I felt a stirring in my soul. Like a hum that never faded in my ears or a shadow racing from discovery in the corner of my eye. Lids widened, opening to reveal a pit of honey, a pit of gold. Irises unnaturally bidden to have a solid core. Gaze rose to the heavens, expectantly as if my soul was waiting for an answer. Would a god appear this night? Fina was also awake. She is lashed in a nearby oak whose branches have been thinned by Orangemoon and currently stood nearly vacant of canopy. The firebird followed my gaze, those startling aqua pools narrowed, then slide back to me with unreadable befuddlement lurking in our unspoken way.

Her body and soul felt it...

Instinct and a feeling urgency drew me from my bed. I turned to follow a familiar trail that would eventually lead me down to the water. Velvet ears swiveled round, picking up on the sounds of the forest. My companion followed overhead, slowly gliding in large circles and keeping a wary watch from above. A waterfall thundered ahead and moments later I caught sight of it through the timber.

For whatever reason a shiver ran down my spine and I trembled. Nerves? Anticipation? Anxiety? I didn’t pause to wonder. Patched limbs pressed forward nevertheless and after a second or two the trees broke their cover. The roaring of water and the pool that gathered below wasn’t what caught my attention first, nay, nestled beneath a tree was the body of an avian. I stopped, Fina fell from the sky like a flaming meteorite. Her talons found flesh to straddle.

“What is it?”

A question that I didn’t answer for many long moments and when the words finally came my reply was soft and sad, “A Zephyr, I think.” its fragile body was no less glorious even in death. Those beautiful blue feathers still seemed to glow, as if in remembrance of life. Fina shuffled from my spine and flew toward the broken bird, her gaze was surprisingly tender. “We should bury it, so it doesn’t get eaten…” Fina landed near the blue zephyr, her sorrow a mimic of my own.

Before I could reply, something in the tree above this fallen angel caught my eye; glancing up I noticed a thick bunch of leaves, sticks and bramble clinging to the corner of many lean branches. A nest? Calling upon magic I summoned sand from the basin of earth, drawing around the tree and surrounding the well-made nest in a sort of cradle. With gentle coxes and tugs I aimed to pull the nest free and lower it gently to the ground.