Night Seekers

    I suppose it would be too easy for me to die, wouldn't it?
     The ocean sighed behind him, in sympathy or reproach he could not tell, and he began to walk along the far-stretching beach.
     He wondered if the Dark Ones had been so similarly, blessedly cursed.

*              *             *

    Be still, people, Daviki stood before his frightened, bedraggled clan, cloth-capped stick poised over the skin of his drum. The Pale One will soon be here and the rebuilding will begin. At least I hope he will, the musician thought. If I did not drive him completely from us this last day.
     He pounded out a calming rhythm on his drum, took some small measure of comfort from the fact that his people settled, pulled family and loved ones close and gathered round, casting wide-eyed but no longer quite so terrified glances at the sand and sea that had replaced their village home after this latest and greatest dream flip.
     When the land had reformed about them he had found that all were changed, those that were old had become young again, those few children had grown to adulthood, some had even disappeared altogether, gone to dream with the ancestors now. It scared Daviki, more so than he would ever admit to those around him, and he struggled to smile reassuringly at Sreela when her strangely youthful eyes turned on him. Did she even remember the daughter who had only so recently left them?
     It was too much, the flips were said not to change things so greatly, ever, they were disturbing, but never mortally so. Never this, never this sea of faces he barely recognised. And why was he alone untouched? Why was he still old, still wrinkled and wizened, still full of the knowledge of what had previously been?
     Kai-ya, he thought. Please forgive an old man his foolish words. I cannot deal with this alone.  
     Daviki.
     Daviki turned at the sound of the voice. Kai-ya stood motionless some little way down the beach. He, too, was unchanged and Daviki gave voice a joyful, childlike sob that here at least was one familiar thing in a world gone madder than even dreams should ever be.
     Kai-ya did not move, merely stared, his eyes so black that all matter seemed to disappear within. Daviki stepped back, afraid where once he had been so sure. Perhaps all was not the same. Kai-ya was indeed different somehow. Changed. Hurting. More so than a previous incarnation could have wished for.
     Then movement blurred silver before the old man's eyes, his nose snapped beneath a delicately hard hand and he toppled forever backwards, the shivering gasps of his people doing little to cushion a fall of booming, snapping drum skins and splattering blood.
     You kept Sahla from me, old fool. Kai-ya stood over him, Daviki whimpered, bled, scuttled away, the Pale One followed, pinning him with contemptuous black gaze. You kept her from me when we needed one another. Now all this, he waved a hand, all this is yours. Your creation, old fool. Made from unfinished perfection, lost love, drifting passion, a dark gone mad. He turned away. Enjoy it.
     Wait! Daviki scrabbled for his feet and pride both, red-stained sand slick and slippery against his palms. He felt anger and shame in equal measures. He had done what was best for his granddaughter, hadn't he? He loved her, didn't he? Kai-ya, damn you, you can't go. What of the clan? How will we rebuild without you?
     Kai-ya stopped. Did not turn. You can't. You never will. That which binds us is gone.
     What? Daviki stared after the Pale One's retreating form. His hands hung limp at his sides; blood trickled slowly from his broken nose.