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Deep in the woods they come across an empty house with vines of ivy crawling up the sides, beginning to engulf the home whole. Across the wooden floorboards there are scrapes that indicate that furniture was moved hastily, repetitively, perhaps on accident. A pile of unfolded laundry, tally marks on the doorframe showing record of the growth of children born decades ago, bundles of herbs and pots hanging from the wall, rusting, rotting, with a layer of dust.
Once, it must have been a good, lively home. But when they found it door was wide open, creaking in the wind, and muddied, frenzied footprints danced through the interior around splatters of blood on the floor, like abstract strokes of paint. It was ominous, but it was dry, and after walking for miles through a midday downpour it was a much welcome sight. Foul weather brings necessity, it is no crime to dwell in the homes of the recently deceased—the signs of struggle and chaos could be dismissed, batted away, after searching for danger and coming up empty. Caleb’s coat is heavy, like a wet blanket, and it is a relief to take it off before pouring water out of his shoes.
Their soaked clothes, laid carefully across two chairs, sag like ghosts.
Caduceus goes outside after undressing—shielded from the rain and wind underneath the small porch—and runs fingers through his long hair, squeezing water out of it several times before shaking his entire body like a dog. He shivers but he feels dryer, his short fur still damp but no longer dripping with water. He shakes again before working on his messy, wind-whipped hair, drawing fingers through it, undoing knots and tangles, humming. While he works he turns his attention to something he noticed before they had entered the house.
Across the grass—torn in patches surrounded by thick mud—grow islands of five-pointed flowers, recoiling with the impact of each water drop upon them. Teacups, by the dozen, of varying sizes and shapes, sit idlily in the grass surrounding those flowers, some collecting rainwater until they overflow. He’s mesmerized by the sight, how delightfully playful it is. An overturned, broken cabinet, sinking into the mud nearby, must be the culprit—dragged out of the house, perhaps by a hungry bear, as he sees long claw marks across the open doors and more smashed dishware inside.
By the time Caduceus has finished brushing through his hair he realizes he no longer feels cold and decides to sit and watch the rain. After some brief deliberation he extends his feet outward, feeling droplets battering his toes before sinking both feet into the waterlogged ground, burying them in mud.
It makes him feel connected to the earth.
Inside, listening to the metallic pinging of rain upon the tin roof and the rhythmic dripping of a leak in the ceiling, Caleb, hunched and folded over himself, reads the book in his hands, eyes darting and paper turning, with speed, with urgency, and not a single bolt of lightning or growl of thunder pulls his nose from between the pages.
The books that this house contained, a few stacked quietly on a shelf, are not useful to Caleb—ways to treat illness with the plants of this region, the diary of all the mundane things that had happened on this property across the years, a collection of handwritten recipes that seemed to be originally written on scraps of paper and only later attached to the yellowing pages of the book.
He’ll take the first one, leave the second, and gift the third.
As night falls Caleb finds Caduceus, his feet still buried under mud, lying on his back, hair obscuring most of his face. It’s hard to tell if Caduceus is asleep—his breathing is almost always slow, relaxed, gentle—so he approaches quietly and kneels, clearing his throat once, then twice, inhaling, and sighing out a wordless breath.
He settles on knocking on the wooden floorboards like it were a door, like he is asking permission to enter, and waits.
“Mr. Caleb,” are the first words out of Caduceus’ mouth when he wakes to the knocking, a lazy smile spreading across his face as he brushes his hair away from his eyes, turning his head to face the wizard.
“I don’t mean to wake you, but it is getting very dark.”
“Ah, no, it’s alright,” and Caduceus begins to sit himself up, stretching. “Honestly, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
He cleans his feet and without rush makes his way inside, patting Caleb twice on the head in passing.
Caleb follows him, shutting the door, and spends ten minutes stringing silver wire around the one room home.
He gives the recipe book to Caduceus—Caleb explains that the firbolg would get more use out of it than him, who had never been a good cook, who burned bread way too often as a child. It’s a throwaway comment, a bubble of a memory, but it instantly makes Caleb recoil, fall silent, unable to look Caduceus in the eye as his nails dig into the book’s cover, tense. Caduceus sits—the easiest way make himself the same height—and his hands brush against Caleb’s dirty hands, dried blood underneath his fingernails, lingering for a moment before taking the book from him in both hands, setting it aside, and returning to touch palms with Caleb again. His pale hands look giant, massive, in comparison to Caleb’s.
“You know,” and Caleb inhales a deep breath, apprehensive, anxious, “I read in a book, once, that there are over twenty thousand kinds of lichen.”
“I can’t even comprehend that large of a number,” Caduceus smiles at his deflection, closing his eyes, cupping his hands together to form a bowl that Caleb’s hands fit into. Caduceus speaks, slowly, and water begins to pool in his cupped hands, filling the basin.
“What else do you know about lichen?”
“Ehm, I’m no expert,” Caleb whispers, still looking distantly across the room at the wall, “but I do remember reading once there is a theory that they are among of the oldest living things on the planet.”
“Now, that doesn’t surprise me at all,” Caduceus hums, turning his hands together so that the water falls to the floor between them, splashing—and while water continues to flow from Caduceus’ hands he turns them to hold onto Caleb’s, washing them of dirt, of grime, as best he can with a holy prayer. “Across the seasons back home I remember them being one of the constants of the landscape, one of the few things that remained somewhat the same.”
His can’t remove everything—there’s still traces of the past underneath Caleb’s nails that Caduceus knows he cannot remove himself, nor is it his responsibility to do so—but it helps, it calms, and Caleb finally looks him in the eye as the water stops flowing.
