'As in Supernova,' she thought at him and looked up. She somehow knew what one was, but not where she had learned the information, or when; nevertheless she continued with, 'isn't that too grand for a little snake?'
He looked down at her humble remark and would would have smirked were it not for the beak. To both bare kinsoul and be able to utilize spirit energy he had no doubts that this little snake would become someone of great importance, that is if she survived. Many would sense her potential and try to snuff her out to eliminate future competition.
"Young one, you are kinsoul. You need a name and not just anything will do. Besides, before I became an Itsumade I studied the stars and planets. You would honor me if you accepted the name."
She paused for a moment, having lived only a short while in this world meant that she didn't know what was in store for her, but having a name to go by made her feel secure. She made eye contact with him and nodded.
His eyes squinted up and he raised his head with a little pride. "Good. Well then, Nova," he said with a tilt to his head, tasting the word and setting it in stone, "My old name was Marcos, but in this life I have chosen to go by Beil. It means a lumberjack or their axe, at least that's what my master told me it meant, for all I know it could be an insult and she tricked me."
Nova smacked her tail tip on the dirt and her body bounced with what he assumed was the equivalent of laughter.
'I don't mean to laugh,' she thought, confirming his speculation, 'but lumberjack? You chose your own name and you chose lumberjack?'
"What's wrong with lumberjacks," he asked in mock insult but on the inside he was bubbling with amusement. This kid was sassy. He liked it.
'Oh nothing, but you have given me a name meaning star explosion, why didn't you give yourself a more powerful sounding name?'
It was a bit of a personal subject, name giving. Either your parents or your masters bestow the name, usually. He had neither for many years, living as a bird that flitted from one danger to another. That was another reason why he scrutinized whomever stuck her soul into a small defenseless creature, with such similarly unfortunate circumstances she probably had to escape death more times than she deserved.
But his savior, so to speak, the one who stopped his death on the wire he'd crashed into, and later again protected him when he was downed by a cat, was a lumberjack. His axe had cut the wire and scared the cat. His axe was his livelihood. Without it he was but an Ogre. As such, Beil felt proud to have named himself such.
"To mock the lowly laborer is to curse at the support under your feet."
She blinked. 'I'm sorry, what?'
"To doubt the importance of the common people and what they provide for this world, no matter how small an impact, is to doubt what could happen if all of them stopped their actions at once. What would happen if all lumberjacks stopped their work? What if all farmers stopped their till and harvest?"
It clicked and she felt shame. 'No wood for houses or to burn in the winter, and no food.'
He was quiet, letting her words be the last of the conversation so that they hung in the air all the heavier. It was one thing to be more than slightly biased towards lumberjacks, but his wisdom to make this into a learning opportunity for her was a much better choice then just telling her what happened to him personally. It also stabilized why choosing the name for himself felt like the right choice.
She was silent for a long time with her head resting on the rock in front of her, so long in fact that he would have assumed she had drifted off were it not for her occasional blinking. She snapped out of it when his shiny brown beak nudged her off the rock.
"Hey, don't dwell on it, kid. I know you were just teasing me, I didn't take it as an insult."
'Oh, it's not that, I knew you didn't, it's just... I don't understand why I can't remember my life before I became a snake. I have this strange inkling that my origin was just as humble as a lumberjack but every time I try to think back it's like a wall of fog pushes me away.'
He faltered. "You can't remember anything?"
'Well, no, I remembered Supernovas, and how to think words, and I keep having emotional responses to things like they have impacted me recently but no actual memory attachment.'
Beil sat in silent consideration just like she had only a moment ago. If she had no memories at all, not just splotches and gaps missing but literally nothing, that was a problem.
"Let me tell you of my memories, what few I have left anyway."
She shifted and looked at him, wanting to destract herself from her lack thereof.
"There are many things that I find are most precious in this world: the stars, young life, and the people I am close to. In my past life I had lost all three. Before I came to be in this world I was an astronomer. I studied astrophysics and chemical compounds of distant planets, I found a star cluster that would have been named after me if someone in China hadn't found it first. I loved my work, but when an opposing force decided they wanted control over the resources we lived on, we were drafted to fight in the war for our lands.
"My brother Edger and I, we were forced to train for this war against our will, and when he refused to kill anyone he was sent to the surgical tent to work as a nurse, but they were raided and killed off so that our side didn't have a chance to recover. Needless to say we were losing our men much faster than they were. What are you doing?"
She had climbed up hid body as he spoke and rested in a coil on his feathery back just at the base of his snake neck. 'You seemed really sad when you were talking about your brother. I don't have arms so this his how I'm hugging you. Also you're warm and my instincts told me to do it.'
He chuckled and shifted his wing to brush against her in greatful solidarity before continuing.
