“My psychology cannot be compared well to a human. I mean, obviously I am human, but I have lived so long and spent so much time joined with the ocean….” He trailed off as if to let time reflect the expanse of the sea.

“I do not recall much from my early life, yet I still have a sense when things are important to me. Take my knife, for instance.” Tavras pulled out the stone knife and actually gave it to Val to hold.

She fingered the ridged blade and turned it over in her hands.

“I think that I told you once that boys made knives in my tribe as a rite of initiation.”

“Yeah,” she said, a sense of her own nostalgia coming on. Val remembered how sorely she had struggled to make spears on his Paradise, and he had boasted about his knife back then.

“I can’t remember if that’s actually the case,” he admitted. “Sometimes I get the feeling that I did not make this knife at all—someone else might have made it entirely.” A giggle of a laugh came from him, almost deranged compared to his usual, cheerful guffaw. “I also feel like I did not belong to any tribe, sometimes.”

“That’s a whole nother story though,” Tavras said, and smiling, he pointed to his face. “I do not look like someone who should be called ‘Tavras’ at all, do I?”

As an old Marivench name, his dark skin and flat, broad features made him look anything but that.

“Marivance happened to be the first place that I came ashore, after I had regained my sense of self enough to return to land. I kept the first name that I was given since I cannot recall my own.”

Val nodded along and tried to say something encouraging. Earnestly, she reiterated, “Tavras is your name.”

“Yes it is, but that does nothing to change the void that I feel inside.” Tavras turned his gaze out to the distant woodland.

Another pause persisted.

Starting anew, Tavras said, “I learned ancient Ompulan to talk to the souls that return to Atlatl on All Souls’ Day. It was funny learning the language because I had received remarks about my strange accent, but I refused to unlearn it. I was thinking maybe that was the true Ompulan accent; maybe I could have been a resident of the Ompulo Empire.” In his act of storytelling, his voice lifted with hope only to be discarded at once. “When I spoke to the souls in Atlatl, no one liked my accent.”

Val had her held tilted and brow creased as she hung onto his every word.

“I was told that I looked and sounded Siuatlan. Have you ever heard of a Siuatlan people?”

She shook her head.

“Me neither, aside from that. I was probably from some small tribe—too insignificant for history to record—that paid tribute under the Ompulo Empire. I learned the language of the people who derided me for my accent, but I don’t even know the language that my accent came from!” A clear tone of frustration was creeping into Tavras’s voice the more that he talked.

“Tavras,” she cooed, the name in which he felt little connection. Tightening her lips, she also tightened her fingers over the back of his hand. “This sounds like it would be so frustrating not to remember your own identity.”

More excited, she spoke faster. “You know, you’re telling all of this to the person who can see the past. Maybe we can work together to help you remember your early years. I could even try to figure out how to let you come with me into the past so you can see your old memories for yourself!”

Val had already offered to do something similar for Arius. It would be a million times better doing that for Tavras, assuming everything could stay exactly the same between them—no embroiled passions one way or another.

“Honestly, I have been tempted to ask you,” Tavras said and cast his gaze to the side, “but you need information as a starting point, don’t you? I have no information to offer you. I don’t want to burden you with seeking out my past. I already gave up long ago.”

“I just need three of who, what, where, when, and why.” Val held up her fingers as she spoke with a gleaming smile. “The further back in time it is, the less accurate I need to be. Who: I’m looking for Tavras. I’m sure that your same name should work because you’re the same person either way.”

A name was like a variable which could be changed without a change in meaning. At his core, Tavras was the same person whether he had a Marivench or Siuatlan name. Val held that belief firmly to heart, at any rate.

She continued, “What: the Siuatlan people going about daily life. Where: somewhere on the continent. When: however many thousand years ago. I can be that inaccurate because it was long ago! Why: um, that is irrelevant in this case. I just need three of the things to start a vision!”

“Let’s do this another time perhaps. We need to focus on your conundrum for now.” A heavy sarcasm tainted his voice, but Tavras quickly cleared his voice.

“Let me apologize. I should be more serious. For all I know something serious happened to you.” Glum, he seemed to take on the guilt for something that had not even happened.

Her front teeth gnawed her lip, wanting to so badly correct any rash misconception or fear of the unknown. “Right.” First, she needed to figure out if Tavras would continue as her ally that she could even help. “How does all this relate back to your reason for hating Arius?”

“I have a strong sense of intuition in regards to certain things. I feel attached to this knife and never want to lose it. I feel compelled to look after sea monsters, especially hydras are my favorite. I enjoy looking after children, but the thought of having any of my own is simply unbearable. It doesn’t bother me to end hundreds of thousands of mortal lives in a wave, probably because it reminds me of the lost city of Atlatl.”

At that last point, Tavras gave a big shrug. “For better or worse, I always listen to my inherent disposition. It feels like it is all that I have left of myself. Ever since he was born, I hated Arius.” That spite became dramatized in his voice. “It’s as simple as that, really!”

Val blinked once, then she blinked again. “You never thought to restrain the urge to hate him? He was a completely innocent baby at one point. Even if the old you were somehow cruel enough to blindly hate a child, you can still improve yourself and become a better man!” The same went for wiping out two-hundred thousand mortals in a tsunami.

“Oh, of course. I’m not heartless. I wanted his mother, Alyvia, to give him to me to raise. She should have been present with Fang and Iharu!”

“Um, but if you claimed to hate Arius ever since he was born, I could see how his mother did not exactly want to hand him over.”

With his eyes peeled up to the sky, he mused, “Nothing good will ever come of Suvier’s spawn. While I would have had to resist the urge to snap his little neck, I would have raised him as well as I did Fang and Iharu.” Tavras held his tense hands about the size of a baby’s head and let them relax.

“Yeah,” Val drawled. “No mother would give you her child.”

Two of his fingers stuck out to her. “She let me have two of them: Iharu and Fang.”

Her eyes rolled. Though she had learned a lot about Tavras—a lot of bad things—she had not come any closer to knowing if he would do bad things to her.

“I’ve talked plenty about myself now. Does that help you feel better about confiding in me?”

Val let a gulp trail down her throat, as she knew it would be her turn to talk next if she could even trust Tavras.