"Good plan," Sakshemar agrees. "I do first watch."

That night, Lionstar dreams of Urtho. 

In the dream, which doesn't especially make sense, he's simultaneously racing across abandoned fields and roads, trying to reach the Tower in time, and watching from a great height.

(In reality, he is far away when it happens, and a different counterattack, set in motion before the mage's death, is what kills him.) 

He sees, too late, half the horizon turn to fire. Urtho's Final Strike, sacrificing himself to deny his former pupil every precious resource that had lain in that tower. Centuries of scholarship slagged to magma in an instant. 

Lionstar wakes screaming. 

Sakshemar is there, reaching for him. He is unpracticed at comforting touch, but—friend. Important.

Lionstar almost but not quite sends him flying with a blast of force. He pulls back in time; it takes long seconds to remember where he is, a faraway forest and not the fiery blaze of Urtho’s Tower, but only a fraction of the first second to recognize Sakshemar. Friend.

He lifts a hand, gesturing for Sakshemar to keep his distance, and tries to wrestle his breathing under control. It’s a struggle, and he finds he desperately wants that comfort, so he reaches back.

”Did you,” he forces out between pants, “did you - sense that - empathy?” 

He can’t tell if he hopes the answer is no or yes.

He stays back when Lionstar gestures, but moves closer as soon as he changes his mind.

At the question, he nods.

...Well, that’s awkward. Lionstar has little sense of how much detail Sakshemar could have picked up via Empathy, and isn’t sure how to ask and clarify without giving any more away.

“I am sorry,” he says with an embarrassed shrug. “It cannot have been pleasant for you. I...was dreaming, of a bad thing that happened.”

He hesitates. “A mistake that I made,” he admits finally.

"Bad mistake," he says sympathetically, hugging him.

It’s...nice...to be hugged. Lionstar can’t recall the last time anybody held him, even as Ma’ar. He’s grateful, because his newly-acquired teenage body isn’t making it easy to regain control of his emotions. He feels - not guilt, exactly, he still thinks that he made the best decisions he could in expectation given the knowledge and resources he had. And yet. Urtho is dead and two empires - at least - are destroyed, and whether or not “fault” is a useful concept to apply, he wishes it had happened differently. Lionstar feels grief, most of all, sharp and keen.

He wonders how much of it Sakshemar is picking up.

Enough that Lionstar is getting very hugged, anyway.

Eventually, Lionstar pulls away.

”I apologize for waking you,” he says, a little stiffly. “I can keep watch the rest of the night.” He doesn’t mind; he has a lot of thinking to do.

He smiles a little, and nods, and goes to sleep.

Lionstar watches the horizon. 

What do I want?

He needs a plan- no, he needs to go back to the drawing board. He had a plan before, and it nearly destroyed everything, he made a mistake even though he doesn’t yet understand exactly where or when or how. 

He needs to step back, somehow, to see with fresh eyes; he needs an outside perspective.

It would be so, so much easier if he wasn’t doing this alone. If he had just one ally he could trust. Maybe that’s been his mistake all along.

Can he afford to trust Sakshemar?

...Can he afford not to? 

The sun rises, and he still isn’t sure.

Sakshemar wakes up, yawns, and goes to make breakfast.

"Hunt today maybe," he says. "More food good." Their supplies aren't exactly running low, but if they're planning to be out here indefinitely, he's got a point.

“Good,” Lionstar says. “Maybe we work on vocabulary, on the way?” 

(If he’s even considering telling Sakshemar his secrets, he needs the ability to communicate clearly and without ambiguity.)

He nods approvingly.

They depart, and Lionstar does his best to walk Sakshemar through some terms and concepts related to warfare and empires. Vocabulary he thinks might be especially important for explaining his past. Should he decide to do so.

He’s a little distracted.

Sakshemar doesn't comment on his distraction, either out of tact or because he's busy absorbing all that vocabulary. He's definitely still picking up the ability to understand new words much faster than he's picking up the ability to use them, but for Lionstar's purposes understanding them is the important part.

...No, he can’t go through with it. Lionstar tries, he rehearses the words and even opens his mouth a few times to say them, but he can’t do it. It’s too much, imagining Sakshemar reacting badly - Ma’ar’s crimes are, to an ordinary person’s eyes, so much worse than a few deeply-regretted flails of anger - and he can’t face it. Not now.

They can hunt instead.

He's very good at hunting. Not used to this terrain or this wildlife, but enough of the skillset carries over that they will be successfully fed. Especially since he also seems to know how to smoke meat, so they can preserve their surplus after they've cooked enough for a fresh meal. (Perhaps this explains the contents of his pack.)

Lionstar continues to be quietly impressed. Sakshemar isn’t just skilled - he’s interesting, his questions during their language sessions continue to hint that he’s very well-educated. Much less surprising, now, given the knowledge that his father was someone ‘important.’

Lionstar decides not to prod more at Sakshemar’s past, but maybe he’ll poke around for topics of shared intellectual interest.

Topics of intellectual interest prove difficult to dig up. He mentions offhandedly that he doesn't like to read— "hard to sit still so long," he explains.

But he turns out to be fascinated by magical theory and Leareth's knowledge of Gifts, as long as he doesn't have to sit still to hear about it. And he can offer more information about the Haighlei understanding of such things in exchange, with insightful if clumsily articulated comparisons between the disparate paradigms.

Lionstar is especially curious to hear about how the Haighlei screen for Gifts, and - if Sakshemar knows anything of it - how they shut down said Gifts in the children who don’t live up to their standards.

The latter is a secret of the priesthood, and Sakshemar has little more than speculation to offer as far as the methods, although he can describe the results; he's met someone whose mage-Gift was taken and he's confident that they were undamaged aside from the flaws that got them in trouble in the first place and the natural results of being known to everyone who meets you as a hopeless disgrace unfit for any important work.

Interesting. Lionstar will just have to keep speculating.

He does know enough theory and pedagogy for various Gifts to keep the conversation running. Maybe Sakshemar would be interested in exploring his strong Empathy as well. Is he able to project emotions as well as sense then?

He confirms that he can do that, but he's a little uncomfortable about it.

"Should maybe practice," he sighs, "for control, like fire—but—" Shrug. "I don't like... to change minds, like that."