The man turned to look at him. In the time he spent turning, he had already begun to absorb his features; his jawline, his hair, the tint of his eyes. Everything had changed, but in subtle ways. Caesar, with his attention to detail, would note each individual difference discounting the obvious change of physical shape. He seemed more . . . human. He couldn't help but feel like that animalistic aura to him had diminished, which was something of mixed feelings to the man, who had come to love the bird for what he was by day and by night. Before he could take in more of his visage, he had to pause. He wasn't quite sure if this man was real or not, before him, as he had been in Caesarion's sight before - falsely. Since he had adopted Rhysol's mark he had been given the power to tap into things he had never before glimpsed upon. He could see people's weaknesses, their lies, their faults. He could cast hexes upon them or manipulate them to his bidding.

And also, he would see things constantly, whether surrounded by others or not. Darkly things - the ill history of the land he walked upon, perhaps not directly but as an energy that lingered over him. This, combined with the strange paranoia that sometimes followed the use of his hypnotic magic, he could sometimes find himself not trusting the things that appeared before him. And yet if he ignored them, he could find himself in peril; ignore an enemy? Death could follow. Ignore an ally? A loss of opportunity. These false visions tormented him for the very reason that if they were not false indeed, his mistrust could lay fatal.

. . . 

He could never know, but he could only trust his eyes and trust his sense of touch. Noah felt real, from the contact he held of his shoulder. He felt real from the air leaving his lips as he spoke, and from the words that imparted from them; his name. Caesarion. And then a question. 

[i]Why are you in Kenash?[/i] Caesarion couldn't answer that very easily. It was a long and complicated story. But he could try to give a brief synopsis, especially after the words that followed - words that sounded painful, even desperate, asking why he would be here after he had taken the initiative to leave Noah behind.

"I am here because God called me here," he replied. That was not a good answer, and he knew that, even saying it. But it was so much easier to say, for now, than a life's worth of words trying to justify why he left. "Much has happened to me since we last spoke. I have been changed, Noah. Darkness encroached on me, as it had been doing for all my life. When it came, I did not flinch. I made it mine." It was true, that the darkness came. In what form? The form of Rhysol? Of the Sahovan hunters, the ones that nearly flayed him alive? Of the boy, in Syliras, that he once befriended; the one that now lay dead? 

All of the events that brought him here were ones that he needed to face alone, in the wilderness, where Caesarion exceeded . . . guided only by the will to survive. And as a result, he had emerged from his tribulations as a man unlike the one he had always been. 

"Let me tell you something, Noah," he drew closer. The man was almost near enough to whisper, brazenly, from mouth to ear. "I can see inside of your heart, just like I could before, when we were bound. I see your hesitation. I see your anger, and your grief. These emotions are not new to me, and I don't fear them. What I fail to see in you is hatred of me, and absent this hatred I instead see desire. So would you tell me why you are not smiling as you see me again, after all this time, and instead grimacing as if I am the devil come to destroy you?" The man's hand moved from his shoulder, running down his back. His other hand, gripping his waist. He did not desire an argument, nor an altercation, those things that always came upon him where he would rather find an embrace. 

Noah had been far away for too long, and if this image was not one falsely implanted by God or by magic, then it was of the man that he came to love with the intensity of a star. Even if that love had dwindled in Noah, Caesarion still felt it somewhere, veiled by curtains colored in ambition and pride. He felt that love now, and magnifying as his body drew nearer and nearer.