tamingthemuse | Prompt# 328 - Conformity - Untitled - Tekia

Title: Untitled Nano 2012
Fandom: original
Prompt: conformity
Warnings: none
Rating: PG
Summary: For a very long time, Nazca has avoided facing his crimes, but with e world changing around him, it looks like his past is coming to find him.

Nazca had been alone so long that sometimes he wondered if he still remembered how to speak. He often sat in silence for hours, working in his garden that yielded only enough for him to survive, sitting before the fire late at night, sewing close the rips his clothes gathered from age, or merely staring out at the vast expanse of desert before him.
Once he had lived in a grand city that arose from the wealth of a river valley, the towers of the buildings reaching the sky, the people numerous and so alive. Once he had been well respected and loved even, but that was a long time ago and far away in his memories.
Since his exile, time had moved on and left him behind. He had been left here in this harsh terrain and forgotten by all. Most of the time, he was alright with that.
Until he remembered that he used to speak. He used to be a master of words. He had been a charmer, a magician. Words like wine used to slip off his tongue and dazzle people far and wide.
Now he wondered if he could even charm a snake.
There was one outside the door, his mind told him, he'd seen it last night and had no doubt that the creature had made a home in the dry ground next to the wall of his tiny home. Maybe they could be friends instead of strangers sharing a building.
Then he scoffed at himself for his thoughts and shoved away from the fireplace. He had been alone so long that he forgot what it was like to be around another living thing. Plants aside, no creatures ventured this far into the desert unless they were in the cold grip of death, and at that, no human or demon or angel had come to see him in a very long time.
Stars glittered in the night sky peeking through his open shutters and Nazca took a moment to read what they had to say, although they had not changed in a very long time.
Humans were taking over the world and the vast powers of the magical ones were naught more than a smudge of a smear on the expanse of blue black sky. The stars littered the sky in ways out here that he never remembered from the cities he had once lived in. Sometimes he was happy looking up at the sky and seeing that clutter he was not allowed to be a part of. He would get lost in it all.
In his youth, maybe he had been willing to fall into that conformity and do as society bid, but now he was too used to following his own rules. He slept when he wanted, never mind the cycle of those around him. He ate sitting at his table or even outside sitting in the sandy dirt that he had forced to yield food to him. He dressed in rags, or in fine robes of petal dew, whichever struck his mood. If there were only the stars and the sand to see him, so be it.
He was used to being alone, and didn't need words to express himself.
He used to love words. They were his skill, once, but now, now he was sure that they were a curse.
It had been so long since he had spoken, but it had been even longer since his own words had turned on him. Bespelled him and made of him a villain. Turned him into something even he could not stand to allow to live.
And that was his punishment, wasn't it? To live when he would have much rather died for his crimes. For what he had brought down upon his people, the people he loved and the people that had brought him forth into the world.
Regret sat on his chest heavy and stifling even after all these years. Those that he had done ill toward had long since passed on into the next life, and their children's children's children's had long since forgotten him, but still he lived, and still he suffered for his crimes. It was no more than he deserved. In fact, he deserved so much more punishment.
Forever locked away from his people, a man of a race that thrived on touch and the presence of others, it was enough to drive one insane, and sometimes, when he tried to remember words, any words, he wondered if that was what had happened sometime between then and now. Had he gone insane from loneliness? Had his guilt and sorrow taken away his mind and twisted his soul into being happy here, alone with only the stars to see him stand tall, worrying his bottom lip as he read that the last in his family line was dead? Had his mind created a contentedness here while the stars warned him of a grave danger spreading out over the world, changing it once more, knowing that he was the only one of his race left that could read the stars clearly and know that everything the world had ever seen was only prelude to the changes it was about to undergo?
~*~*~
A lizard made a home it Nazca's garden, eating the tiny bugs that had also found a foothold in the leaves and vegetables. When Nazca worked in the garden, the lizard scuttled away to sun itself on a rock, green eyes watching him warily. Nazca didn't talk still, for what was the point in talking with a creature that couldn't understand nor respond. At night, when the sun was gone and the sand had lost it's warmth, Nazca left his door open for the lizard to sneak inside, close to the fire, away from the cold.
