Now that D’Argen had an idea of what to look for, it was much easier to spot the differences.

Lilian would ask him to join them in petitioning the five to help the mortals migrating out to the east, and a moment later D’Argen would remember that he was pulled away from that task when a war broke out on the southern islands. He rejected Lilian’s proposal and instead sat in Evadia waiting for the call and hoping he was going crazy. It made no sense to remember something that had yet to happen, if at all, but as he waited around and contemplated: the call to go south came.

Abbot would wave him away as an annoyance when he offered his help, and when D’Argen was seething he remembered Acela reorganizing the ranking structure and that some event happened—will happen—that made D’Argen a rank above the God of Light. The first time he tried to order Abbot to do something, the orders coming out so naturally as if he had been giving them out for centuries, the artist laughed and walked away. The first time Abbot did it anyway, D’Argen got sick.

Acela would send him to run messages, and D’Argen remembered the contents of them. He would play games with himself, trying to guess every message that she told him to carry and though he was off on the exact words or the times sometimes, every message he had read before he also read now. Funnily enough, when he tried to read the messages, he never read in his other set of memories, they were not important at all. He was, however, berated for opening them.

But the memories that never overlapped were those of Vah’mor and the white shade.

D’Argen knew the white shade was another god, but when he tried to catch it out of the corner of his eye it disappeared. Even worse, when he tried to chase it down those few times it remained, he always found himself running into Vah’mor.

And Vah’mor never looked at him with a kind smile.

As D’Argen looked for Acela to deliver a message he never actually received, he once again found himself under the silver glare of one of their most powerful. He remembered Vah’mor reuniting the pilgrim mortals that first came to the field of the gods, but he also remembered chasing down the nomads with a white shade and then trying to clean the blood off his hands. He remembered Vah’mor returning from an envoy mission for Acela, and he remembered a deeper voice delivering the reports.

With every discrepancy he caught, he thought himself going insane.

It took him too long to finally succumb to the pull of his drained mahee—running too long and too much, even though he remembered running even more before—and look for the court physician.

Not court.

There was no castle yet.

The thought had him stopping on the spot in the open circle that was already the centre of an ever-growing city of the gods. The stone hall was standing strong with the sun shining high above it. It was not the arches he saw like a double vision that framed the castle of Evadia in the background. Acela and Vah’mor were inside. D’Argen could swear he felt Vah’mor’s glare even now.

Simeal.

Finding the God of Healing took him too long. When he did, he remembered that she did not gain her title until a few thousand years later when Darania left Evadia and settled in the Rube Islands permanently.

His head was hurting.

“D’Argen? Do you have a message for me?” Simeal asked him as soon as he stepped into the small stone house Simeal had claimed for herself. It took him three tries to find it.

“No messages. I was actually wondering if you could help me with something.”

“As long as I can, I will. What is it?” She brushed some powders off her skirts and the white cloud had the scent of flour. She was not healing, but cooking.

D’Argen did not know how much to share, afraid she would deem him insane and lock him down how he had seen some of the mortals do to their own, so he settled for saying, “I’ve had a horrible headache for a few years now. It comes and goes, but when it comes back, it’s stronger.”

Simeal chuckled, but she looked confused. “Why come to me, then?” she asked.

“You’re interested in the healing arts, no?” he asked back, trying to remember when she actually took an interest in them. “I don’t want to bother Darania with something so small.”

“Clearly, not that small. Come. Sit. Let us see if I can help.” Simeal pulled a wooden stool out from under the table and motioned him to it. As if she had been doing it for thousands of years already, she immediately went to wash her hands and then uttered a simple spell that he knew would clean them even better.

“When did the headaches start? Do you remember hitting your head?”

“Ah… that is one of the issues, actually. I’m having a hard time… remembering some things.”

At those words, Simeal’s casual smile dropped completely. “Like what?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Nothing big, just…”

D’Argen was not sure what happened next, but his legs were numb as if he had been sitting for hours and Simeal was taking an empty cup from his hand that smelled like tea.

“Just be careful,” Simeal said, as if continuing a conversation. One that D’Argen was not privy to. “We have yet to find any long-term effects to being here, but you never know.”

“Here?” D’Argen asked in a daze, trying to catch up to what he had missed. His mind was blissfully blank even though the sun’s rays already painted Simeal’s tiny house bright orange with sunset.

“Maybe it will do you some good to get out of the city. You are not usually in one place for so long. Your mahee bids you to run, you should listen to it.”

D’Argen tried to remember how long he had been in the city already, but the thought slipped through his fingers before he could catch it.

“How is your mahee? You look tired.”

“I am tired,” he confirmed and then frowned. His mahee was barely churning inside him, more like calm waves lapping at the shore than the currents that had raged through him before. Will rage through him. Again. His head started pounding once more.

