Sol

The first thing I remember is a battlefield. It wasn't sudden, I mean, I sort of remember what lead up to the war, and my childhood, all hazy and indistinct. And honestly, not very important. But the first clear memory that I have is of being on a battlefield, holding a bloody sword.

I didn't even realize that I didn't remember anything prior to this until after the battle. I stood there dumbly, just holding my sword and looking around me, at all the corpses.

I don't know how long I stood there before someone poked me in the side, "What the hell's the matter, Sol?" the man asked. I turned to look at him. He was tall, as tall as I was, with blonde-orange hair. His eyes were and odd shade of blue-silver. His face was firm and scarred, but I also saw passion and love in it. His clothing was all in yellows and oranges. "I almost thought you were dead!"

I blinked at him and frowned, "You're... someone I know?"

His eyes widened in surprise, "Oh gods... Come on Sol, we gotta get you to a doctor." He grabbed my arm and started dragging me in the direction of our camp, though how I knew it was the direction of our camp, I'm not sure, because I certainly wouldn't have known to go that way if he hadn't shown up.

"Meru!" he hollered as soon as we'd entered the camp, "Meru!"

A woman poked her head out of a large white tent. Her hair was blonde-red and her eyes were expressive and green. "Stop your screaming Luna! If you can yell like that, you don't need me as bad as these men do!"

Luna hauled me right up to the woman, "Something's wrong with Sol, he doesn't remember anything."

"I'm standing right here," I grumbled, "Don't talk over me or anything."

Meru looked at me, shock and horror on her face, "Sol," she gaped.

"Um... yes?"

Meru turned to look at Luna, horror on her face, "What happened to him?"

Luna shook his head, "I don't know, I found him standing on the battlefield looking lost..." Luna looked at me again, "he hasn't even taken care of Lunas yet."

I looked between Meru and Luna for a moment, lost, "I-" they both looked at me again as I made the first noise, "I'm sorry-" that was obviously the wrong thing to say, as they both looked shocked and alarmed. "I just..." I looked at the ground, "I don't remember anything before the battle."

Luna looked stricken, "You don't remember anything from before the battle?"

"Ah... no."

Meru grabbed me by the arm and hauled me into the white tent, "Did you take a hit to the head during the battle?" she demanded.

"Ah... I don't know?"

"Of course you don't," Meru said briskly. Then she began poking me and asking me all sorts of questions which I didn't know any of the answers to.

Finally she stepped back and looked at me sadly, "Come over here Luna," she said, and her voice oozed her dispair at what she was going to have to say. Not that I knew what she was going to say.

"Luna," she said softly, running a hand through her hair as she turned to him. "Sol's got amnesia. I'm not sure if it's permanent or not, but... he doesn't remember a thing. Probably didn't even remember what his name was until you told him."

The look on Luna's face will haunt me to the rest of my days. He looked like someone who's lost their reason for living. "Luna?" I questioned softly, reaching out a hand to him.

He looked at me then and the pain in his eyes was so intense that I snatched my hand back and turned away, looking at the ground.

There was silence for a moment before Meru whispered softly to Luna, "Talk to him."

Then the young nurse walked out of the partitioned section of the tent and back into the main partition. Neither I nor Luna moved for a long moment, before Luna finally sat on the cot beside me. We were silent for a long time. I was finally the one to break the silence, "You knew me well." It wasn't a question.

Luna sighed, "Yes. Yes." Luna sighed again, "Very well." The silence between the two of us lengthened uncomfortably. Finally, Luna sighed and stood, "Come on, this is not the place to have this conversation." He turned and faced me, meeting my eyes for the first time since we entered the tent. I took the hand that he held out to me, and he pulled me gently to my feet. When I stood I found myself nose to nose with him, looking into his expressive blue-silver eyes. He leaned forward slightly and I took a reflexive breath. He started guiltily and took a step back. I blushed and looked at the floor again.

Luna turned and walked out of the partition and I followed quickly behind him. Luna lead my out of the infirmary, through the camp to the middle and into a large-ish tent.

The first thing I noticed when I stepped into the tent was how dark it was. Luna took two more steps into the tent and lit a lantern. Then I saw that it was so dark because there was black cloth on the insides of the tent walls. That made sense, archers wouldn't be able to pick us out by our shadows.

Luna sat in one of the chairs and I followed suit, sitting beside him, then turning so I sat sideways in the chair so I could look at him while he talked.

Luna studied the table for a long time, tracing patterns with his fingers on the dark wood. Finally he took a deep breath and looked up at me.

I looked up from the table into the eyes of the man sitting beside me and I saw nothing of the Sol that I'd known for nearly eight years. He still looked the same on the outside--beautiful long black hair that many girls would kill for, smooth pale skin, slightly pointed ears, dressed in his purple-blue battle-robes, hard amber eyes. Except now they were soft, and scared.

My Sol was never scared.

"Okay. So you're Sol." He nodded. I repressed the urge to cry, this man is not my Sol. "'Kay... You were born, grew up, all that important stuff-we never talked much about it. Not important." Of course, I knew it all, we just never talked about it. He told me once what happened to him before we met. But he didn't need to be overwhelmed with everything that ever happened in his life all at once.

"Blah blah blah, okay, so you're eight. You get taken away from your family and trained in the Emperial army. Kay, now you're nineteen, end of your training. There's this thing that all the recruits have to go through before they become members of the army. You've got to walk through this room, and no one tells you what's supposed to happen, but they shove us in and we walk through, and if something particular happens, it means you're one of the warriors that are supposedly chosen by the Twin Gods -- that's Sol and Luna." He's opening his mouth to ask a question, I plow through him. "Then those two warriors assume the names of the gods in their honor and the gods help them. Now, traditionally, Sol's male, and Luna's female, but... it obviously didn't work out that way this time." He closes his mouth.