Weeks later, the lizard found a convenient transport on Nazca's shoulders while in the house, and even while Nazca was busy in the garden.
It sat with Nazca as he built a loom and wove a blanket out of leaves and skin's of fruits. It tickled his cheek with it's soft tongue as Nazca sat on the sloped roof of his home, gazing up at the stars, reading their secrets. It dug it's claws in when the winds picked up and kicked up sand and dust into the nooks and crannies of the building. Nazca wrapped the lizard in a length of cloth, tied another around his nose and mouth, and tucked the lizard away in a cupboard while he went out into the storm to cover his poor garden.
When the storm passed, and he pulled the piles of sand off his garden and tended to the shocked lizard, Nazca gazed up at the stars and noticed a new star bright in the sky.
He had not seen a star that bright in a very long time and thus had to pull out the old scrolls and charts that had not been touched in a very long time. He had to dust the sand off them and carefully unroll them, the lizard making a very nice paper weight at one side and a jar of water at the other. He traced his fingers over the paper, ignoring the words that he had forgotten how to read. Weeks passed hidden behind scrolls and covered in dust as Nazca tried to find the source of the bright star. Without words to guide him, Nazca felt nearly defeated, but he had been stubborn once upon a time, and Nazca would not admit defeat. He pulled scroll after scroll out of hiding and poured over them, trying to find anything that was similar to the star.
The storm had been great, he idly realized, bringing about the star and changing not only the earth, but the sky as well. He almost thought about how the rest of the world had faired during this star's brith. What really surprised him was that he had no urge to go out and find out. What had once been something that gnawed at his insides, the urge, the want to be around others of his kind, to leave and see the world and all it had, was now gone. He had adapted to his solitude and now reveled in it. He was content and, dare he say, happy alone here with only the lizard that was now the length of his arm for company.
With time, everything fades away, and even the want to understand the last link to his own past left him, letting him turn his attention back to growing his food in the tiny garden and tending to the shelter that seemed to be falling down around his ears.
He cleaned his shelter from top to floor and built bricks out of the dirt from his garden to fix the parts of the building the storm had ripped apart. As the lizard sunned on a nearby rock, Nazca wondered how he remembered how to do these things, but forgot others. His people had once been masters at everything they applied their talents toward, and he had once been the pinnacle of their reach, but now he was but a shadow of his old self.
At night, he stood before the small mirror he allotted himself, staring down at the face that had brought him low. While he still knew he had been great, back then he had allowed his greatness to be a fault instead of a blessing. He had been arrogant and stupid for all his brilliance. He had stood tall and fell hard.
His hair was shorn off just below his ears, the tips jagged and sharp from the knife that he used to cut it instead of the scissors he used to cut the soft fabrics he made from magic and dust. His skin, once so pale and fine was now sun darkened and hard from the years he had suffered under the open sky and against the constant barrage of sand on the wind. He was still tall, although much thinner. His ears were still long enough to balance out his face despite the short hair, but they were now tipped red from the constant sunburn. His yellow eyes had changed over the years and were no longer the yellow of the late harvest moon, but the dark brown of mud and earth. He wondered when that had happened.
He was changing just like the world around him was changing. And he never noticed.
He put the mirror away and went back to darning his trousers before the fire with the lizard sitting on his shoulder, the long thick tail resting heavily on his collar.
The sky didn't change after that, but the new star grew dimmer with every passing month, although Nazca didn't really notice. He lived every day as if in a haze, not really paying attention to the passing of time. It was easier that way, in the beginning, and it was still easy that way now. Letting time wash over him like a blanket protecting him from the harsh reality of his situation.
If he never thought about it, it couldn't hurt. When he didn't think about it, he was content. If he said it enough, he would believe it. He petted the lizard idly and turned his thoughts away from the painful.
