How did I come to be? How did this all happen? I don't understand. I don't understand Sitka. This cannot be.. and yet, your tail lays limp before me. Your mouth ajar, your eyes blank, your body motionless. Your throat will never hum again, will it? Nevermore will I hear a song of mourning, of joy, of sheer and utter recklessness spill from your lips. Never again will I feel the rough scrape of your claws as you scramble grumpily upon my back so that we might travel faster. Never again will I feel the soothing embrace of your voice wrap around the shattered innards of my soul.. Sitka. No. I will not believe it..

My nose presses against your flesh, it wrinkles against the stench of the beast whose horn penetrated your heart - but not before your teeth had crushed its throat. It was of porcine descent, and that was all I cared to learn of it. My eyes crawl over you, rimmed with tears that I soon feel falling against my skin as well. As water falls, it pools, and fills with the crimson life source that so recently was contained within your veins. As you drift further and further away from me, I feel everything within me quake, and shatter.

No... I want to deny it, to close my eyes and forget it. I shiver against the cold that closes in around me, knowing somewhere in my mind that it is my own fault - I have lost control of my magic again - but not caring. how could I care about something like that, when I was faced with this?

Sitka, you can't be gone. I clutch your drenched fur in my strong jaws and shake you, but you merely fall limp at my forefeet, dislodged from the wretched beast that killed you, now sprawled out in front of me, broken and.. and, dead.

I turn away.

---

Are you proud of me, mother? Father? Sister? I fled those wretched lands when death seemed to rise up and possess those I would call comrades, I did the same as you, father. I turned my back on my family and I ran. And for what good? I survived, at least physically. I'm still here, walking this earth, flying in these skies, taking foul weather with me wherever I go. Some days I would feel a storm stir, and I never knew whether it was of my own doing or the actual god-given weather. With the wind forever lifting my wings when needed, I would allow it to wash over me, to drench me to the point where even magic could not lift my sodden feathers. But always, I seemed to land somewhat safely, whole and at most, bruised from my death-defying efforts.

There is a gaping hole within me. Part of me has died, it has ventured to wherever you went, Sitka. I can't even count the days, weeks, months since your passing anymore. All I know is that I am no longer whole, and any interaction with others has left me either fleeing their presence or doing something that causes them to flee mine. I don't know how to exist, to function, without you.

Somehow, my hooves find traction in the Meadow. I remember it, for it was a land I frequented when I lived here. A snort passes through my nostrils as I breathe in the summery air, though a hot breeze buffets me soon after - my magic reminding me of its eternal presence. My elongated tail sweeaps across the dry grasses, the sun shines overhead - my hide is a brilliant sky blue, reflecting the cloudless expanse above me. My tiara lifts, my nose pointing south, towards where I was raised. But it was also where death occurred.. and right then, I didn't know what I wanted.

Why did I return here? To face the demons, the wraiths who had plundered the souls of those I once knew? To be taken by them, so that I might join those I have lost in whatever afterlife existed?

But there is no death upon the wind, there is only new life..

Compared to the freshness of the world around me, I am the rotten corpse.

I wonder if I will ever truly live again.


[ Open for anyone :3 ]