"I am very grateful - though I am beginning to wonder." He had gotten up with too much ease. His knees didn't protest, his hips didn't ache. He didn't tend forward as he had for longer than he wanted to think. When he looked up, he had the full motion in his neck. Something had changed, and once he was standing, he looked down at his own limbs, his arms, his legs - and what he saw was, in a word, shocking.

His skin lacked age spots, lacked the papery, thin quality it had gained in these later years. When he breathed deeply now, despite the water he'd inhaled, he could feel it to the depths of his chest rather than stopping just past halfway. When he raised his hand to his chin, the thick, white beard he had worn was gone in favour of one shorter and suddenly, he thought, darker. He couldn't see it, but he knew the look of youth when he saw it.

"Al'ama," he muttered, turning his hands over. No wrinkles. No knuckles standing out broadly against narrow fingers. "How can this be..."