I take a deep breath, and continue, "So we've been together as the Twin Gods' Warriors for eight years now. We've been commanding this army for nearly six. Well, 'we' is a pretty loose term. It's... mostly been you."

He nods, my breath catches, that was decidedly more Sol-ish than before... "And Meru... she's been our doctor for... six or seven years. When we got the army, we made her head doctor, but before that she was our personal doctor." I smirk slightly, "The Emperor likes to keep his resident Gods' Own Warriors in good health." Sol smirks with me.

"Does... does any of this seem familiar?"

The confusion is back. "Some of it... it's all really fuzzy..." he rubs his temple gently with one hand, then sighs and looks up at the top of the tent, as if his memory is hiding up there. "It's not so important that I remember-" my breath catches, he doesn't want to remember? "-my past that is. I want to remember the important things." He sighs again and looks down again, dropping his head into his hand so that one amber eye peers out at me from behind a curtain of black hair. "Like you."

My heart stops, I'm sure it does. Sol slides out of his chair and walks over to me, brushing my bangs gently away from my face. I swear I'm not breathing, I never can when Sol's being tender-which is so rarely I can count the times on one hand. He frowns then and leans towards me, and I barely hear him murmur, "I know you're important..." kind of like he's reassuring himself.

I can feel his breath on my lips when the screaming starts. He jolts away, his hand going to his sword, which he must have cleaned in the infirmary. I'm out of my chair in an instant and we're moving together out of the tent. At least he hasn't forgotten any of this. Solarus and Lunas glint in the sun, it's travelled to mid-day while we were in the tent.

A shadow passes over us and we look up and it's obvious why our men are screaming. It's huge. That's the first thing I think. Then I see how it's like a lizard with wings. And then I'm jumping backwards because the archer's arrows are hitting the ground around us and the thing is swooping in and then I notice the second one.

I jump back as the winged lizard swoops in, just ahead of Luna. Arrows hit the ground around us, I don't hear them, all I can hear is the blood pounding in my ears. That's all I've been able to hear since even before the screams started. I take my attention from the one in front of us for just a moment to see if there are any others.

There is, there's a second winged lizard behind the first. Not just behind, far enough apart that the archers can't fire at them both. I look back to the first, it's fast. It's just above the groud- reaching out-

"NO!" the word's torn from my mouth before I realize it. The lizard's claws are clenched around Luna, he raises Solarus to hack at the claws but the creature jolts upwards and he drops the sword.

I dart forward and I think I scream Luna's name, but the lizard's already far above my reach, I bend down mid-stride and pick up Solarus, intent on doing something to the second lizard-thing. But even as I watch, the winged lizard moves from across the camp to right infront of me in the blink of an eye. I'm halfway standing and I try to bring Lunas up to swing at the lizard, but then the claws are closing around me too and then I'm shaken to my teeth as the lizard changes directions suddenly, and I tighten my grip on Lunas and Solarus convulsively and then I'm alone and surrounded by blackness.

We're still a couple feet above the ground when the dragon drops me. I hit the ground and roll, trying to avoid hurting myself. I watch warily as the winged lizard settles on the ground in front of me. A girl drops off its shoulder, and walks towards me.

Every inch of me screams that I should be prepared for the worst, after all, who abducts someone with begnin intentions?

"Relax, we mean you no harm." I raise an eyebrow sceptically. "Honestly. I brought you here, to Draco's Inferno, because Epochith thought that you would make a good candidate for a dragon. And there are precious few of those."

"Why me?" I ask warily. This could easily be a trick. After all, the best way to stop an army is to deprive it of its leaders.

"Something about you's special," she replies, something in her voice makes me think that she's telling the truth. "Epochith sensed it, so we went to go get you. However, I didn't expect to get shot at," she smiles wryly. "So I'm sorry for the abruptness of our Searching, but we didn't think that you'd wait long enough for us to explain if we landed."

One of the first rules of battle is not to show weakness, but I find myself needing to ask questions, proving I'm in a new situation that I know nothing about. It's not comforting to show such things to a potential enemy. "What do you mean, 'candidate'?"

"Like a bond with a dragon," she pats the dragon's side with a small smile, "If you wait. You'll see."

"I can't, I have to go home- we're in the middle of a war."

"I know... but... time is a tricky thing," she says. Then, "Trust me, it will not be so long as you might think..."

I remain silent for a few minutes, considering. "Alright... But, is there anyway to get a message back to my people?"

The girl tilted her head to one side, "Trust me, you won't need to."

I frowned, "Really... they'll be-"

"You. Don't. Need. To."

I sighed, "Fine. But if something happens to them," I growled, "I'll blame you."

Sol is standing at Lantessama Isle and Luna is standing at Draco's Inferno

It was right about the same time as Rashaelith's unnoticed hatching that Kindraimanth lifted her wings away from a sixth egg she had hidden below her body. The egg was small, pale white and moving wildly. It took little jumps through the air, finally hitting his mother's front paw. At that the egg burst open and a Firestorm marked, silver male dragon sat on the sands, shaking his head, whirling away the sand that had fallen on him. Looking with his strangely coloured golden eyes, the hatchling looked over all the candidates, but finally pointed toward one with black hair and strange amber eyes, "Sol! You are mine. My name is Soleil."