Days turned sour when Kri didn’t return. The sun still rose, and the wind still blew; but I felt in my heart that something had gone very wrong. Fina nudged my shoulder with her beak, successfully breaking my musing process. Carefully she slide her lean body up my nape by grappling patched neck and taking it step by step. I shuttered unpleasantly but tolerated her nudges and digging claws. “Ye stresses much, worries much.” A heaving sigh came as a preliminary to my response. Gently, I pushed the sand and dirt at my feet around in little circles, digging my hoof down when the soil sprang gold, “Because there is no one else to carry this.”


“There is.” She insisted earnestly, thrusting an image of familiar kin through our link. I frowned at her and shrugged my shoulders,“Aye…maybe.” It didn’t feel right appointing kin to duties, yet it had to be done. Too many of our ranks lay empty; to many of our kin stood in different directions. They had to be unified, or else all would fail.

______________________________________________________________________

Slowly my wings unfurled, they stretched to their magnificent limit. With a lingering glance at the old magnolia that had sheltered my family for years. I turned my face to an empty heaven, a silent prayer moving my lips, a prayer for grace, for family. Those that were near and far. That collar around shoulders felt heavy today, weighted by the choices I’d made. Father Earth hadn’t lied. Painted limbs struck out into a full blown canter, a spray of golden gravel flew out behind me. Fina screeched and rose from my neck, she spread her fiery wings wide and launched toward sky. Sand swirled around us in a whirlwind.

We headed toward the stadium of stone. The rising waves greet us an hour before twilight; I couldn’t help but allow the wind to tug my lips apart in a smile. There had been so many different memories in those stones; some good, some bad. I choose to land in the place that Kri might have stood had she been here. Golden sand followed me, Fina sat astride my rump.

Trumpeting toward the desert I called to my kin.

“Come my friends, loyal brothers and sisters of the desert!”

Shinning granules spread from my hooves and trailed out in all directions. Fina shrieked and took off toward the ocean to gather our family together.

OOC: No posting order.