He finished the blanket and hung the massive thing over the back of the building, giving his desert a bit of color. He started another and didn't wonder why he needed to, after all this time, make this place his home instead of his prison.
Maybe he was finally accepting his place. He thought he had long ago, but now it seemed as if he really was settling in. Only took a few thousand years.
Not long after the star appeared, only a few short years, everything changed.
Nazca dusted his hands of his trousers before he began cleaning up his gardening supplies for the afternoon. The lizard raced after him, kicking up a small sand storm as his tail whipped around behind him. Nazca stepped aside as the lizard entered their home before him. He let the heavy curtain drape close behind him and set the basket of tools on the nearby table. It was dark inside after the unfiltered sun, and Nazca pushed open his shutter, propping it up with a prop. He gazed out at the horizon, spotting a black dot wavering in the waves of heat. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make out just what he was looking at. Nothing had crossed that desert since he had all those years ago. The lizard climbed up his body, the sharp claws at the end of his long fingers digging into his clothes, until he was sitting on Nazca's shoulders.
They both stared at the black dot for a long moment. Then Nazca shook his head, dismissing it from his mind. If it was coming toward them, then it was coming and there was nothing he could do about it. So Nazca went back to his daily chores, mending the pot that had cracked in the fire the night before, fetching water from the well, and fixing the perch that the lizard had claimed as his own but had knocked off the table.
Hours later, Nazca glanced out the window and stared at the black dot that now was marginally larger on the horizon. He tilted his head to one side to consider his choices. If it were a large animal, he might have to fight it off for his life. Who knows how long the thing has been traveling in the desert, lost perhaps, hungry for sure. Was he tasty?
He licked his lips and glanced at the lizard. He was. There were memories somewhere in there of eating roasted lizard over pineapple and covered with a sweet sugar glaze. He can't ever remember eating roasted elf.
The sun set, and the desert cooled. Nazca lost sight of the black dot with the disappearance of the sun. He closed the shutter and sealed the curtain against spiders and snakes that were bound to sense the fire's warmth. Well, the snake that was holed up in the crack of the building's entrance way, although there were those tiny bugs that thrived in his garden.
The fire warmed a stew, and Nazca ignored how the smell filled the living area and probably escaped the building and floated out to whatever that creature was. It had to be large for him to see the dot this far away. Maybe a wolf, or a desert lion. Or perhaps it was a human or demon.
A demon or even an angel could make it easily into the depths of the desert, if they knew about him at all. Nazca's people had made sure that he had been forgotten as part of his punishment. His curse. His blessing.
With dawn, he could make out that the black dot wasn't black, but brown, and person shaped. His lips thinned and he wondered what brought this person to the desert. He stood in the door, watching this person steadily approach, never once deviating away from the path toward Nazca's shelter. The lizard stood on his shoulder, head tilted to one side so it too could watch the form come toward them, his tongue flicking in irritation. Nazca could relate.
He didn't want this person here. He had long ago gotten used to being alone, forever forgotten about by the whole world. He had forgotten how to be around people and he was quickly resenting this person's presence.
Lips thinned, Nazca went to his garden, setting the lizard on his customary rock and knelt to beginning tending to the fruit of his labors. He didn't watch the horizon. He didn't watch the progress of the person. He didn't care, only that the thing came and left. The quicker it left, the better for them all, he was sure.
Nazca stopped his work just before the zenith of the sun and sat at the side of his shelter, his blanket over his shoulders and head against the harsh glare of the sun on the bleached sand. He slept with his eyes opened to mere slits, the lizard perched on his covered head.
He napped and ignored how he felt something growing in his chest. Something he hadn't felt in a very, very long time. He had no name for it, but thought maybe it was excitement.
He told himself that he was quite happy being alone and forgotten, but he couldn't deny that he wasn't wishing the person wasn't coming, only that they left quickly. It wasn't that he wasn't allowed visitors, it was just that he didn't know what to do with them anymore.
When he had first been banished here, he had had visitors all the time. Well, maybe not. It was so long ago.
