The Book of Many People

Celestar and Nalifrom

Celestar woke up to a collection of burning embers in his face. Precisely one second later, a bucket of water was dumped over his head, presumably to keep him from burning himself.

He sat up with a groan, eyes blearily blinking the water and sleep from themselves while his head lolled back and forth on his neck, searching for the owner of the bucket.

Behind him stood a short, pale man wrapped in torn black cloth. Black fabric was stretched over his mouth and nose, obscuring everything but his white eyes, twinkling merrily out from underneath a tattered black hood and a few locks of white hair spilling off his head. He was leaning to the side a little, bracing a wooden bucket against his slender hips.

Celestar eventually turned around and saw the man and his bucket. When he did, he immediately dropped his torso back onto his soggy bedroll and groaned again.

"Good morning, Nalifrom," he said. "Thanks for the wake-up call."

Nalifrom, the short, pale man, said nothing, but beneath the covering over his face, his lips curved up into a smile, and his chest convulsed a little with laughter. Good morning to you also, and you are welcome, he signed. Nalifrom could not speak.

They remained still for a few moments more, enjoying the rays of the early morning sun that filtered down through the branches above them, dappling the ground beneath them with patches of blue. Wind rustled through the trees, making the shadows of their leaves dance across the ground.

It also made Celestar cold, so he got up and started another fire. Nalifrom disappeared and returned with a shirt and a blanket that he passed to his young friend. Celestar took them gratefully; such a day in late autumn was not kind to water-chilled skin.

Breakfast was strips of seared boar and a honey-sweetened oat gruel, piled high with delicious, teeth-purpling crowberries. Nalifrom took off his half-mask to eat, popping meat and fruit delicately between his scarred lips. Celestar was less refined; the seemingly fey and mystical spirit stuffed everything he could into his mouth, chomped down hard, and gulped it down the hatch.

They ate beneath the waxing rays of the sun, the blue light catching strands of hair displaced and frizzed up by sleep, making Celestar's head glow. His green eyes sparkled happily under his sharp brows. Every time he tipped his head back to swallow, the light glanced off the tip of his nose and made it shine. The firelight splayed across his face in shades of carnelian, obscuring the natural olive tone of his skin.

Sometimes Nalifrom wished he could look like that, for he was pale and too-thin; the skin of his face seemingly stretched over his cheekbones, a network of white veins visible underneath. His irises were colorless and extremely off-putting. His hair was dull white, like rime. But all alone in the forest like they were, there was no need to be beautiful, so Nalifrom didn't let himself be too upset about it.

Celestar was completely oblivious to the concept of beauty. He was a simple person of simple wants, and those wants were generally 1) Be alive, 2) Eat food, 3) Hang out with Nalifrom, and 4) Do fun things. Sleep was also a priority, but he didn't love sleep as much as he loved swimming, or climbing.

Celestar and Nalifrom lived somewhere called Lenari's Forest, the greatest collection of trees currently known to intelligent life. Celestar was a young creature of fourteen years, all boundless energy and inquisitiveness and quick quick eyes forever dancing over the world. Nalifrom was old, older than even the forest itself, witness to the slow turning of ages, but only a witness. He had been a prince, once, of a great people, and he would have been a king if not for the will of his father. Now his people were gone, and his father and the child he favored were dead, leaving him to roam the world alone for as long as he could live. Which turned out to be a very, very long time.