“Thank you for the book. I’ll see if I can make anything in it with what we currently have.”
Caleb nods.
A good life may never be enough for Caleb— there’s a part of him that abhors himself for enjoying the food that Caduceus makes, that feels uncomfortable with himself for the momentary pleasure of sliding under the sheets, that feels that he shouldn’t enjoy the aesthetics of living. But as monstrous as he thinks himself to be he is only a man. He looks at his cleaner hands and is happy, but frustrated, conflicted, like he is with everything.
And Caduceus feels that Caleb needs time, space, and a little assistance. He is a mage of transmutation, a facilitator of fantastical, wondrous, unnatural change, and he is capable of untying the mask of horrors he wears on his face and bit by bit, with focus, turn it into gold.
It’d be rotten work, to sift through the scars upon your heart and make hard choices only you can make. It’ll never be made entirely right. It’s complicated.
It’s ultimately down to the tossing of the dice and a choice of character.
Frumpkin purrs against Caleb’s stomach, sprawled and sleeping while his owner re-reads aloud the diary entries of those who occupied this bed prior. Caduceus listens, his eyes closed, his tall body not suited for such a small bed—the only way to fit himself comfortably is to curl himself in an arc, Caleb’s back against his chest—and it’s a snug fit. Caleb narrates and Caduceus daydreams about the lives of the those recently departed, whose blood is still clinging to cracks in the floorboards.
A funeral, Caduceus says, they should hold a funereal, at the very least.
It only seems fair.
Caleb falls asleep while reading, three-quarters of the way through, the book grasped loosely in his hands and his uncut, overgrown hair licking and curling around his face like a wreath of flames, a halo. It is only when he sleeps that Caleb looks truly at peace.
Caduceus is only barely conscious himself—weaving in and out of wakefulness as Caleb read him. He’s surprised when his eyes flutter open to a dark room—the spell-conjured lights that Caleb had cast failed, dissipated, now that the wizard was unconscious. With a sweeping of his finger and a whisper Caduceus touches the blanket covering both of them, which erupts in a pale pink glow, and with light now around him he carefully wrestles the book from Caleb’s grasp, setting it on the small wooden table aside the bed.
When Caduceus pulls his arm back he notices that Caleb’s hands have moved, that they’ve buried themselves underneath the blanket, and looking up at him are Caleb’s blue eyes and the same half-asleep, gently bewildered expression that Caduceus can feel on his own face. He cranes his neck down to meet Caleb nose to nose and blinks a few times, sleep trying to drag to both of them back.
Caleb moves close, and reading the mood, Caduceus snaps his fingers, soundlessly, and the room is once again dark.
Their first kiss isn’t good but Caduceus doesn’t know any better. Caleb is out of practice, without confidence, but the brief, chaste sensation of lips upon his own is enough for Caduceus. It’s good to him because he has no baseline, no comparison.
It’s an odd conversation to have the following morning, dissecting that tiny blip in time, a decision made by two exhausted men who had one foot in the realm of dreams and the other in the realm of the living.
It’s nice.
“Fire is destructive,” Caleb warns and he has good reason to believe that. The roaring of wildfire across the planes of the Empire reducing crops to ash, the tales of boiling molten rock pouring from cracks in the surface of the world, the memory of a wooden house and the smell of burning hair. It is needed, is a useful tool, fire, but it is dangerous for a young man to play with.
There are stories of the Gods reaching down and creating man, molding forms out of soft clay along the astral riverbanks, making life out of the damp and wet and cold. “But life,” and Caduceus puts his hand over his heart, smearing his fingers across his chest, “life could not survive without heat, without warmth.” All living things need to generate and/or absorb heat. The Gods gifted life into their creations by the warmth of breath, finally given form.
And even today, clay is shaped by fire. Caduceus has made many pieces of pottery alone in the woods, building a makeshift kiln to replace the ceramic he had broken in his clumsiness. He’s aware how delicate the process can be—if you fire clay at too high a temperature it can break, melt, deform. It can only tolerate so much.
“I can heal many things,” Caduceus replies, clutching the heart-shaped periapt around his neck. “But I can’t heal the charred bits of your soul. I’m not that kind of cleric.”
He may be a gravedigger, one who does dirty work, but he is not capable of bringing everything to rest, to bury it six feet under in a shroud. There are undead specters of your former selves that have never healed from the battering you have been given. They whisper their dark secrets into your ears and force your body into muted repetition of behavior born out of suffering.
“The only one who can turn those undead is you, my friend,” spoken between a sip of bitter tea the next morning. “Still, I feel it is through a series of very unlikely events that we’ve found each other, that has brought us to this place.”
“A concatenation,” offers Caleb.
Caduceus nods slowly, then shakes his head.
“I don’t know what that word means.”
“I will explain,” and Caleb smiles.
And laughs, just slightly.
"You have some battles that you can only fight alone," Caduceus says, "and my dear, I have my own."
"I know," a pause, swallowing. "I know, Caduceus. That's alright. I'll be here."
The conduction of heat is transferred through physical contact. It is science, defined, written about in leather-bound books scrawled in minuscule letters, clinical, dry. But it can also be read as poetry, a simple fact about nature, a physicist’s letter of love, uncomplicated and divorced from all technicalities. It’s the flirting line between the cold hard facts, of efforts to categorize and quantify the world, and the amorphous chaos of the world as it actually is.
“I feel like I am in the process of growing and learning, in part because I know you,” Caduceus says as they leave the house in the woods behind them.
“Oh,” and Caleb shifts, pulling his scarf over his face, muffling his next words.
“I think I am, too.”
“Onward?”
“Ja, of course.”