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He finds a quiet place -– the first of many he will seek out, when rapt eyes and beseeching hands become too much, before the blinding white chime of the sun drowns even those out. He does not know this, and yet something trembles minutely through the hand he examines, a shiver like a drop of molten dread down his spine.
This war room in the manor is wasteful like all the rest, but the man who owns it had been quick to back him up, and so Waidwen keeps his scorn behind his teeth. It is empty and quiet, and he can breathe here, away from the growing crowds.
His hand is the same as ever when he examines it, brown and callused and striped with a thin, pale scar down the palm. It had glowed, not so long ago. All of him had, according to the din of words that followed, and there is no injury left in its wake.
"Did you do that?" Waidwen asks. He doesn't know if it comes out accusatory or not, and he doesn't know why it's the first question out of his mouth. There are more pressing matters at hand, and he'd needed a place to talk to himself in peace, and yet...
His voice is his own. But the voice that ripples through his thoughts is not unlike it, ringing like a distorted echo.
You did, Eothas says. All I did was light a spark that has always been with you.
Waidwen feels at his head, as if rivulets of light will be there for his fingers to catch. As he does, something twinges within him, like the gentle lurch of a step half-missed. He almost doesn't pay it any mind, except that something stirs slowly in some shadowy corner of memory, a limping recollection called forth.
He doesn't know why it comes to mind, but: "I've seen people before," Waidwen says abruptly, dazedly, because it feels important, and he isn't quite recovered from the punch-drunk feeling of inexorable power. "With horns and the like. People call them godlike." He flexes his fingers. "Some of them glow too."
The lurching flinch comes again, quiet enough to miss if not for the fact that Waidwen pays attention now, and this time, Waidwen knows that it isn't his. He blinks and blinks again, like a man waking from a dreaming sleep, and he wonders about it, then. Eothas is in his head. But that means that Waidwen is in a god's head, too.
"Did you turn me into one of them?" Waidwen asks, nothing but accusation.
He wonders if he imagines it: Eothas somewhere within him, the simmering warmth of a spring day, rushing under Waidwen's skin like blood replaced by liquid sunlight. Waidwen wonders if he imagines it, the whisper of alien feeling not his own and yet hovering inextricable at the edges of his thoughts, a distant chime.
I didn't have to, Eothas says, after a long and weighty silence.
Waidwen drops his hand and stares at nothing, and then he moves to the nearest reflective surface. A shield mounted on the wall, more decorative than useful, like all of the displays here. Nothing like a tool shed. Not even like a barracks. But he finds a use for the silver and gold and stares into its depths.
He looks the same, in what he can see between the curves of the shield. He hasn't sprouted horns, and he no longer glows.
My godlike are not like the ones you have seen, Eothas says, gentle. They carry a piece of me, but their light -– your light -– is a matter of faith. It will not emerge without it, and given your opinion of me...
"It's never happened until now," Waidwen concludes, wry
It offers some choice in the matter, Eothas adds.
"Some choice," Waidwen echoes, a little harder than wry, and he closes his fingers into a fist, "if you don't even know about it."
The metal of the shield distorts his image nonetheless, and when it bends too much, when he opens his fist and waves his fingers in front of his face, he looks like a stranger. Has he always looked so tired? Would it have been such a long and dreary twenty-six years, if he had known?
You are right, Eothas says, a little more quiet. Regretful, Waidwen realizes suddenly, and he doesn't know where the insight comes from, except that it rests between his thoughts as if it's always been there. Which is why we must do this.
Waidwen doesn't know what to feel or think. This is still a nebulous idea, because Eothas thinks in grand, faraway goals, and Waidwen is supposed to keep up. "Is that why you chose me?"
For your opinion, Eothas asks, or your nature?
Waidwen blinks. He hadn't considered the former. "Both?"
Something dusts across the surface of Waidwen's mind, a glimmering impulse that almost makes the corners of his mouth turn upward. Both, Eothas agrees, and Waidwen doesn't know what to feel about that either, except that the simmering warmth makes him feel light, now, when he has always been heavy, weighed down. It is why you and I are able to share a form. Had you not been what you are, my presence would have been too much for your body to contain.
Waidwen wonders what that would feel like. He wonders if that piece of Eothas is what has rested so heavy in him all this time. "Guess mortals aren't cut out for this sort of thing."
Eothas is quiet again, until: On the contrary, you and I are closer in nature than you know.
"What else aren't you telling me?" Waidwen asks, pointed. Perhaps he should be a little more suspicious, as a rule.
I didn't wish to overwhelm you, Eothas says, delicate.
Waidwen laughs, somewhere between bitter and amused, and he pulls away from the shield, from his distorted reflection in its silver and gold. "Too late for that, my friend," he says, reflexive, and it gives him pause. The words are odd in his mouth, but not unwelcome. There are problems not yet dealt with, and this god expects him to keep up. "Tell me later, then."
You should know that you will not be able to have children of your own, Eothas says anyway, subdued. It is part of being godlike.
"Oh, I've never really worried about that," Waidwen says, reassuring –- his turn to be gentle.
And there is something in it that straightens his spine, that makes the warmth within him ever brighter. Something found in offering forgiveness and not being made to ask for it, in feeling the god of light absorb his words with all of the regard and relief that Waidwen had never deigned to offer first.
Something that he could get used to, Waidwen thinks, before he turns his attention to what they must do.