There isn't an immediately obvious explanation as to why a bright light comes arcing through the trees toward him, exploding with a concussive force sufficient to hurl Beau over a hundred feet, directly into and through the branches of a particularly knotty sycamore tree.

It's really more that the branches are going through him, one might say.

The branches aren't actually strong enough to support the weight of Beau's body for very long.

Why couldn't he have killed someone easier to carry.

Lucien can't really bring himself to believe this will work, but he's trying it anyways.

It works!  The corpse opens his eyes.

Then he'll see a man holding him, looking down at him with terrified eyes.

...He dies.  Again.

Okay but this time Lucien knows that it's maybe actually possible. He's going to get Beau's heart beating no matter what he has to do. 

Nope, he's ignoring that idea and continuing to work at this.

Beau is - kind of awake, for a moment, except that he has no idea what's going on - he can't see anything or feel anything; he hears - maybe something, he tries to concentrate on that -

and then all the pain comes back at once, and he very much doesn't want to hold onto that; he would really really like to be back asleep, actually -

-okay traumatic injuries are bad for the boy, this shouldn't be that surprising. What if... Lucien fixed those. And did all the other things again. And then later his thoughts can be pulled in uncomfortable directions, but not now.

The next time Beau wakes up, he feels... fine?  Cozy.  Sleepy.  There are sensations and those are fine; there are noises and those are annoying.  Ultimately he feels pretty nice, though.

Good!

But he doesn't, like, move about this.  He's breathing; does that count?

Lucien can't tell.

"Please wake up."

"Nno..."

No actually the boy needs to wake up. How do you wake someone up.

Okay, his fourth idea isn't completely terrible and so he's going with it and digging his nails into the boy's arm until the pain wakes him up.

- That does make him jerk and open his eyes.  And keep them open.

Lucien can't think of anything to say that he won't regret so he's going to silently stare at a point to the left of the boy's head instead.

.....................

"...Wha'happened?"

"You were injured, and now you're not."

Lucien buttons up his shirt.

"There..... there was a," he swallows, coughs a few times, and breathes, "a light?  ...It hit me."

"Mm."

"Who're you?"

"Lucien. And you are?"

"Nnnnnn.  Beau.  ....Can I go back to sleep?  'Mtired."

"No, you may not."

"Ohh.  .....I wanna, though."  He closes his eyes.

Lucien can resume digging his nails into Beau's arm. Harder than last time, apparently.

"Ow -"  He squirms.

Nope, not happening. He pushes the squirming Beau off his lap forcefully.

"....Ow."  But it seems like a slightly more lucid complaint.

"Are you awake now?"

"Yeah."  He gets an elbow underneath himself and sits up a little bit.  Halfway.  Maybe a quarter.

Lucien can lift Beau into a sitting position.

"- hrk -"

This causes Beau to look down at himself.

There's a hole in his shirt.  There are multiple holes in his shirt, and some of them are big.  Right through his chest.  And there's kind of a lot of blood, and not just on him....

"- What?  Happened?"

"You fell."

"...No.  There was a light.  - An explosion?  Did you - how could you have fixed me -"  He digs his fingers into his chest, dizzily searching for wounds.  Doesn't find any.  Realizes how dumb that would have been, if there were any.  Leans over to one side and throws up.

"-huh."

"Can we - uhhg, go away from the blood -"

Lucien suppresses a deeply confusing emotion.

"Yes, we can do that."

Beau tries to shuffle along the ground, finds it ineffective, and pivots to using Lucien to hoist himself up.

Lucien pointedly doesn't react to this!

- Yeah, he doesn't really like the idea of walking on his own at the moment; it doesn't seem like it'll go well.  He leans on Lucien until they manage to get some distance between them and most of the seepage.

....And this doesn't even help, really, because it's on him - he sinks back onto the ground, takes off his shirt, mops up what he can, and flings it back toward the general direction of where his blood is.

Well now Lucien is definitely looking at him.

Oh no.  - Wait.  He waves a hand in front of his face, stopping for a moment directly in front of each eye.

"I think I can't see - am I blind?  In my left eye."

"Hm."

Lucien puts his hand on the side Beau's face and makes a thoughtful expression.

