The God of the Earth's instructions had been clear and unmistakeable. To make Andash whole once more, she was to gather natural materials that represented the bone, flesh, and feather of a wing. And yet, as urgent as she found carrying out the task to be, she refused to miss her meeting with the stallion himself. She had told him the night before, prior to her journey to the veins, that she would meet him by Dragon's Blood, and so there she waited. Above her Kye called out in the trees, making her presence known and scaring off any prey. Around Xira, mice ran out from patches of fern and dens that rested in moss covered hills. She tilted my head at the patch of fern and approached it with curiosity. Perhaps it was foolish, for she knew that mere plants would make a fragile wing, but she couldn't help but marvel at the similar shapes of the ferns and her very own feathers. And the moss as well- how it coated the earth like skin to bones.

She wondered what the Earth God would say if she arrived at the veins with mouthfuls of moss and ferns to place at his feet. Would he laugh, or recognize that they were the best she had to offer? After all, what else other than the bones and flesh of another living creature could she provide? She sensed that death was not necessary to grant Andash this gift and fulfill the task set before her. Perhaps he was simply expecting her to think outside of the box to an extent; to forget physics and look deeper into nature.

To look deeper into a few things, perhaps. For the reason why she was doing this for Andash still haunted her; as moral and right as it was, she'd never been one in the past to do things for others simply when it was kind. She wasn't so much selfish as independent and reasonable. After all, wasn't one who helped others simply doing it for the attention, to have someone to lean on later? She couldn't understand the concept, that was simply the problem. And Kye, who perched now above her on the sturdy limbs of Dragon's blood, thought her foolish for it all. Was she really doing the best thing? More importantly, did she really care?

Xira pushed the thoughts away and made her way slowly to the fern patch to bite at their stems and collect a bunch of them. No, she could not dwell on such thoughts now. She would simply do her duty and collect what the God of the Earth had requested, and she would wait; wait for her company to arrive and her loneliness to fade away.