At the bottom of the wadi's canyon at the edge of a plunge pool he laid on his side looking at Ogaz. His breath had calmed but his shoulder burned as if it caught fire from the inside out. He hovered his fingers over the opened skin and felt the hot wetness there. He winced and closed his eyes and rolled off of it.

"I'm tired of dying," he said.

He turned his head and saw the dead [bosun] kneeling two yards away, clearly not dead. His black garments dripped water and when he saw Orc looking he held up two bony fingers as if to say that's twice.

Orc unlooped the [Skyshard]'s leash from his wrist and flung the sodden thong onto the ground. He tried to see the wound on his shoulder but he couldn't turn his head that far. Ogaz sat up slowly and spat and rubbed his eyes with both hands and saw the [bosun]. He jumped up and away and the dead man made a choking noise from where he knelt as if laughing without the benefit of air.

"Orc," said Ogaz, and he looked between him and the [bosun] and back again.

"He's the one from the forest,” said Orc. “He pulled me from the flood. You too by the look of it."

"It's risen."

"Seems so."

"It's unclean. Worse than humans. No trusting."

"You're welcome to kill him, but I don't think it'll do much good."

Ogaz reached for [Booky's blade] but his hand came away empty. "Oh. Ogaz loses Orc's knife."

"Don't twist yourself up on it. It's just a knife."

"Ogaz knows better. Ogaz knows where Orc gets it."

"Well. You might've thought about that before you threw us into the flood."

The tusker smiled around his tusk and stub. "Sorry. Saand makes Ogaz promise to help Orc find stone. Says is too important. Says if Orc knowing where it's found then Orc must go and find. Says he just needs little push, so Ogaz gives. Is mistake."

"It’s not our first.” Orc wiped his face with his hand and slowly rolled his head around and noted where the pain started and how to avoid it. “Seems like living's just a long line of mistakes and they'll likely look that way til we get to the end of it. Seems like we won't know what's right and what's mistook til it's too late to make any difference."

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The [bosun] watched them speak but gave no indication of understanding or sentiment. He reached behind his back and drew [Booky's blade] from his waistband and held it handle first toward Orc.

Orc said in human talk, "You always seem to have what I've lost."

The [bosun] turned away. His eyes were wet though who could say why?

"Dead can weep?" said Ogaz.

"That's all they're doing," said Orc. He took the blade from the sailor and tried drying it on his damp shirt. He looked at the [bosun]. "Remember Booky?"

The man turned back to him but said nothing.

"When she gave me this she said the world's a shit place that needs a good burning."

"What's Orc saying?" said Ogaz.

He told him.

Ogaz pointed over Orc's head. "World's already burning. Whole elven forest is burning."

He looked up the wadi and saw the great clay colored smoke covering the west and clumping across the north as if the sun and moons had seen enough disappointment during their billion year stares. Had seen enough of orcs and humans fighting and dying and dropping their warlike implements wherever they fell, in the flood, on the banks, under their slouching bodies. Had seen enough of riderless horses whirling amid the claws and gunshots and broken spears, fleeing across the wastes to wander until the clamor ceased, returning to stand over the bodies as still as memorials of some long ago conquest with their hindquarters in silhouette against the gathering dark and their heads lit in a soft red from the forest's embers and each of their globular eyes focusing the fire into a single sharp red pillar. Had seen enough of the most wretched of men slinking from body to body to pull precious heirlooms from stiff fingers while passing over folded letters to loved ones. They had seen enough, and so they wheeled behind the smoke to paint the earth in reds and wait for the sky's next flood to wash away what men had done to it.

Orc watched the smoke and thought of the mother consumed in the conflagration. Becoming she'd call it. Her long held secret lay bare within the matchstick forest. Glowing from the heat released by her transformation. It felt wrong to enter there. A kind of betrayal. As if trees could be betrayed. Still, it felt wrong. He would not walk from snag to snag in the acrid air searching for her corpse, footfalls swirling pieces of her in narrow circles that curled over the ground like the hair of the dead.

She'd [shown] him where to find her twin. One of four split from one. He would need to leave the home his people had twice given their lives to defend and go back to the home that had taken his life to leave. A home he hated before and now hated more than before because now he knew there was no other place he felt he had belonged.

He looked at [Booky's blade] and flipped it in his grip and offered its handle to the [bosun]. "Take it."

"What's Orc doing?" said Ogaz.

"Making mistakes," he said. Then in human, "You can pilot a boat."

The [bosun] looked silently from Orc to Ogaz and back again. He nodded slowly and his unhinged jaw opened and closed with the movement.

"Across the sea."

The man looked east as if the sea already lay before them. He turned back and shrugged as if to suggest it was no large task.

Orc pushed to his feet. "Follow me."

"What we doing?" said Ogaz.

"Setting the world on fire."

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> -1 [Rage]: ...ultimately I believe he had to accept who he was for who he was, and he had to respect the limitations of natural law and divine order as he was taught to do... (8/10)

> +1 [Awareness] ...if there's one thing I know about him it's that he don't give a shit about no authority, not what the world gives him nor the priestly kind... (7/10)