Cataract

He doesn't remember much before the lightning strike. Just the overwhelming feeling that, in those moments just before, the Lord of Storm wanted him gone.

---

He woke blind. He'd been an adult before he dared to attempt the Trials; he knew what it was to see. But he blinked and blinked, lifted his claws to his face to be sure his lids were moving and he knew that he was blind.

A voice crackled in his head, tense as the air before a storm. Go from here, said the Lord of Storm. When you are sure of yourself - then you may return.

There was no way to take it but a challenge.

---

Water was welcoming. Water washed his eyes and their seers asked if he might not learn to see by other means, as they do - reaching into the future or the past, to see beyond simple sight. He tried, but he had not the knack. Still - they taught him. Creatures of water could see through vibrations and echoes, and with his element he learned to identify the flow of energy of living things.

But water, he thought, was not where he was meant to stay.

---

He found his home in fire, even if it took him years. A blind Necromancer - few knew what to make of him. Even he doesn't know, most days.

But his Lord of Storm sent him and his Lady of Plague gifted him and his Queen of Fire welcomes him.

Until he knows how or when or even if he may return - this is his home.

And he likes it here.

---

His sight comes back but never fully. He can make out light and shadow, learns to recognise vague forms by how they move and what drabs of colour he can make out. It is Herculanea who makes the frames for some spectacles, Porcelain who ascertains what kind of lens he would need, Silvanus who grinds the lenses down.

They help: it is less strain to try to see with the glasses than without and he joins Pestilentia working in the library. As she reads out each book, slow peaceful words almost lulling, he etches them onto tablets, written out so he, blind as he is, can read them on his own.

And then, in practice, he reads his tablets of stories to the hatchlings.

---

Not all the hatchlings cared to listen. After all, not every story is for every child. Some wandered off partway through, some fell asleep. Only some listened with rapt attention, and fewer asked questions.

"But why did the sun have to give way to the moon?" Clara asks. "It's stronger!"

"It's a parable," he reminds her gently. "And every strength can wane. If the sun is forever above us it would weaken - and it would not shine it's light where else it is needed. So the moon reflects some light back down to us that we may still see - that Shade might not touch us - and to let the sun recuperate before it returns to grant us full light."

Clara is quiet for a long stretch.

"But you can't see, can you Uncle Cat?"

She is not the first hatchling to ask so directly. She is one of the few who remains quietly, carefully aware of it all her life.

---

All children grow. Eventually most, if not all, children leave. Some of the hatchlings stay in contact with the clan, some do not. None stay as blatantly in contact with the clan as Clara does, sailing her huge vessel up the Flamerock River every now and again, her Maren friends preserved in pools and pods of water belowdecks.

Cataract would almost regret introducing them, but that they so clearly bring Clara such joy.

After how she handled the trials, after her trouble picking up the tricks that others of her caste are capable of, she needed some certain sense of who and how she was. Her ship has given her that and if that means she comes yelling and shouting down the loading plank to tell them so, then he cannot truly be sad of it.

---

"You know," he says, one quiet evening as he and Pestilentia are finishing tidying the library. "I'm starting to think I'm not long for this world."

He senses as Pestilentia swings her head around to look at him.

"It's not age, exactly," he muses. "But more like the static before a storm. I do not think I am meant to stay."

"Master Cat-"

Ah, Pestilentia. Always so rigorously polite.

"Master Cat, if you are concerned-"

"Not concerned. Just... aware, I suppose."

"I will ask Pleurisy to take a look at you."

He doesn't laugh at her for that. It would be easy to; he knows she means well but he knows just as clearly what the will of gods is for his future, now. He was sent here until he learned how to master his plague as much as the element of his birth. Who and what and how he is. He has done that. It is time for him to return home.

"All right," he says instead. "But I am a Necromancer too, my dear. I have been one even longer than your master."

Pestilentia's voice is quiet as she gently leads him from the library and back to his chambers.

"I know," she says. "But you Necromancers do not always agree, do you?"

She has always been, beneath her formality, a sweet girl at heart.

---

Dear Clara, He writes. His claws are well able to mark the letters into soft clay.

I rather feel as though my time in the lands of fire are coming to a close. I told you, many years ago, that I felt sent to Fire by my Lord of the Storm, and I feel now that I am being called home. Knowing as I do that you live perpetually at his periphery, might I ask you to be kind to an old dragon and help him make one last journey?

With the dearest of love to my most favourite of pupils,

From

Cataract, the once Clear-Sighted, Lightning-Struck, Last Necromancer of the Clan of Tethys, Those Bound By The Broken Bone.

Half as an afterthought and half to make her laugh he adds with a flourish, Your Uncle Cat.

"There," he says to young Pyrmal. "Could you see it fired and sent off, young lad?"

He smells the wafts of brimstone smoke that rise from the lad's primal eyes.

"Of course, Uncle Cat," he says. "Ameliore will see it taken to Clara as soon as it's solid."

And, Cataract knows, as soon as Clara sees it, she will turn her ship to come and visit. He prepares to pack his things.

---

"Uncle Cat!"

He hears the cry even before he hears the heavy thump of the gangway lowered onto the ashy, pumiced shore, then hears the inevitable thudding rush as Clara charges down the heavy metal and across the beach to embrace him. He lifts his arms to embrace her back.

"I have missed you, little clear-sight," he says.

"Do you have all your things?" she asks. "Do we have anyone you want to say goodbye to? Any familiars coming with?"

She's a barrage of questions, lively as ever, and he taps her on the forehead with one claw.

"Most everything is organised already," he says. "'Tia and Pyrmal will get things aboard if you let them. But before we go, let us say final farewells, hm? I believe your parents have a gift for you."

---

[The clan gifts Clara a set of Darksteel Bracelets of Pyrmal's make. They are enchanted so she can remove them and use them as shackles at will, should she ever have a prisoner, and as a bonus, if she removes them all she can also command them to become a chain, to help anchor her ship or secure any stock she's carrying in stormy weather.]