They're stranded.
At some point during their run-in with a group of monsters in Renais, Gerik and Saleh got lost in the nearby forest. Gerik's all right--nothing that wouldn't heal on its own in a day or two--but Saleh's more than a little worse for wear.
Which means that he nearly got his arm chopped off by a maelduin. It still looks as bad as it sounds, even after Gerik helped him dump his entire vulnerary on it. He hates it when those things manage to land a hit, because it will never be just a nice, clean, painful gash; those things can break bones without even trying. The darkening roof of the trees above them doesn't make Gerik feel good. If the flying units are scouting, they might have already breezed right over them.
"We'll just have to wait it out, then." His voice echoes in the stillness. Saleh attempts to nod, then winces as something doesn't move right.
-
The night brings new and even less appealing possibilities: Saleh's got an open wound, at least a few broken bones, and they're in a damp and dusty forest. If he doesn't get an infection, all the blood he's losing might be letting predators track them right now. Or more monsters.
"See, this is why I hate letting healers get hurt. If I were in your spot, you'd have taken care of it and the most you'd need to worry about is a good night's sleep."
"…What about you?" He sounds like he's just sleepy, but there's the tell-tale shallow breathing of blood loss.
"I'd be all healed up, remember?"
"Right." It's forced out on his exhale like a cough, and Gerik hopes he just imagined the specks of red accompanying it.
"You know, I've still got a full vulnerary on me." He knows Saleh won't use it; they both know that if Gerik gets too badly hurt and they've used everything up, they're as good as dead. But he offers anyway because something isn't right--even with half his blood gone Saleh shouldn't be breathing like he's afraid to take up space, and his movements are of pain beyond limping.
Gerik's not a healer, though, and knowing what's wrong won't do anything now. "Come on, Saleh--it'll be faster if I carry you." The sage nods and winces again, and Gerik tries not to shake him up too much when he picks him up. It's late enough for the stars to have faded, but he has no choice except to keep going.
-
"Someone's following us," Saleh rasps into his neck, and Gerik turns his head to find a light-haired man ambling along a few feet behind them.
His spine prickles--Gerik didn't see or hear anything before Saleh said so, and now he can feel the power radiating from him. He looks like Saleh; the same gray hair, but longer and unkempt. Lights weave in and out of it, and Gerik doesn't know if they're pieces of lightning or fireflies or stars. His eyes are sand-colored, too, and that can only mean one person.
The storm god gives no warning…
But even though he keeps walking and pretends not to be freaked out, the storm god meanders in front of them and the recognition in Saleh's face is clear as day.
"My boy." His voice sounds like distant thunder as he smiles, and Gerik can't tell why he's getting so defensive.
"Saleh is not Jehannan--"
He puts a hand on Saleh's wound, and something jolts before Gerik's body seizes up. He can't help but drop Saleh with all the magic forced into his veins, but even before he does the sage gives a choking yell and clutches the spot near his wound. Through the magic, Gerik sees the storm god waver like a heat mirage.
"Wait--wait! What did you do to him?!" His skin is burning like the dunes and now they're both out of action and they're going to die, they're going to die because the storm god thinks it's funny to mess with people and Saleh's still screaming like someone's hacking his arm off the rest of the way--
Somehow Gerik manages to pick him up again and run, and all the magic and screaming makes him forget to wonder why Saleh recognizes a Jehannan god.
-
They've been found.
It's been a while later; the sun is halfway over the horizon and Gerik's legs have given out from so much running. Saleh's bones have healed up, and everyone's a little shocked that his "only" problems are blood loss and a really bad gash. Gerik mentions something about vulneraries and good luck, but he's not letting go of Saleh because the storm god might come again and he won't give any more warning than he did the first time--
The healers are perplexed that he's showing the confusion of heat stroke when he was in a forest at night: Even running while carrying someone would overheat him in an entirely different and less malicious way. They chalk it up to a rough night and heal the worst of his burning skin, but the Jehannans are suspicious because Gerik's not the type to piss off his own country's main god.
"I think you are confused, Gerik," Saleh says. "You were tired, and I was injured; those conditions are hardly the best for rational thought. I, for one, mistook that man for my father--"
Oh Stones help him, the storm god was messing even deeper with his head. "He's a god, Saleh, there's no other way he could have gotten through both our resistance at the same time!"
"What?" The sudden disbelief stops Gerik as much as the actual interruption, and Saleh speaks like a mentor with a really dense student. "Gerik. That man… looked very much like my father. But he has been dead… for fifteen years."
The Jehannans nearby shoot him a glance, and suddenly everything makes sense to Gerik. Cloud-gray hair and the stars went out and Saleh recognized him--
-
"What Gerik is trying to say," Joshua sits the two of them down in a ring of Jehannans (and interested non-Jehannans) sometime after dinner, "is that Saleh happens to look a lot like Jehanna's most powerful god."