Maybe his close friends had visited him a time or two, those that didn't hate him too much for what he had allowed to happen. He didn't quite remember their visits. He remembered only the presence of one man standing in the shadows of his hovel, one hand resting lightly on the table he still used today as his green eyes bore into Nazca's. He couldn't remember the man's name, nor could he remember what the man had been saying. It had long ago become unimportant. It had long ago ceased to matter.
The lizard jumped off his shoulder and woke him from his nap. The sun had moved from directly above to a slant in the sky. Nazca stood, tossing the blanket off and stretching his arms over his head.
The dot that had turned person shaped now was close enough that Nazca could make out the color of the clothes worn, a brown on brown ensemble with a red sash over its hips. He could see a skin color, pale, but burnt by the sun. It was also a man shaped person.
He must have seen Nazca, for he raised one arm and waved.
Nazca picked up his blanket and ducked into the shelter, sealing the curtain and closing the shutter, barely giving the lizard time to dash in through the window.
When Nazca had been a free elf, humans were docile. They lived in their small tribes far away from the major cities, and they didn't bother the elves too much. They had their hands full with demons and angels. The three races were in constant battle of wills and power. The elves and even fae chose to ignore them, hoping that they would grow to understand that they were all the same race, only in different stages of existence.
The stars told Nazca that that had yet to happen. He had long ago lost hope that it would. They seemed to enjoy fighting each other. Having the three worlds collide didn't change that. Separating the three worlds didn't change it. They would forever and always fight each other, as if it was what they were created to do.
Humans were the weakest of the three races, the children compared to the demons and the angles. They were also the most numerous, spreading over all of the earth like fleas on a lion's hide. They were also the mostly likely to win the war they insisted on fighting with the angels and demons.
The other races scoffed at the elves' belief in this result, but the other races weren't as long lived as the elves had been. They didn't have millions of years of history to back them up. The demons were cold hearted and cruel; the angels powerful and wise, but it was the humans that learned and adapted and understood far better than the other two. It was the humans that learned to build better weapons. The humans that learned from their mistakes.
And the humans remembered.
This man that was approaching Nazca's hideout was a human, and proved that Nazca had been wrong all these years. He hadn't been forgotten.
The humans had remembered him.
~*~*~
The human arrived to find Nazca's door firmly closed against him, the window sealed tight. Nazca sat with his back to the wall, listening carefully to the sounds of the human searching the outside for him.
"Hello," he called out, but Nazca didn't understand. Couldn't understand. The language of the human was a strange thing to him. "Is anybody here?" He could hear the human walking around the shelter, from the door to the corner and back. There was a knock on the wall. "Please, I need your help."
The lizard scrambled up to Nazca's knee and flicked his tongue out at him. Nazca nodded. This was stupid of him. He shouldn't be cowed like this, but out there chasing off the human. He was frightened of a human. Biting his lip, Nazca stared at the lizard. The lizard was no help.
"Please," the human said again, and his words drove Nazca to his feet. He ripped aside the heavy curtain over the door and glared at the startled human.
He was tall. Much, much taller than Nazca could ever dream of being. The elf only came up to the man's shoulder. Growling low in the back of his throat, Nazca tipped his head back to glare up at the man.
The human gaped at him for a long moment before he finally, visibly forced himself to speak.
"You are the one they call Nazca?"
Words aside, Nazca could still remember his name. That was his name. How, after all these years, had the human's remembered his name? He narrowed his eyes even more. What sorcery was this? He waved a hand, maybe the old mime of a shooing gesture. The human stepped back, as if afraid Nazca, nearly half his size, was going to hurt him. Maybe more than just his name had survived the time, and the humans knew to fear his power.
Aside from being so much taller than him, the human was also wider. The breath of his shoulders filled the doorway, and would have cowed Nazca had he been a few steps closer. He wore his long yellow hair pulled up and away from his face in thick braids tied with a leather thong. It was almost white in spots where the sun had bleached it. His eyes were near in color to the plants Nazca worked so hard to harvest, the green of their new leaves sprouting up out of the dry dirt.