"Oh, what the..."  He blinks, and closes his right eye, then just his left, then his right again.  Keeps it that way.  "What are you?"

Lucien puts his hand down.

"I fixed your eye."

"Okay, you fixed it alright!  - I'm colorblind.  Or, I was; now I'm half - thank you -"

"Huh. You're... happy about that."

"Shouldn't I be?"

"I... didn't...."

"-are you here for the ley line?"

"...Is that what's in the geocache?"

"-I... uh, is that another term for a locus of magical power that can be summoned with one of four rituals, depending on which of four networks of similar loci it is part of?"

"...No..."

"Repeat back to me what I just said?"

"...Uh... A magical locus with.... four different summoning rituals?  And some other stuff."

"Where is this light coming from?" Lucien asks, causing his palm to glow softly.

"- Well, I don't know!  You tell me!"

Lucien closes his palm, vanishing the light.

"It's magic."

"Okay!!"

"-oh hmm.. I... may have accidentally made you a ritualist."

"Okay!  What does that mean!"  Eeeughhh okay this much enthusiasm is outpacing his declining nausea.  He's going to chill out some.

"That you can understand magic, and summon it yourself if you do the required rituals."

"Okay..."  He should not throw up again.

"-you can just ignore it. Mostly."

"- Sorry, I just have a weak vasovagal system.  I probably won't want to ignore it, just - all the blood.  ...What happened?  Now that you're telling me things?"

"I was trying to modify the ley line based on a theory that turned out to be wrong and I lost control of the transformation and managed to toss it away from me before it exploded but it turned out I tossed it in your direction."

"I am rather sorry for that."

"And then you - fixed me?"

"As best I could, yes."

"Wow..."

"Mm."

Oh no.  "So... now what?"

"-mm. It's an hour hike back to the nearest road."

"...I am not really feeling up for that yet."

"Mm."

"My cabin is... much closer."

"Could I come?  Please?"

Lucien closes his eyes briefly, and then opens them.

"Yes, you may come to my cabin."

"Thank you.  ...But maybe not for a few minutes, still.  How far is it?"

"Five minutes."

"Oh.  Good.  I might be able to do that soon.  - What's magic like?"

"Soon would be good."

"-magic can do a great many things but it is... inconvenient in its particulars."

"What do you mean?"

"The rituals necessary to acquire magical power extract emotional and physical tolls, depending on which ritual one does. The magical power can then be used to fuel transformations, including the ones I did to heal you and make light. Non-ritualists will also misunderstand any magic they encounter, which complicates the use of such transformations."

"Wow.  Well, thanks for healing me despite the tolls.  I don't really think I have any way to make it up to you at the moment, but if you ever think of anything -"

"- Or, I mean, I think I might have a twenty in my bag, if you want something right now.  I, I just thought it would be a little insulting.  Or I could send you more if there's signal at your cabin?"

"-that won't be necessary." 

"Okay.  Should we try and go?"  He moves to get up.  "- Nope, no, we shouldn't yet - sorry -"  He clenches his teeth and shuts up.

"Mm."

Lucien can stand here silently until Beau is ready, hopefully very soon.

"What things can magic do?  Besides putting a person back together."

"It can transform things into other things."

"Like what?  ... Should I not be asking?"

"It's very flexible and can make any real thing a ritualist understands sufficiently." 

"'Real?'"

"You can't use it to make unreal - also called magical - artifacts."

"Oh, I see..."  He spends a minute blinking back and forth to compare his color vision between eyes.

Lucien isn't aware of this because he's looking anywhere besides Beau's eyes, face, body, or general vicinity.

"Is your cabin in the blood direction or away from it?"

"Away from it."

"Then I think I might be able to move there.  ...With help.  Sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry." Lucien can help Beau up in a totally normal way, with very deliberate movements that don't betray anything that's going on inside his head.

...Okay, even if this person is magically angry, or in pain or something, clearly he doesn't want to tell Beau about that.  And seems to want to act like it's not true.

The pair of them can stagger to Lucien's cabin.  Beau isn't that heavy for his height but that's not saying much; he is of course more helpful at locomoting himself than when he was dead, but it's still slow going.  It takes them about twenty minutes to make the five-minute journey, and he asks to sit down for breaks twice.