"Aren't they immortal, though?" Eirika inquires. "Master Saleh said his father died."
"For Jehanna? Technically," Joshua ponders on what to say next, flipping a coin and watching it spin before he catches it. "They can die if someone tries hard enough; they just come back after a while. It's bad when the storm god dies--the rains were erratic when I was about ten, and it was that much harder for Mother to keep everyone alive and happy. People said it was because the storm god went missing."
"I would think no rain at all would be worse," Natasha remarks, to shakes of the head from Joshua and Tethys. (They aren't letting Gerik talk yet because of the heat-stroke and all.)
"Nope, Sister--as unpredictable as they are, we need the floods. Only a flood would be enough to loosen up a desert's soil, and that's why your average Grado drizzle won't cut it," Tethys tells her. The conversation goes off on a tangent about the nuances of Jehanna, and Saleh isn't looking at the others anymore. Instead he stares into the space between Gerik and the forest, as if he can call up the storm god to make him explain things in person.
"Saleh? You listening?" The sage sighs vaguely and he hopes it's affirmative. "He wasn't… he didn't get himself killed so he could pack up and leave guilt-free. He's a god and all, but he's not heartless."
Saleh turns to look at him; Gerik can't read his expression, but what he says next is scathing in its very calmness. "Well, you are all Jehannan… So I guess you would know him better than I do."
He stands up and leaves, and his words burn like embers in the air. When they finally fade into the breeze, it's a few minutes of concerned silence before they all remember just who they've been talking about.
-
The time that you may approach the god:
As stars fade into the dawning air,
Betwixt cold night and the morning.
He will appear with nary a nod
And lightning laced through his cloud-grey hair--
For the storm god gives no warning.
-
Gerik's been kept under close watch by the healers and drinking lots of water to make sure the last of his heat-stroke is gone, so it's late in the night when he finally gets cleared to fight again. He comes across Saleh at the base of a tree, with a contemplating look on his face--but there is no aura this time.
"What's the matter, mountain man? Can't sleep?"
"I was waiting…"
"For me? Aw, you didn't have to." They both know that he's wrong, but he smiles anyway and sits down. Now he knows what Saleh's looking at: The sky. "He's not just a storm god, you know. We call him that because no one remembers his name."
But there is one, hesitating at the tip of Saleh's tongue. Gerik waits, but he doesn't say it.
"I keep forgetting to ask you this," he laughs sheepishly. "How did you grow up?"
There's always a reason for someone to have turned into Saleh or Marisa, all pointed silences and subtle expressions. It's hard to remember that they might have been perfectly normal when they were ten-ish or so--just a little quiet.
"He loved her," Saleh says very, very quietly, in the tone that makes Gerik instinctively promise not to tell anyone. "I don't know if Mother knew, but… there was always something I couldn't place about him."
They are quiet for a long, long time--enough for the stars to vanish into the graying velvet sky. Gerik checks around them, but the storm god isn't there. He's like the yearly floods of Jehanna; everyone knows which places to avoid for the first two weeks of fall, but that doesn't mean they start right then.
"Saleh… He didn't abandon you." An eastern wind blows mournfully around the campsite, ruffling Saleh's cloud-grey hair like a consoling mother. Gerik wants him to believe it, but he keeps staring into the clouds and his face is too composed to really be calm.
For once, Gerik's glad that both his parents were mortal.
-
Notes: I always wondered why Saleh of all people has silver hair. The Renaitians have true blue/purple-colored hair, and silver is clearly a rare color; aside from Lyon and Vigarde, Knoll is the only one even close to it (very light purple). Lyon, Vigarde, and Knoll are native Grads (two of them are royalty), while our resident sage is from a secluded village in the Renais/Jehannan mountains. Those are hardly good circumstances for random silver-haired Grad nobles to meet up with Saleh's mother. So I drew off Gerik's reference in Chapter 5 about Saleh looking like "the storm god"--I figured Jehannans would hold such a deity in highest regard since they live in the desert, and there's connotations of unpredictability about a storm that you don't get with general rain.
Not to mention that Saleh starts out with a thunder tome, his affinity is wind, and he starts out with an A-rank in Anima, which makes him the most likely person to start using Excalibur after you get it. What has wind, rain, and thunder/lightning? A thunderstorm. Hence, he's the son of the storm god.
To be honest, I wanted to turn Saleh into a badass demi-god. But then I realized that people focus too much on how SUPER-SPESHUL-AWESOME demi-gods are. They never stop to think about how much it would SUCK to have your dad be absent for most of your life--and if he's a god, why couldn't he take a few minutes to explain why he left you and your mother, or how he's alive and kicking again without being an abomination of nature? It would suck even more for people to talk like they know him better than you, even if they don't mean any harm.
So... yeah. I like writing about the flip side of mythology.