"Where was I? Oh." He took a deep breath and started. "When it inevitably came, I wasn't ready for my death. I was angry and vengeful, and I was still in mourning for my brother. All of that emotional energy caused my soul to linger and it found its way into a bird's body. I lived that way for many weeks, barely a few steps ahead of dying again, until one day I followed a Troll because I had no idea what it was and curiosity was a burning question, so as the door it had opened was shutting behind it I slipped in after."
'But what about your old world? Why would you so readily leave it behind?'
"What was I supposed to be doing in that world anymore? My homeland was burned, overtaken, and I was a bird. Was I supposed to find a female, one without my level of intelligence so as such I was essentially going to mate with an animal, and raise a clutch of eggs? Me? With an adult human's mind? That doesn't feel right."
'Okay, I get it,' she stammered, her mind too flustered to project the words more clearly. He nodded, now that he had defended his decision he continued.
"In this strange new world my body almost instantly started to change into what I am now, though it took many years to complete the process. With every life threatening incident I turned into more of a hodgepodge of creatures, first I was a bird, then once I'd eaten enough spirit energy I became part snake, and somehow my wings lost their feathers and I was now part bat, and since my mind was still around I even managed to get a human face. For a long time I thought of myself as a monster."
.
'You're not a monster.'
He turned his head around to look at her.
"I know that now, there are many more of my race. I am not a freak of nature or an accident, my soul just happened to find something to stabilize into. The bird as only a bird was but the start of my journey."
She nodded.
"By the time I had gathered up enough strength and was able to go back to the human world, the war had long since been over and everything had become peaceful, but very different. There were computers now, and jet planes, and everyone had a phone. I had to hide everywhere I went so that I didn't cause panic. My homeland was now a mix of my people and the winners of the old war.
"There were very few of us left when I traveled worlds, and those that had survived were scattered across the nation, but after all that time they had bounced back. I was releaved that our legacy was not forgotten. I came back here determined that anytime I find a battle to be fought, or the remnants of one, I can use my knowledge to aid the recovery process. It's not worth it to mourn the dead and forget how to live. Your troll friend gave his life so that you could continue to live, so honor his memory by doing so and prove to him that you are worthy of his sacrifice. Find a worthy cause to honor him by."
She frozen and thought back to the cave. Sorrow washed over her quite suddenly until she realized what he had said.
'Wait, I don't think I told you that he was a Troll. Or what he did for me, for that matter.' He went silent and her body tension was like a spring as she waited for his explanation.
"He is... was a friend of mine. He specialized in body alteration healing magic, and I know it was him who took care of your eyes for you because he never mastered snakes, always giving them a second set of eyelids," he said with a soft tone to his voice, one of admiration, amusement, and sadness. She relaxed back into her original state and listened carefully.
"He was imprisoned within that cave for releasing a very important prisoner of war during the revolution here nearly fifty years ago. The cave used to be a small secluded paradise until someone thought it would be a perfect place to dump a rat infestation, but I knew that would not have bothered the old coot. He liked to raise them and utilize their spirit energy to keep himself occupied. So when you let me know that one of the rats you ate lacked the energy I immediately knew he was still alive in there."
'Why didn't you try to break him out? He was your friend.'
Beil burst out laughing and she was in fact a little angry with him for it until he explained, "That idiot told me that if I tried something so stupid he would break out himself, slap me into next week, and then go right back into the cave."
He giggled for a bit before recovering his demeanor. "The fact that he used all his remaining energy to not only give you eyes from nothingness but also set you free, you being a Kinsoul with a very strong will and mind, I'd say it is the greatest honor in the world for him. One last hurrah of magic medical aid and setting yet another trapped soul free. That troll was rebellious to the very end and regretted absolutely nothing about his choices."
When he looked back at her eyes and saw the fire within, a sense of pride warmed his heart. She was a strong woman, that little Nova.
Beil sobered up from his previous emotional outburst with a cough and stood up. Feeling like she was going to fall, Nova wrapped her neck around his as he walked, and it a good thing that she did. The forest around them was thick with brier bushes and as he stepped over them his whole body would tilt sideways, or he would duck low under half fallen logs and hanging vines.
'Where are we going?'
"You mentioned you lack all memories from before you awoke as a snake?"
She nodded and since his eyes were facing forward she was about to think it aloud when he nodded back. He must have felt her move. "That is not exactly normal, child. We must remedy that. I'm taking you to town."
She tightened her grip. 'I don't think they'll like me.'
"You? No, they'll find you as adorable as I do. Have you not tried to communicate with anyone besides the cave troll?"
Adorable? 'Um, no. I scared a guy before, though. And a horse. And maybe his, uh...'
"His what?" The tone of his voice sounded amused again, but gently curious too. She caved.
'The horse's rider was a lumberjack.'
Beil halted and stared at nothing for a moment before he burst out laughing for a second round.