By the time he broke his observations, my own nerves, even with the aroma of steeping tea filling my nose, were fraying a bit. His face darted about, as if seeking some danger above, constantly turning to Preacursor's always changing shapes, as the Dancer Before gave her nightly performance up there.
"When Uru-anna rises, that would be the best time to destroy this amulet. Let her blessed light aid us in the dissipation of the powers bound within, summoning home any bound within it to her waiting arms." He accepted the tea I offered him with a chuckle. "No lesser flame beast am I. My fires are of water that is split and burns, forging new things for the glory of Uru-anna."
The thing he named took a moment to sink in. Jzhan, our warming sun, I guessed after long thoughts on the word. "I seek not your quenching, but rather your good will and freedom. Perhaps, down the road, friendship."
He chuckled, a thing my ears heard not just as sounds, but popping crackles, same as the fire he'd kindled for me. "Friendship? That is a word few used with me. Tragrilorm, Varew, Harleigah, perhaps two dozen others."
Naming gods as friends disturbed me, leaving me speechless. I covered my shock, hopefully, behind sips from my cup. This tea, a mixture of rose hips and chamomile, soothed nerves left sparking in curiosity from that revelation.
Batulbel merely sniffed the tea, raising doubts about his statements of immunity to water, even though the vodka he'd quaffed earlier consisted mostly of that element. Doubts rapidly destroyed after a while, as he tossed off the cup in one draught. "Smells better than it tastes."
Smiling, I offered him more. "Tastes in teas vary." I filled the cup again, slowly, glad for the bronze ball holding the bits and leaves, so we could easily make more, if needed.
"So it seems. It pleases me that you try no poisons, mortal." His chuckle again danced across the night. His face turned again towards the Dancer, blazes with the eye holes narrowed. "Yes, the time has come for the Great Mother's sisters to send forth new souls at last."
That cryptic comment fanned that part of my anima that oft proved too inquisitive. "I never realized Elemental beings came from mothers."
"All things, even your gods, are born and die. Even the Lords of Entropy do not live forever. Eventually their powers fade, as the matter they feast upon escapes their grasp, evaporating away into the cold between Realms, or rushing back out to create new Realms." He stared still at the brightest star of the night, as the last cresent piece of Athalan's rings sank in the west. "My birth, though first and greatest so far from Uru-anna, is not the last of her children. Each day, the great breaths of matter and fire she exhales sends more of my siblings into the cosmos, to live and eventually fade into cold, dead embers for those Lords of Destruction to consume."
"Strange, that no scroll I've read speaks of these Lords of Entropy." Finding my cup empty, my hands filled it reflexively.
"Not so. Many scrolls mention them, if only in veiled terms to hide their True Rulership. They lie out there, even at the core of this galaxy, giving the anchors around which all spin, drawing together the masses of stars and gasses, the corpses of my kin, into their reach, albeit with a patience few can fathom. Their power spans distance you can scarst imagine, reaching from their abodes the entire distance of all you see above and further." Metal screeched as his face turned to me. "Their arms gather in the elements the Mothers are born from, the waves their arms create forging those lanterns to hold their meals until the time of feasting on the stars or their dead bones comes at last."
I held my peace. Our travels across the desert taught me patience with his methods of instruction. My hands wrapped around the cup, seeking the warmth it provided, as the chill of the long night still held on the land and air around us, leaving me fearing the winter to come all too soon.
When he spoke, again he face northeastward, gazing at the Dancer. "That one now exhales for the first time in ages. Her breaths will be wonderfully terrible, scouring this planet of life if allowed." Creaks filled the air, as his hands flexed those metal gloves. Gestures turned to fists, fists ot open hand motions I did not recognize. "You seek things, mortal, well beyond the ability of your mind to grasp. But I will offer for you my own birth, and a reason we only hold the Mothers above anything. Pray to your gods you are not shattered along with those foolish notions you have of life."
I chuckled at his warning, not from dismissal, but a phrase Matertera used often during my youth. "You never heard the sayings about young elves and cat?" I asked.
"Long-lived, unless they die nine times from their curiosity?" That chuckle, something more soothing than a dragons rumble, warmed my heart. "Very well. Fill this again, the way it burns within my fires is indeed soothing."
As I refilled his cup, his eyes dimmed to mere embers, focused on me tightly. Much as that first time we met, over the stunned body of his summoner. Once he had his drink in hand, he looked away, leaving me guessing why this conversation came now, despite his hints.
His words after came slow, between sips of the brew.
"When Uru-anna still lay cold and unlit, her siblings, save Athalan, still scattered remains of previous stars, one of the Lords of Entropy's domain passed near our ever moving home, stirring her shell to motions. Already, her heart burned, but barely. The wake of that passage, striking her body, drove more dust and bits deep into her, feeding that cold fire, fanning the flames to life. She screamed her joy for the universe to hear, gouts of that burning matter spearing outwards, as she woke for the first time.
"Riding upon that gout of her fiery primal scream, I and other broken fragments of her mind lost our connections to her, tossed out as her emissaries, to stir the sparks of others, fan the flames amid what you call aether, and guide those grandchildren of the stars into life and fire of their own, to drive away the darkness.
"But the hands of the Lords of Entropy reach far, with strong grasps. Those sparks fade faster than we of the first breaths, each generation buring shorter, dimmer, and colder. Draining away the fires, gathering to themselves all in their reach, until everything becomes the cold and dark they thrive upon, despite fires kindling in their hearts from so much being in such small places.
"Beside Uru-Anna, and around her, Mother's sisters joined her or slept on, as (Athalan) dreams still, never waking to blaze her glory. Even in those dreaming stars, the embers of those reveries dance into life of their own, moving about, lifting out, gathering and molding the elements around them into bodies. Some great, some small, but all imbued with the same forces, if weaker, as I was. Thus it was, as I watched your folk born beside the Usumgal, that you call draconis. And all those we faced this last shadow, those who rose before you amid stronger moments of her failed flames."
Looking again towards the Dancer, he sighed. "And now that sister of the Mother sends out her children. Ones steeped in fires beyond my own, seeking food and shells to serve their own creator through."
His arm rose, hand cupping the collection of crescents and discs there, just as the body of that celestial being brightened.
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