1st of Cylus, 722
Russel had never spent a Year's Dawn without his family close at hand.
Peering out the window of the small room provided for him during his recovery, Russel wished for white snow instead of the raining ash which dusted down from the sky. He sat upright in an army-supplied cot, when all he wanted to do was crawl into his childhood bed. He yearned for the wide plains of the Kandor Clan's farms, the rolling hills of wheat and the small orchard they kept in the back of the homestead. The games he and his siblings would play with each other, the mischief they'd find themselves in, and even the inevitable scoldings they all individually and uniquely earned from the clan elders.
He would take a thousand scoldings every trial of his life just to be close to them now. He would gladly traded everything he had seen and done in the war, every accolade or honor he could have ever earned in service, just to see the smile of kin on this night. He'd give it all away to find enough strength to crawl out of bed and find a way home.
But winter was too deep in his bones, and even moving an arm underneath the covers proved an effort to great for him. His face turned red and ruddy from the effort of demanding his limbs obey him, but nothing could convince the offending appendages to budge an inch. Another delightful aspect of Ashan's curse, Russel supposed. It wasn't enough to hang him for his crime against the Immortal, to push blooms through his skin and thorns through his veins, to force him to carry the stench of death with him wherever he went, and to sever a part of his being that he didn't even know was there. No, he absolutely needed to be bound to the bed during Cylus as well.
Bitter thoughts to match a black mood.
Russel winced as he felt a fresh bloom bloodlessly sprout on his exposed shoulder. His teeth grinded together as he felt roots spread underneath his skin, twisting and tearing through muscle so that it might find purchase a nearby section of bone. He couldn't even move in response to the pain. His body had quickly gone rigid after he woke in the morning, and for breaks now all he could do was stare in horror as the slow spreading growths quietly tore through his skin. His face wasn't even capable of curling in disgust in response to the corpse-stench which wafted out from the budding blooms. Forced to watch his own form atrophy, unable to even give a disapproving twist of his lip or furrow in his brow.
So he was forced to sit and watch the morning spin by, leaving him behind. Leaving him wanting and waiting, dreaming of better days he had only an arc ago. Wistful memories quickly turned sour by a rising frustration, and Russel so tired of it all. He was tired of the world just happening to him. He was tired being bound by an Immortal's inequity of judgement. Most of all, he was tired not being an active participant in what he could or couldn't do with his body.
He owned himself.
The sharp stabbing of a vine piercing a vein proved him a liar quick enough. Russel didn't mind too much, however. Pain was a powerful motivator.
He turned his mind from the vines, down to simplest part of his extremities. His hands had rested on-top of his sheets before his body had gone rigid and inflexible, and though he could not see his fingers from the position his neck had frozen in, he could feel them all the same. Trying to tense the muscles around his fingers sent roaring waves of pain up his arm, forcing a pitiful whimper to life from behind the Kandor's motionless lips. Sweat pooled on his brow as he tried to force his way past the angry thorns that dug into his arm with every attempted movement, and tears joined that cocktail of misery soon after that.
Ragged, exhausted breaths raged out from Russel's nostrils. His body refused to move. Even trying to lift his finger was like a tree trying to uproot itself. Something in him screamed with every brute force attempt to make his body move the way it used to.
Then it struck him. He couldn't move like he used to, because his body wasn't like it used to be. Whatever these vines and thorns and blooms had done to him, whatever mark Ashan's hatred had left on his soul, it had fundamentally altered his being. Both in spirit, and in structure. A tree couldn't lift itself up the roots, but it could bend and sway with the wind.
He would've smiled if it didn't hurt so much.
He returned his focus back to his fingers. They sat on top of the clean, if simple, sheets of his bed; having moved not one inch since he was bound in this position. He figured isolating his focus would help achieve something relatively easy, but perhaps isolation was the problem? His muscles had been corded together by his curse, wound by vines that seamlessly and painfully flitted in between through his body. What was separate before was now connected in new and unknown ways.
Russel visualised how his body moved before. Regimented. Segmented. Every part fulfilling its purpose. A tree uprooting itself so that it could learn how to march. He then cast his mind back farther, before the military, before his movement even had any meaning. When he moved just for the pleasure of it, when he was child first learning how fast he could run. He saw himself, younger than he was even now. A child, laughing and darting through the fields of rolling grain on his family's land. Arms stretching high as he reached for the next branch on an orchard oak he was not supposed to be climbing. Feeling the trunk he wrapped himself around shift with his weight. Matching the tree as it bent and swayed with the wind. Its movement didn't come from the branch, but the core. The center of it.
His focus shifted from his finger, rolled up his arm, and rested at the place his torso met his stomach. His core. His center. He let his impulse, his need to move, become the wind; traveling from the center of his being, up his spine, through his should, down his arm, and finally into his index finger.
It twitched.
Small, and sudden enough that if Russel hadn't felt it, he would've thought he imagined it. But it was there. A twitch! Movement! If his jaw wasn't still locked shut, he would have laughed open-mouthed!
Speaking of, the youth traced his movement from his core, up his spine, and into his jaw. His will was the wind, and though the movement was much subtler, it still carried through his body. Silently, swiftly, his mouth fell open.
"Ha!" Russel exclaimed, delighted to taste the air on his tongue again. Over and over, he changed the way he thought about his movement, and over and over, his body responded in kind. He had to put active thought towards it, but it wasn't long before he regained mobility in his arms, his torso, his spine, and face.
It wasn't so much as he was re-learning how to move, that process would have been excruciating and taken an immense amount of time. Instead, he was rediscovering the intention behind his movement. Utilizing the new pathways so graciously gifted to him by Ashan to reinterpret the way his body occupied space. It would take time, but Russel was sure that it would become an unconscious aspect of his life with enough training.
Taking a full breath with his upper body, Russel felt the subtle ways his body moved in response. From his lungs, to the top of his head and all the way to the base of his spine. He could feel his the top of his thighs twitch in response. The youth was eager to test them, and his body appeared to be in agreement. Using his translated intention, the Kandor swung his legs wide from out under the sheets. The force was too much, and he nearly toppled at the movement. A quick change of impulse, and his arm snapped out to catch himself on the frame of the bed.
Slower then, he decided. He carefully adjusted his hips back to being perpendicular with his torso, brushing his toes against the stone. Gently, he breathed down into his lower extremities, pushing from his core and through the new bindings his musculature had taken on. He could feel the impulse carry through his legs, and as he shifted his weight onto them, he knew that they would bear him safely. With one final, full breath, he let the wind of his intention push himself onto his feet.
There was a moment of unsteadiness, but he did not falter. No matter the sprouting blooms or the grasping vines, his body remained his own. And he was certain that by next arc, he'd be able to run through thosing rolling Kandor hills with the rest of his clan.
Ashan be damned, he would never spend another Year's Dawn without his family at hand.
