in and here I have lived ever since, serving our Lord Apollo in whatever capacity I may.




Siris: And the world outside? All that you copy down in your scrolls? Does it hold no interest for you?




Iollas: Riddling sphinxes and godlike heroes? Surely you know these are things of the imagination. No, Plato might speak of ideal forms, but that world is far removed from our own. What ideals could there be in the great cities that I could not find just as easily here in our own temple garden?




Siris: (sighs, shifts to rest his head in Iollas' lap)




Siris: I wish I knew.




His naivety was a balm to my world-weary heart and I let it seep into my blood. Safe within the god's house, the world narrowed and became no bigger than the patch of sunlight we lay in, the spaces between the soft words we spoke.




And sometimes, we had no need for words at all.

 

Aglow in the aftermath, he would sleep...




...and I would listen.




It was on one such night that I heard the rattling sighs of another old priest nearing his time. Ripples of death had reached me from beyond the temple walls, as distant as echoes, but this was close enough to ring in my ears. I could no more ignore it than I could turn back a Nile flood.




I savoured the warmth of his breath on my skin, even as I carefully shifted free.

Perhaps a part of me knew, even then, that I would not feel it again.




Iollas: (blinks open his eyes)




Iollas: Hmn?




Iollas: Siris? What are you doing?
Siris: I must go.




Iollas: Go? It's the middle of the night. (takes Siris' hand between both of his) Surely whatever you wish to do can wait until dawn?
Siris: You don't understand. I cannot remain here.




Iollas: Then please, explain it to me. I would know whatever is troubling you, perhaps I can be of some help?
Siris: (agitated) You cannot. Please, return to your bed and let me do what I must.




Iollas: (stung) ...'my' bed? When for months you have slept nowhere else?

 

Iollas: (gasps)




As the light dissipates, it leaves in its wake the sound of thin chains tinkling, and a distant wind.




Iollas: (fear-stricken) Shining Apollo– what manner of creature are you?




Siris: I am no creature, but one of the ba.
Iollas: And what under heaven is that?
Siris: I fetch the souls of those whose time has come.
Iollas: Thanatos?! Soul stealer?! That is your true nature?




Siris: You know not of what you speak.
Iollas: I know well enough the lies a soul stealer will weave! All these months you have hidden within our walls, how many souls have you reaped for your foul master, Hades?! Was I to be next?
Siris: It is not yet your time.
Iollas: (choked) You lied to me, demon! Begone from here. By Apollo's cleansing light, I banish you!




Siris: (quiet) You cannot compel me, Iollas. Your gods are dead, if they ever existed at all. But I will leave this place if you ask it of me. Whatever you believe I am, you have been kind and generous with your heart.




Iollas: (shattered) Just go. Get out and never show your face to me again.











The air felt thinner outside the Temple of Apollo. In the scant months I had been there, the world had changed irrevocably. The sighs of the dying became harder to hear, the desert winds no longer called to me. The river that had once pulsed in my blood now felt as lifeless as the souls I guided across it.

Icarus had known. With Alexander's death, the age of myths and manifest gods had died with him. I'd not seen another ba for centuries. Gazing upon this ancient world, bereft of all its power, I came to realise that all I had known was gone. I was the last remnant of a forgotten age. And I was entirely alone.




Despair is a uniquely human emotion. The ba are not made for such intense feelings, and yet, despair is what came to settle in my heart. Eventually, I took to the air. A bird does not feel the loneliness of itself against the sky.

On the wing, thousands of years became one extended moment. I forgot I had ever been anything but a bird. Forgot what I would become should my feet ever touch ground again. I saw only the currents in the air and the vast expanses of earth laid out below.

 

...until one day I came upon a land where all was strange. Neither birds nor trees spoke in a language I could understand. The ripening fruits were bitter, the seeds too hard to crack.




Exhausted and hungry, I took refuge in the shaded branches of a nut tree. When a dog came to frighten me from my perch, I did not have the strength to hold on.




I remember little of what happened after that: only that I awoke as a human for the first time in millennia and before me was a man with Imhotep's face, offering kindness and care, as he always had.




My name is Siris. I am the last of my kind. I am neither thief nor saviour. To those who have need, I offer my hand...




...whether they be human...




...or immortal.




I protect those in my care with all that I am. And so it shall remain, until there are no more souls left upon this earth and the gate closes behind me forever.




continued in The Shoreline


(stock images sourced from Wikicommons)

 

Thank you so much!

 

Thank you so much! We've been building up to this particular reveal for a long time

 

Thank you! Those shots were taken in the gardens at Volks Tenshi no Sato in Kyoto. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.