When D'Argen first fell to the mortal realm be heard only one word: forget.

So he did.

And then he hit the ground.

The impact was hard enough to rattle his bones and send a headache splintering through his skull. It rumbled and echoed and got louder and louder. Until he opened his eyes and realized the sound was not in his head. The ground under him, still hot and covered in a very fine layer of black soil, was shaking. The only horizon he saw were the edges of the creater he had created and they were completely white, getting smaller and smaller as the rumbling intensified.

He got up on shaky legs, trying to balance himself even as the ground did not stop moving under him. Something inside him made everything stop for a moment and then he realized it did not stop moving, he just did not feel the shakes unbalance him. His first step out of the centre of the crater was sure. His next was firm. The step after that was a skip over what looked like a piece of metal with engravings on it.

D’Argen focused on that as it trembled and only when he reached for it did he realize what it was. A vambrance. One that matched the silver covering his reaching forearm. Then he noticed his fingers on that hand were bare and cold. The hand that was missing the vambrance had a glove that only covered three fingers. Then he saw strands of long black hair and had to tug on them to ensure they were his own.

It hurt.

He looked back at the place where he had hit the ground and noticed a broken silver bow. Beside it, standing upright in the black soil, was a silver sword. When he reached them, he saw his own reflection in the sword’s blade and stopped.

Dark blue eyes stared back at him and for some reason his appearance made him flinch. The vambrance he had on matched the small pieces that connected to form a flexible chest plate and guards on his shoulders and chest. A thick belt at his waist had an empty scabbard for the sword and two smaller sheathes that must have held daggers – the daggers were not there. His legs were also covered in protective and engraved metal.

He was dressed for war though there was not a spec of blood on him or a single scratch.

A moment later, he was kneeling in the hot black soil and leaning closer to the sword to look at his own face. Three fingers covered in a thin black material touched under his eye while the rest of his bare fingers explored his face. He touched the metal around his neck and it felt so constricting that he had to rip it off with shaking fingers. When it landed in the soil with a thud, it started shaking too. The chest plate and shoulder guards were next, the belt around his waist released and he took a deep breath, and then he tore off the guards on his legs. He kept his one vambrance on.

He was here.

He was... he was--

The ground stopped shaking and that something inside him that made him balance dissipated.

No. He was not mortal. He knew what that was and what it meant.

But the black soil under him was of the mortal realm.

A glance up at the sky had him squinting his eyes closed. It was too bright. He peeked one eye open just in time to see a dark streak run through the sky, aiming somewhere in the distance and disappearing over the black horizon. The black...

Snow.

D’Argen did not know how he knew it, but when the ground was shaking the edges of the crater were covered in snow. He forgot about the sword and bow, about his abandoned armour, and started for the edge again, having to climb up out of the hole he had made with his fall.

Once there, his knees trembled and buckled and even that something inside him was not enough to stop him from falling to the ground as he looked down.

Closer to the top, to where he sat, were bare rocks and overturned dirt. Further down were patches of snow and toppled trees. At the skirt of the mountain, all the way at the bottom, was completely covered in freshly fallen snow. He could not see them but he could hear the mortals screaming and crying.

He had caused an avalanche. The thought had him trembling and shaking, trying to shake away a memory that made no sense of another avalanche that would take place thousands of years from now.

Then he forgot about that and instead looked at the distant horizon. He knew this place. He had never walked it but he knew where he was. He felt the sun on his skin as if he belonged under it though he could not remember having seen it before. There was not a single cloud in the sky above him and he knew that they had cleared because—why? Why were there no clouds? Did his fall move those as well?

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Fall?

From where?

D’Argen chanced another look up but had to close his eyes to the bright sky. There was nothing at all above him. But below, there was a long dead heat. He knew the mountain he had landed on was dormant, but his impact should have shaken something loose. He knew that the air that entered his lungs would be thin and burn too much, but he took a deep breath anyway because he knew he needed to breathe. He knew he was cold, and yet the air in his lungs burned.

When he looked around him, he was alone and he knew what that meant too.

He failed.

But he also forgot what he failed at.

Somewhere in the distance, he felt a tug. It aimed him toward that streak in the sky he saw earlier. He knew there was something inside him that wanted to go there and he knew what he would find—others like him—but he could not remember why that was important. To be near others like him. To be away from the mortals whose cries echoed up the mountain to his ears.