When Beau asks for a second break Lucien helps him sit down, breathes deeply, and bites his own lip hard enough that he really feels like it should be bleeding.

"...Are you okay?"

"Mm."

...Okay.  Beau will just sit here and try to become capable of walking faster.

And then he's ready and they can finish the rest of the trip.

"Are you capable of. This?" Lucien asks, when they come upon a, by his standards, fairly climbable cliff.

"Uh!  I don't think so."

Lucien... can trace a sigil in the air for a moment, and then look at Beau....

"I will carry you." he says, debating how to make a motion to do this without being weird.

"Okay."

Continuing to attempt to hold Beau isn't actually helping to find a more appropriate option, so Lucien is just going to settle for scoop Beau up and holding him close to his chest and above Lucien's waistline.

He tries to hold still.

It is slightly implausible that Lucien would be able to hold Beau and climb the cliff face at the same time, but apparently that doesn't matter for Lucien.

That sure is implausible but not really the most implausible thing that's happened in the past hour.  He does his best to distribute his weight helpfully.  Within the bounds of holding still.

"Could you stop moving."

"- Yes sorry."

If Beau will stop squirming than Lucien will get him over the cliff easily... and then carry him the additional few paces to the cabins front door, since this really is faster than walking with Beau.

He is Holding So Still.  Even though hopefully they're done with this now.

Lucien unlocks the door.

Beau falls a little bit over, but manages to hit the wall of the cabin instead of the ground.

"Sorry."

The locks are complicated - there's a fingerprint scanner and a keycode and regular lock with a corresponding key.

Impressive-cool-spooky!

The interior is a rather cozy cabin, furnished much more thoroughly than would be expected given it's remote location. There's a bed, two sofas (one grey and one blue), circular rug, and significantly more fluffy blankets than seems reasonable. It's heated as well, to 76 degrees. 

The grey sofa in particular is extremely soft, which Beau is going to discover right now because Lucien is tossing him onto it, grabbing a few things from side table, and bolting into the bathroom.

Beau "- Erp!"s in surprise at being thrown.

...And then he's alone.

He...... keeps blinking back and forth to test out his new color vision: interior edition?  The other couch is blue.  That's really weird.  Is that what his eyes really look like??  He reaches into his pocket to get his phone and check on the selfie cam.  .....His phone was pulverized when he was and now his hand is a little bit full of glass shards.  Aaaaa.

At least?  It's not?  Bleeding???

Lucien is definitely having normal experiences in this bathroom! Normal. Bathroom. Experiences.

Beau has no idea how long this guy is going to take to come out but clearly it's not the sort of thing where he can be interrupted.  Beau'll just sit here and try not to make things worse.

....He's a little bit freaking out about the pocket full of broken phone, and he can feel it itching against his thigh, and - okay, it will definitely make things worse if he needs even more healing, so - there are blankets right there, even if it's too warm for them.  And he's wearing boxers which are decent enough.  He - shimmies out of his pants.

Lucien exits the bathroom while this is happening, having just washed up.

Nope, actually, he's going back into the bathroom now.

Okay!!!!

Nothing else to do for it but get them the rest of the way off and then put a fuzzy blanket over his lap.  Even though he feels himself going red and warm.  Maybe the blanket should cover everything but his head and feet, actually.

...And after a few minutes his feet, too; he reaches some sort of temperature tipping point and feels cold enough to start shivering.  Maybe this is a side effect of magic, or just of having had a really big hole in you.  He draws his knees up and does his best to tuck the blanket around him.

Several minutes later he may hear the bathroom door open again.

Lucien can't look him in the eye. What he can do instead is start up the electric kettle and prepare two mugs of chamomile tea.

"Uh, I kind of..."  Shivers.  "Hurt my hand?  Because my phone exploded, and I reached in my pocket.  Which is why, uh - I thought it might make things worse, if it could cut up my leg from there -"

"Oh." Lucien sets the mugs and sugar dispenser down.

"I have a first aid kit." He gets it out from under the sink.

"Um. Are you left handed?"

"No..."  Here is Beau's right hand even though it's COLD outside of the blanket (and also inside of the blanket).  It's kind of shakey.

"Okay."