Right now, his eyes were wide with fear, heavy with exhaustion, and full of hope. “Please,” he said again, a hand held out in supplication. “You are my last hope.”
Nazca rolled his eyes and took a step forward, reached out and touched a finger to the man’s lips. He paused when the man flinched, but moved forward again once the man stopped moving. He touched the tip of his finger to the man’s lips and then brought the finger to his own. Magic moved between them, stealing the man’s words, his language from him and gifting it to Nazca.
As the magic flowed, Nazca felt it twinning around him, inside him, and through him. It was like the cool winds of the desert’s night, so welcome after the harsh dry heat of the day. It flooded him with the knowledge that he could do anything with his magic.
Resolutely, he shoved those thoughts and ideas away and focused on the spell that would allow him to speak with this human, that would allow him to understand him. Language filled him, crawled over his tongue and down his throat and into his lungs, expanding and billowing until his lips parted and he spoke for the first time in forever.
“What do you want?” His voice was soft, low and sounded like wheels over gravel. It hurt to talk, his throat aching with each word.
The human dropped to his knees with a clatter as the bottles and tools for food preparation settled around him. “You are Nazca, the mystic that lives where none dare?”
The words took a moment to make sense of themselves in his mind, and when they did, Nazca rolled his eyes. “Mystic, no. I am Nazca. You shouldn’t have come. Your trip was pointless.” He searched for the word he wanted. Found it. “Leave.”
The man scrambled to his feet, shoulders bowed as he tried to beg with his whole body. “Please, you are him. I have searched the known world and all that is left if you. I have traveled from the bowels of the human cities and through the archives of the demons to find the help I need and only the wisp of any help comes with your name attached.”
Nazca folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe. The lizard climbed up onto him once more, and the human’s eyes followed its path. “How did you find me?” The stars had long ago told him that his name hadn’t been spoken for ages.
The man tore his gaze from the lizard that lounged on Nazca’s shoulder, its tail stretching down toward the dirt floor near Nazca’s bare feet. “There are books covered in dust in the forgotten libraries of the ancient races.”
“Ancient races,” Nazca repeated, tasting the words, testing them to find if they meant what he thought they did. Ancient; old. Lost to time. Gone. Yes, that suited his people. “How did you find the libraries?”
He gave a half-hearted shrug. “I searched.”
Suddenly, Nazca shook his head. “If you found my name, then you should have found that you should never have come here.” He pushed away from the doorframe and shooed the human again. “Leave now, and speak naught of me, for only ill can come from having my name on your tongue.” He turned away, finished with the human and allowed the curtain to fall closed behind him.
His heart was fluttering rapidly in his chest, and he could feel a flush on his cheeks. Emotions ran rampant inside him. How long, how many years had it been since he had spoken? Since he had laid eyes upon another being that could speak with him?
His fingers trembled with the urge, the want to touch. He balled them into fists at his sides and slid to the floor once more, his fists pushing into his eyes to hold back the explosive riot of emotions. Longing to reach out and pull that human into his life. Words were beautiful, and they were like the water to his unquenchable thirst. How he longed for words to be a part of his life once more.
He bit his lips against the impulse to talk to the lizard now that he had had a small taste of speaking. He covered his mouth with both his hands and squeezed his eyes closed as he heard the human begging on the other side of the wall for his help.
What could he do that he hadn’t already done? What could he do that wouldn’t end in such tragedy? He had fallen into that trap once and feared falling for it again, knowing that it was oh so simple to walk that path and be blind to the faults until it was too late.
It was too late.
It was too late for him, for his people, and even for that man outside his door. He had already committed the worst crime, and everybody had paid the price for his foolishness. He had damned them all, and his punishment was to be locked away from the things that could make him happy.