He ignored that feeling and instead focused on the something inside him, the one even deeper than the tug, that helped him balance earlier and now told him to run.

So he ran. Right down the mountain and over the snow. Right past the few mortals that had survived and were screaming for help. Right out into the flat lands beyond and toward the water that called his name.

He did not stop running even when he reached the edges of what he would learn was an ocean, but he was not fast enough to run atop its lapping waves. Instead, he ran along the coast and twisted and turned and ignored the tug inside him that told him to go back.

D’Argen did not stop running for a long time.

Passing a few others at first—others like him—he noticed they were all wandering in the direction of that first tug he felt. He ignored their calls to join them and instead continued to run.

First, he ran under the light of the sun, and then under the smile of the moon. The two chased each other across the sky again and again and again, laughing at him for being so slow and unable to keep up with them.

One day, the sun hung on the edge of yet another ocean, one that stretched even farther and was much darker, and the sun waited for him.

He reached the edge of the land and stared as that urge to run inside him finally relaxed. The sun hid from him yet again, though this time it was not with a mocking laugh but a joyous one, asking him to wait.

The salt in the air and the scent that surrounded him felt less like home and more like his own, like they were something that belonged only to him and made him who he was. He felt the drops on his skin as the waves broke against the rocks below him, hearing their thunderous claps as if they were greeting him home, and saw nothing but blue, blue, blue in the distance that turned black as a moonless sky covered him.

D’Argen knew this ocean was his.

He did not remember why.

The moon came to visit him again just as the sky started brightening and it too had stopped laughing at him. It laughed with him instead and D’Argen breathed deep and let his feelings overwhelm him where he stood alone atop a tall cliff. The thunder continued below him, the salt coating his skin in thin layers, and though he did not have the memory to compare, he knew he was free.

So he got up and ran again.

And such went his first months.

He ran with the sun and moon, never able to catch either of them or even keep up, but they always came back, sometimes even together and seemed to slow down to wait for him. He ran during the day until his legs were shaking and his lungs were burning, then felt his body drown into an inexplicable exhaustion so he slept during the night. He felt safe enough under the moon to relax completely and close all his senses, knowing she would keep him safe though not remembering why he knew that or why he was so certain.

Sometimes, he closed his eyes under the sun and stared at a beautiful and strange world under the sea. He breathed air filled with salt and drowned himself in the water of what made him who he was. The earth gave him a place to move his feet and the ocean gave him a place to rest his head. They both sang him to sleep and woke him up so that the sun and moon could keep him company as he ran. He did not need anything else.

The first time he encountered one of his own again, it could have been hours or years. Though he had never felt alone, both the sun and moon were missing from the sky that time. They had already ran long past him. Something inside him connected to that other person, the same as the tug to go that had become so faint he already forgot about it. It was the same as the urge to run that was keeping him going though he did not know where.

“We have been looking for you,” the other spoke with a lilting voice that barely reached his ears through the thunderous claps of the storm raging over the ocean.

“Why?” he asked.

“We have all gathered. After we fell.”

Fell? D’Argen looked up at the dark sky covered in thick black clouds. The storm over the ocean would be over them soon.

“Fell from where?” he asked.

The other replied with a smile and pointed up to where he was looking earlier.

“What is up there?” he asked.

“I do not remember. None of us do. But maybe, together, we can figure it out.”

D’Argen thought of those words and they sounded right for some reason. After a moment, he realized he had no idea who he was talking to.

“I am D’Argen. I am one with the ocean.” It felt like a strange introduction to him, but the other only smiled wide.

“And I am one with the breeze,” the other replied and laughed as if it was a joke, but did not share their name.

D’Argen smiled in response because it seemed fitting. His voice was much deeper and his frame much larger. The other was slight, almost delicate looking with long hair the colour of wheat and eyes a lighter shade from the ocean surface but shaped like the leaves he ran on this morning. And their scent was hard to place but it made him think of the drops of water that gathered on grass in the morning, which made the last of the worry inside him dissipate.

He did not remember this person but he knew them. “Lilian,” he stated instead of asking.

“Yes?”

“I know you.”

“And I know you.”