Prophet Enki the Keeper and Wanderer-incarnations Joh and Laurance. Man.
Enki, who sees another man's body cradling in its chest the soul of his beloved, of the father of his children, of the World's Wanderer. Who wakes before Kul'zak with tears on his face and a hitch in his chest, and he looks beside him at Kul'zak's face, slack and peaceful in sleep as something in his dreams braids his hair with flowers that do not exist in the waking world, budding and blooming as though they grew from Kul'zak himself. He brushes one of these braids from Kul'zak's face, knowing he will not wake at his touch.
They're not yet twenty. Their life together has only just begun.
In his dreams, Enki sees his husband's smiling face in a village built on stilts and gangways, and he sees him with a child, two. Their children, young, and their children, grown. And he sees a man with Kul'zak's smile and Kul'zak's wanderlust and Kul'zak's soul, in a village built on stilts and gangways, with his own husband and his own children. Two of them, young, and two of them, one growing old as the other never will again.
He sees the man with his husband's soul with an arrow through his chest, saying his goodbyes to his son as he begs him in Kul'zak's language not to go Baba please please don't die. Enki's sons will someday call Kul'zak Baba. The younger will call Kul'zak Baba as he sends him and his brother off to their own homes after family dinner on the night that his husband will die. He grows old, Kul'zak, and he dies happy with Enki at his side despite his aches and wounds and the infection festering in his side from a wound he had received on his latest venture out of town that had been beyond help by the time he made it home.
Enki has known for a long time his husband will die tonight, and when he wakes to find him cold beside him Enki cries himself to sleep and when he finds Kul'zak is in his dreams he doesn't wake up again. And Enki's soul will return to Gal'ruk.
Kul'zak's will remain on the mainland. And Kul'zak will have another life. Another husband. More kids. Far away where Enki will never meet him again.
And then he dreams of the man Kul'zak's soul will make a home in dying in his son's arm, and as Kul'zak's soul is untethered his other life's son holds him tight, and the pieces breaking off his soul sink into the grieving son's. And he will never know he carries his father with him. And Enki will see his love again after all, and never know what they once were.
In the present, or what he thinks is the present, when they are not even twenty and are sleeping curled together among the roots of an ancient tree on the side of a well-traveled trail, Kul'zak's eyes flutter open. He smiles, and it falters as he wipes tears from Enki's cheeks. He murmurs a good morning in Galenk, and he kisses Enki so sweetly, and by the time Kul'zak asks what's wrong, Enki has forgotten what he was dreaming of that made him cry in the first place.
Nothing, he says instead. I love you.