After the man finally stopped begging at his door, after the sun had set, Nazca finally forced himself to stand. He felt numb after the flood of emotions ran their course. He moved without putting much thought into it, rekindling the fire, putting the hot soup over it to boil, and arranging the lizard over the heated rocks so that he didn’t burn off his tail. He sat at the table and stared out at the middle distance while the soup boiled. His body was still trembling. Something was clawing in his stomach, twisting his insides around until they were so tight that it put him off the soup. He pushed the soup away from him and watched as the lizard's pink tongue flicked out and began lapping up the broth.
He hadn't opened the window and thus couldn't see the stars, but he was too frightened to open it. He didn't know if the human was still there or not. He was too afraid to find out.
He crawled onto his cot and hugged his arms around his shoulders, his eyes squeezed shut against the knowledge that he was so weak.
He had thought that he could just turn everything off, but it only took one human to prove to him that he was truly no more prepared to face his solitude.
The lizard dropped onto him, startling him awake with the breaking of the dawn. Nazca sat up and ran a hand through his hair, blinking in the darkness. A moment later he remembered the human. He stood stiffly and carefully pushed the window open with his forearm. Just outside, the human had made camp, his bedroll laid out along the length of the shelter and the human was bundled up against the chill of the night. Nazca frowned down at him and felt the lizard climb up to peer out the window with him.
Nazca let the window close softly and bit back the feeling of pity he felt, knowing that the human had spent the night without a fire to keep him warm. He knew better than most how cold the desert could be without the sun to warm the sand. It wasn't his concern. It shouldn't matter to him at all.
He shook his head and swore he could feel the lizard watching, judging him.
Finally, he slammed his fist on the table and scooped up the bowl of dried dates from his garden out back and went to the door.
Even if he was sending the human away, he knew how hard that journey was and how much it had to take to go that distance. He knew that a body couldn't make it if it wasn't taken care of.
He pulled the curtain away, and the human started awake. He jumped to his feet and spun to face Nazca.
"You're-" He started, but Nazca interrupted him by shoving the bowl into his chest.
"Eat these, leave the bowl, and then be gone."
Reflexively, the man gripped the bowl to his chest. "Please help," he said, as if that was the only thing he knew how to say.
Nazca shook his head. "I'm not what you're looking for. Find someone else to help you."
"There is no one else. Only you."
"I don't have what you need."
"I believe you do. Please, try."
Nazca stepped back, retreating into his shelter. The human followed.
"Please."
Nazca hissed. "I can not."
"You won't know until you try. That's all I ask."
He paused in the doorway. His nails were digging into the palms of his hands as he fought with himself. He knew he shouldn't do anything. He should turn his back on the human, make the human forget him. He knew he should keep his word and never enter into the world of the living again. Keep himself locked away.
He sighed and turned to face the human, and he could feel the disappointment in himself growing. "What is it you need?"
With those words, he could feel his own guilt weigh down on his heart.
The human stepped forward, paused, then knelt to pick something up from under the blanket. He pulled free a child, a girl child, with a riot of black curls and big brown eyes. She blinked in the sun as her head listed to his shoulder.
"This is Green Sea, my sister's daughter." He lifted her as he stood, the little girl's arms and legs clinging to him like a vine on a tree. She turned her head so that she could keep her eyes on Nazca, and blinked slowly at him. Where the man had been hiding her, Nazca hadn't a clue.
She slipped one finger into her mouth and chewed on the tip as she stared at Nazca.
Nazca returned the stare and felt his magic boiling just under the surface. He shook his head.
"I can not help her." Even from this distance, he could feel the heat coming of her as if she were the one boiling on the inside. Her breathing was labored, and she looked frail, likely to break with a good gust of wind. She was sick, dying perhaps. "She is beyond my abilities."
The human shook his head. "You haven't even looked at her. Look!" He knelt and set the girl on her own feet. "She was born early, small enough that we weren't sure that she would make it through the night, much less the first year of life. She still lives, but she has had a fever since she was born. She's sick. No medicine man nor shaman has been able to help her. No demon cares enough to face me, and no angel will touch her. You are our last hope, Nazca of the desert."