Of course he agreed to it; she once more found herself bewildered by his kindness. Had she ever possessed such a trait? She doubted it- she could not recall ever being truly nice to her family, she'd simply drove them away with blunt honesty and undeserved insults. This act, gathering these materials to form her friend's new wing, was perhaps the first honestly good thing she'd ever done. She felt hesitant about it still, and Kye's words of criticism didn't ever help. Why? the falcon pressed constantly, bearing the question down on her and making Xira face the fact that she simply didn't know the answer.

Just shut up and gather moss, the chestnut mare told her charge bitterly, trying to ignore the, as always, on target comments of her company. She watched with a sigh as Kye begrudgingly obeyed by slicing moss from underneath with her claws in large sheets and the dragging them into a pile at the base of the tree.

With sudden embarrassment, she realized she'd yet to answer Andash. "Just, uh..." Xira hesitated, mentally kicking herself for coming off in such a manner. So she'd kept everyone at bay for all her life, insulted and teased, and he was an exception. For some reason she'd let him in and now struggled with the emotion of it all- so what? That didn't mean he was special, he'd simply been in the right place at the right time. Anyone could have walked up to her that night and she would have done the same, wasn't that the case?

There was a sense of crippling defeat when her eyes caught his and she realized how awfully wrong she was. With a jerk, she tore her gaze away and began shuffling around the pile of ferns to re-amass them. "Could you just grab some ferns like this?" she spoke, her voice turning to a sickening, shuddering whisper as she realized that nerves were overtaking her. Her confidence slipped away and the answer to Kye's question took its place, but she dared not think of it.

The roan turned instead towards the tree, looking for some sort of comfort and solace in it, but seeing only the bloody sap trickling slowly from its torn patches of bark. In the summer heat the blood turned to crystal and the bark, dried from a lack of moisture, curled up and reached for the sky. Xira began to walk around the tree before seeing a long, low hanging branch that must have snapped off in one of Tallsun's wicked storms. She placed a hoof on it curiously, testing its weight while all the while trying not to look back at Andash.

Bone, the God of the Earth had wanted bone. What of the tree of Dragon's Blood, with nature running through its veins and years of age building it sturdy? She rested her head beneath the branch and felt its weight, but her actions were absentminded. All of a sudden she lost the battle when her gaze turned back to the ghostly stallion standing several feet away in a patch of verdant ferns.

Kye's question gnawed at her mercilessly.