“You are definitely not eating enough. You are almost skin and bones. We have bodies now and we must take care of them. I know you are not a fan of eating meat, but you can have proper nutrition without it.”

D’Argen nodded. Then he remembered something.

He looked down at his hands and noticed that his fingers were too skinny, his wrists bony where they peeked out from under the edges of his sleeves. But that was because D’Argen never did consume food before other than to try it and taste it.

“Is Yaling here?” he asked, apropos of nothing and startling Simeal with the abrupt question.

“She left a few months ago. Acela finally granted her permission for the music festival.”

The music festival?

The music festival. The first music festival.

D’Argen found himself grinning through his headache and thanking Simeal as he left her house.

The city continued to grow, both Acela’s and Halen’s estimates of a few centuries falling way behind as more and more mortals came to the land and realized they could stay. He did not take to the roofs of the houses only because he remembered some of the wooden ones breaking under his feet and sending him stumbling. Instead, he jogged out through small alleys and crossed wide roads, until he came to the large swath of farming fields that fed all of Evadia.

Burdap, the one who would eventually be known as the God of Harvest, if not already, would be unhappy with him, but D’Argen felt his blood singing. He opened his mahee and ran, driving a long furrow into the earth before his speed picked him up so he barely touched the ground at all.

It took him a few days to reach the shores where rafts were ferrying people back and forth between the mainland and the cluster of islands just north of the coast. D’Argen was completely exhausted when he arrived so he took to one of the rafts and sat under the rope that was being used to pull the wood across.

Before they were even halfway there, D’Argen heard it.

Drums and fans and bells made his throat vibrate. Horns and flutes and harmonicas made his ears perk up. Guitars and lutes and sitars made his eyes water. When he scented the sweat and drink and sex, D’Argen closed his eyes and breathed in deep. When he disembarked on a crowded beach, he tasted the mahee in the air.

And, for the first time since Lilian found him near the ocean and brought him home, his stomach stopped rumbling. D’Argen gorged himself out on the sound around him. He had forgotten what it felt like to not be thirsty or hungry. He took it in, and in, and in, and in… and he was taking in too much and much more than he ever thought he could.

When he thought he could take no more, there was still room.

The buzzing in his veins was like thousands of bees and the itch under his feet was like stepping barefooted in a forest of pine trees. The headache was blissfully drowned out and when D’Argen felt like he really could not, there was no possible way for him to consume more, his mahee proved him wrong.

He was drowning under the sound, and he must have spent days lying on the beach with his eyes closed, not even needing to go further inland. The nights were sticky, the days scorching, and D’Argen just kept consuming until he felt bloated with it.

Then he consumed more.

“You are starting to scare some of the mortals,” a voice pulled him out of his cycle and had him squinting his eyes open. “They say you have been here for weeks without moving and feared you dead.”

Yaling. Never one to mince her words.

D’Argen smiled up at her and she looked confused and concerned both.

“Did you get a heat stroke, or something?” she asked and crouched beside him. When she reached for his forehead, D’Argen was too satiated to flinch away from her warm touch.

“I missed you,” he whispered and Yaling snapped her hand back and away from him.

“You are either delirious or drunk. I do not know which I would prefer.”

“Have they stated calling you the God of Music, yet?” D’Argen asked, ignoring her words, and closing his eyes again. The sound continued all around him and though he knew that there was yet more room, he finally started closing off his mahee so he would stop consuming. He felt so full yet at the same time it felt like nothing at all.

“You have gone mad,” Yaling said instead of answering.

“They should. And don’t listen to them when they say you can’t sing. Your voice is absolutely delicious. It tastes like plums and grapes.”

“Okay. That is it. Come on, get up.” Yaling started nudging him around, a lot gentler before they became friends and she started using her feet to kick him about, until he was sitting up and then standing.

“Thank you,” D’Argen said, and he did not mean for her help in standing up. She looked so confused, but he could do nothing but smile at her, dopey and drunk off the sound. There was still room for more.

But, more importantly, he felt the sound course through his entire body as if it was waiting for something. Once Yaling let him go and his mahee automatically adjusted to balance him, he knew exactly what.

In his other memory, the Moving Islands got their name on the last day of the music festival when the sound and magic had combined and crescendoed so much that everyone thought it was the music that made the lands dance around even thousands of years later.

D’Argen had just enough foresight to step away from Yaling and make sure there were not any mortals too close to them. Then he opened his mahee as wide as he could, still consuming the music around him, and let it guide him forward.

In this memory, they would get their name from him.

D’Argen pushed and the world shifted, as if it was moving through him and even the sound inside him could not keep up. There was no white shade around him, only because it was waiting for him at the other end of his run. D’Argen grinned wide and he knew that this time, this time the memory of pure white eyes and snow-white hair would stick.

The resounding boom behind him broke something in the realm and then caught up to him and shattered something in his mind.