He can hold Beau's hand palm up very very gently, just to keep it steady. And then use tweezers to get the shards of glass out, one by one, moving so so carefully.

Eventually Beau's temperature regulation comes kind of back online, or at least tips back in the other direction.  (He leaves the blanket mostly on anyway).  There are a lot of shards and not all of them are big enough to tweezer out.

Lucien mournfully looks at the remaining tiny specks of glass for really quite a while.

And then he gestures with his other hand and the shards turn into tiny droplets that move to the center of Beau's palm, combining together into what is for all intents and purposes a glass marble, with a hazy swirl of grey suspended inside.

"- Woah."

"Mmm."

Lucien is not crying about it! At all.

"Thank you so much, again -"

"- Are you okay??"

"You can have the marble."

"Okay.  Uh.  Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No-o?"

Tea. Here is tea for Beau. And also sugar.

Beau guesses he will have some tea.

"It's... the magic has some sort of cost?"  Tea sip.  "Is, um.  Is there any way I could take some of that on, for you.  Since you used so much for me, it sounds like."

Lucien is pouring a good amount of sugar into his tea.

"Not without... paying a significant cost I don't think you should have to pay." Okay maybe that is enough sugar.

"You saved my life."

"It was my fault you were injured in the first place." Siiiip. 

"It wasn't your fault I stuck my hand in my pocket."

"That wasn't a lot of magic to fix."

"I also think it's like, really cool that magic exists.  And I want to try it."

"I'm really not sure if the consequences are worth it for most people."

"What are they?"

"The mundane explain away any magic they notice with explanations that reflect badly on the ritualist doing the magic. So if they see you do a spell to save someone from getting hit by a car they might mistake this for you trying and failing to push the person into the path of the car."

"Oh.  ...But you can do it in private?  Or is there still something else."

"You have to keep the impacts private too. So if people notice that you made yourself stronger they might assume you took illegal stimulants, or something worse."

"Will it be a problem for me if I just want to help pay you back?"

"It also makes some ritualists intensely depressed after recharging one's magic. And I expect you are such a ritualist." Lucien is not making any expressions at all while he says this.

"Is that what's happened to you?"

"Yes."

"I don't want you to be extra depressed just because you saved my life.  Even if it was because... it seems like you still had to try really hard to save me.  I bet some people would have just left me there."

"You really shouldn't feel obligated to repay me. It... it was my fault." He is sort of choking up about this.

"...Is your magical depression maybe making you feel worse about this."  Tea.  "I think you should just take the help."

Lucien goes as if to take a sip but instead is going to mumble into his cup.

"It also makes ritualists really badly turned on at first."

"Hm?"

"Would you like more tea."

"I think I'm good, thanks.  I, uh, didn't catch the last thing you said.  Before that."

"Prior to the emotional after effects from recharging there is a phase of.. intense physical excitation. Which is... rather unpleasant."

"But you go through it a lot?"

"Yes."

"....Does it, I don't know, give you magic cancer or something, where if I do it once it's worse than someone doing it a lot of times?"

"No." 

"Then would you please let me help pay you back?  At least half of whatever it took."

It is actually pretty difficult being the only ritualist he trusts and he wants to cry about this and also everything else.

"I would rather you didn't feel like you needed to, but if you insist than... okay."

"Thank you.  ...Not that I think trying it now wouldn't just make me cause more problems.  But once I'm feeling better.  I promise."

"As you wish."

"...Is there anything else I can do to help you?  Now?"

"I was going to watch Amarian."

"Then... you should do that?"

Then they can do that! Amarian is a melancholy film about the relatively ordinary life of a pair of sisters in Austria, done entirely in water colors. It won best animated film at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. It's beautiful.

That's pretty cool.

Lucien also has the sequel, Amarianer, which the reviews claimed was a cash grab but probably it can't be that bad. 

Okay, apparently he was wrong.

Two movies back-to-back is kind of a lot even when the quality drop isn't this significant.  But keeping quiet is really the least Beau can do, here.

"Sorry for... that." And also for everything else, which is terrible. God, why can't he cuddle with Beau.... because it would be a bad idea, that's why.

"It was fine.  ...It wasn't very good, but it's kind of fine for things to not be very good.  Sometimes."

"You're very forgiving," Lucien says, inanely.