Bako found him just before morning on the third day. Takeo was sleeping, curled into his rock shelter, arms wrapped around his knees to fight off the cold. Something woke him, stirring his senses. He was suddenly alert. Something was near. A predator?

He blinked his gritty eyes and peered into the darkness, making out a dark form silhouetted against the starry sky. An equine form. And then Bako fell to his knees next to Takeo—warm, and familiar, and real. A lump filled Takeo’s scratchy throat and he started to weep. His shoulders shook as he cried crusty, dry tears.

“I feared I would never see you again,” he said, sniffling, his arms tightening around his seishen’s neck. A small part of him was embarrassed that the desert had broken him down in such a short time, but there was no hiding his thoughts from Bako. The time for pride was long past.

The stallion laid his head in the sand, exhausted from his days of galloping to catch up with Takeo. “I knew you’d last longer than a day,” he said, from his prone position. “But it is good to be together again.”

“I haven’t found water,” Takeo admitted his failure. “I probably won’t last beyond tomorrow.”

“I have word from Lyra,” Bako said. “Azura is coming.”

“What?” An incredulous laugh bubbled from Takeo’s cracked lips. “How is that possible?”

“It is difficult for seishen to communicate over such a distance,” Bako said. “So I know little more. But one message is clear. You are not to die before she arrives.”

Takeo’s heart soared, his resolve restored. As he lay down in the sand besides Bako, throwing his arm over his seishen’s soft neck, he suddenly felt like the richest man in the world. Bako had made it back to him. Azura was coming. He would survive.

Takeo lay in the shade of the rock outcropping as the morning sun beat overhead. “Remember the first day you found me?” Takeo croaked, savoring the memory like a fine whiskey.

“You were sitting in the rain, pouting,” Bako said. “Ozora had beat you in sparring practice. You always won, but that one time he had you.”

“Rain,” Takeo said for a moment, thinking about all the times he had cursed the rain. Trips with court ladies cancelled on account of weather; long marches made miserable by an incessant downpour. How foolish of him to not see it for the precious gift it was. “I didn’t take it very well,” Takeo chuckled dryly, turning his thoughts to his bout with Ozora. “I was a poor sport.”

“You were a twelve-year old boy,” Bako said. “It goes with the territory.”

“It had been raining for days and the practice field was muddy and gray. I saw you in the distance, the rain steaming as it hit your coat. I thought you were a ghost. Or a demon,” he said. He was having trouble speaking. His tongue felt large in his mouth.

“I like to make an entrance,” Bako said.

“Ozora could have beaten me every day after that, and I wouldn’t have cared. Nothing mattered, except you and me. We were inseperable.”

“Until Azura,” Bako said.

Takeo flinched. “Yes. You’re a better friend than I deserve. I’m sorry I got us into this mess.”

“It is the way of things,” Bako said. “Nothing stays the same. The seasons. Growing old, dying, being reborn. Do not regret that you fell in love. It was fate.”

“Seishen believe in fate?” Takeo asked.

“Of course. The seishen elder always said there was a flow to time and reality. We are intimately connected to it. We all have our part to play.”

“And what is my part?” Takeo mused, afraid of the answer.

“To live.”