Noah Lazarus ✦ David Shepherd (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tankslayer) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} thereincarnates,@ 2016-10-16 22:27:00 |
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What: Two lost strangers trying to find their way home.
Where: A clearing in an unnamed forest.
When: Night
Warnings: Language, possibly. Nothing else likely.
When he'd left for the war, he'd been a young man. Eighteen, full of ideals, certain that the cause he'd been fighting for was just, and good. He'd been certain that they would be victorious, that they would win because they were the ones in the right, and that he would return home to the lover he'd left, the one he'd thought would wait for him while he was gone. He had been as certain of those things as he had been of his own name, and he'd stayed just as strong, just as sure, for the three years they fought a war against all odds. Through every hardship he faced on the battlefield, he reminded himself that they were in the gods' hands, that they were blessed because they were doing Their will. It hadn't been until the final battle, when he'd realized that what they had been fighting for all along wasn't justice, or freedom, but money. Power. Prestige. Nothing that he had ever considered worth fighting for at all.
If he'd kept his mouth shut, if he'd done his job as a soldier, he'd have been able to go home. Instead... instead... he wasn't certain what had come over him, then. When he'd stood up. When he'd told their greatest hero, the demigod who had led the battle for those three years, the man who stood a full head and shoulders taller than him, that he was wrong. That he wasn't following the gods' will, that just because he'd been fathered by one of them, it didn't mean that he spoke for them. That the gods wouldn't have wanted this. That had turned into a challenge, and a fight. No one had expected him to win it, not even him... except he had. A lucky blow. The one spot where the hero's mortal mother had forgotten, when she'd dipped him in the sacred river that had granted him near invulnerability. He'd never intended to kill the hero, even if the hero meant to kill him, but he found himself standing the victor, their greatest hero dead on the ground in the wake of their victory.
They'd have killed him, then, the generals, if it hadn't been for the flash of light, for the sign of the gods' favor upon him... not the god that had fathered their hero. No... no, that was a god who had held a grudge against him, even though the rest had found him worthy of favor. They had blessed him. The hero's father had cursed him to wander, unable to find his way home until the kindness of others brought him there. The generals cast him aside, then, hadn't wanted to risk the god's displeasure falling upon them, as well, for offering him aid. And so he had wandered, alone, lost, in an unfamiliar land.
He'd gotten lost, for a time, in a land where they ate nothing but a flower, one that caused them to forget all their worries. They wasted away, and didn't care at all. He'd almost wasted away, too, in the arms of a golden-haired maiden who had made him forget the lover waiting for him at home. He'd lost a year there. Another two, wandering, after, uncertain where he was. Three, on an island where a sorcerer changed him into whatever beast took his fancy, for the moment, made a pet of him until he forgot to renew the spell and he'd become a man again, long enough to free himself and escape. He'd lost everything, there, everything that had been left to his name, wandered naked for another half year until he'd stumbled on a valley that it seemed like time had forgotten, into the arms of a dark-haired man who had given him everything he could ever have asked for... everything but a way to return home. He'd almost forgotten why he wanted to leave. He had forgotten, for two and a half years, until he caught his reflection in a wine glass and saw a face he didn't know. The face of a man nearing his middle years, youth lost.
It had been enough to shake him fromt his stupor, and draw him away from the arms of the first person to offer him true kindness since he'd left for war, no matter how selfish the reasons. He'd left, not certain of anything anymore. Where he was. Whether he'd ever been in the right. Noah held on to his name as the last truth he knew.
At least he was clothed, this time. It was better than the last time Noah had left behind everything that he'd thought he had, everything that he'd relied on to tell him who he was, what he was supposed to be, and want. Poking the small fire he'd managed to start with the stick in his hand, Noah tried to summon some of that hopefulness, some of that certainty that things would work out because he was in the right. Ten years wandering. It had to be time for him to find his way home.