Some secrets aren't meant to be told.

[Rance]

The moon was a brand upon the ripples of Silver Lake. Its light turned dull, black spines of water into jagged streaks of white, and the reflection of the moon was distorted across its every wind-kissed motion. Bodies had been thrown here in the past; deeds whose proof was washed away beneath sediment, and the skeletons that drifted below were the seals to their murder. The seaweed held many of its own quiet secrets, but it was the finest confidant of sinners and criminals.

The boy who hung his head in thought over it tonight held a secret, too. One he would not trust even to the ears of Silver Lake. It was far too precious.

Tired eyes fluttered in and out of sleep, and with toes half-buried beneath the mud of the shore, the boy was rocking back and forth where he was squatted at Silver Lake's edge, peering at his own face in a small, foamy pool in an old footprint. Phlynn Marion Johnford had oft refused to linger anywhere near the dreaded lake, where he'd been drowned, battered, and thrown to his death times before -- and it was here, he thought, that he'd find the perfect serenity.

He was the last person they might have expected to find there.

Chin upon his knees, and arms wrapped around these, he stared at his watery reflection, not with disdain, but instead, wonder. He tilted his head to the side, and below his breath, the meager boy would whisper to himself. "Nice to see you again, Phlynny. Y-.. You've been hiding a long time under all that sadness."

And it was only when he realized that he was not alone that he regretted saying those words, for there were footsteps behind him, and it was in the mud that he would pivot, jagged claws clutched at his sides in preparation for defense. Only the bad ones found him here, wanting to drown him, wanting to murder him. He was prepared for a fight at the first sound of a breaking twig. But the voice that spoke cast a palsy to his hands, and old memories hammered in his head. A warm voice. A gentle voice.

"Crying again? It is no wonder you have name that you do."

Phlynn new that voice, and it near knocked him backwards into the water. It was denial of every urge he had not to run towards the shadow that was so much taller than he. The boy's heart burst with sheer joy -- it was the man who had been his only friend in the younger days of his tenyear with the Moapa. It was the man who had defended him and had silenced ridicule about his white skin and weak stature in the wake of the other natives. It was the man who had kept him safe, who had endured great amounts of social descension in the tribe simply to call the boy friend, and vice versa.

Stood-as-One. The man who had forgiven Phlynn for murdering the tribe's medicine man. Stood-as-One had forgiven Phlynn for killing his very own father, the Wise One, and had even helped the boy escape the Moapa when the deed had been done. And here, he stood beside the boy once more, a reunion long-awaited, and the tension throbbed thicker in the child's chest than the bark of the trees beside him.

Phlynn Marion Johnford had never really understood Stood-as-One's endlessly noble morals. But he appreciated them. The tall native clamped one of his own clawed hands upon the child's fragile shoulder, and squeezed with the warmth only old friends shared. "... wished I would not need to see you again, Cries-to-Flowers."

Without looking up, Phlynn let his head hang, and he nodded. "I know," the boy said. ".. I .. I did not mean to pull you into this."

The flicker of the last night they'd seen one another danced in the child's thoughts. In the woods, Stood-as-One had found him. .. In the distance, the torches and the sounds of the Moapa's war-parties were carrying through the woods, and their fury was hungry for the blood of the little, red-haired boy that had murdered their Wise One. Ironic that it be the Wise One's own son that had located Phlynn, and even stranger that he had crouched before the frightened child, and swiftly said, "Leave this place, Cries-to-Flowers. I will tell them that I could not find you. Go -- run. This is not your home, and will not be. Promise me that you will never return -- that I do not see you again will mean that you fare well." And without another word, Stood-as-One had been off to intercept the murderous natives, and Phlynn Marion Johnford, towards the ocean.

That had been near four centuries before. And here, they shared words like old friends, and Stood-as-One chuckled faintly at the boy's guilt, ignoring the topic for the moment. "... is beautiful land here, Cries-to-Flowers."

"I know it is," the child said, glancing up to his dark-skinned old friend. "I ... I thought you'd like it here."

"Stood-as-One does," agreed the native. "Because it is more suitable for you." And the native would toussle a clawed hand through the boy's mohawk, a laugh rumbling admirably in his chest before he lowered his voice. "But Stood-as-One also hopes that beauty of land suited for little friend has not made him forget our secret."

The child turned his head back down so he might stare at the ground. The back of a soot-stained hand rubbed across the bottom of his nose, and he would nod, voice little more than a breath. "I ... I remember th-.. the secret."

"Good. Stood-as-One remembers this secret, too. This one is ours, and soon it is Ember-Blood's -- Pyra's. But there is another secret, is there not, Cries-to-Flowers? One that you have not told your friends?"

".. I .. I haven't told them yet."

"Then are they true friends?" Stood-as-One peered down at his young friend with a modicum of wisdom. It was a wisdom passed through the family -- The Unseen had been wise, and from his loins, had given birth to the Wise One. The Wise One had fathered Stood-as-One. Their line was endlessly wise. The boy promptly responded.

"Th.. they are truest friends! L-.. Like you," the child murmured, sitting back upon the earth.

Stood-as-One would stand to peer off along the lake surface, crossing his arms, advising the child in the ways of the Moapa as if not a day had passed since they'd last met, let alone four hundred years. "Then you must hide truth from them still?"

"I ... I can't bear to tell them. Quincy, sh-.. she'd not hear it, neither would Khalika, and ... and Pyra. They wouldn't understand. I can't tell them."

Stood-as-One would click his tongue and shake his head, black braid swaying evermore. "They confide in you as true friend, but you do not return favor by confiding in them as true friend? You will do them this wrong, Cries-to-Flowers?"

Phlynn would shoot upwards, standing, promptly shouting up at Stood-as-One, his eyes begging for understanding. "I can't tell them! Not yet!" But even then, Stood-as-One had been turning, and had promptly severed the old reuinion as quickly as he had come, stepping back into the ferns with a doubtful shake of his head. It chilled the child's heart to watch this old, fond memory forsake him so -- to leave Phlynn to the burble of Silver Lake and its quiet, watery whispers. He stepped once and reached out to Stood-as-One, who was disappearing through the low-hanging branches. Stood-as-One left him with the weight of those final words.

"They must know from you, Phlynn Marion Johnford. I will not tell them the secret of your voyage -- for they? ..If you so wish to tell them, they must know it from you."