My mention of her home seems to go unnoticed, and for that, I am grateful once more. Whether she simply did not recognise it or whether she simply assumed I was a well-travelled Helovian native, it didn't matter - she didn't press me for information on my deduction of her home. I wasn't ready to delve into my history, to relive a time when you were still alive, to explain your once-existence and now-extinction to someone who simply couldn't understand it. The pale creature is enraptured by her colts, and it lets me smile - though I harbour a sense of cynic dislike for the male gender, I can at least write off their young, foolish activities of those as children, still learning and growing. Perhaps they were trainable still, perhaps with a quality upbringing that Brisa could provide, they wouldn't fulfil the stereotype that has begun in my mind.

The mare mentions how she hopes they would never jump off the Edge's cliffside, and I can only plaster a lop-sided grin upon my maw, tossing my tiara to tilt my dreadlocked fringe out of my eyes. It was bound to happen - the call of flight to a pegasus was as alluring as the call of an addicts favourite drug, there was no equal, and if they were anything like most pegasi I knew, they would not be able to resist such a calling. But that was why they had to be prepared. It was good that they were under the protection of the Edge.. Assuming it was the same sort of herd as before the horrific darkness descended, it would surely have numerous pegasus and other winged creatures at its disposal to show the boys just how to fly. Soon enough, when their muscles grew and their soft, fluffy, downy wings shed out to longer, more refined and elegant feathers, they would find themselves lifted off the ground even as they did this simple exercise. The next step was easy - taking off was something more pegasus mastered in one attempt.

It was landing that usually proved the troublesome part.

My ears twist sharply upon my crown as the mare's body language tenses up, and I feel myself instinctively searching for you, wanting to borrow your senses, wanting to feel the secure caress of your soul against my own. I am left alone, however, my thoughts thrown away into the abysmal hole that is inside me, swallowed by the black hole of death, following you to wherever you are now. My wings shuffle again at my sides, opening slightly, prepared to take off or to become a weapon themselves if needed. Brisa gathers her boys close, and at her touch I almost jump, until her low, soft voice informs me of her concerns. I nod, once, before reaching up to my left wing to pluck out the spear decorated with the black-and-white feathers of my father, feathers nearly identical to the one that was strung up in my dreadlocked mane. The taste of the wood upon my tongue gives me comfort, the faint scent of my forefathers that has soaked into it gives me strength.

"Stay here." I say simply, not giving a backwards glance to those I have apparently decided to risk my life for. Oh Sitka, what I wouldn't give for your sense of smell, your fine-tuned hearing, your ability to deduce everything going on in our surrounds with nothing more than a swift sniff and a glance. I am blind without you, but that doesn't stop me, for now I must learn to survive alone. I move forward, only a few paces, hoping to move enough that the wind I control (when its not controlling me anyway) can penetrate in between the trees, can deliver to me a scent, a sound, a hint of what might lie there. I call to the breeze, I feel it twist and turn, I encourage it to scoop up what it might and deliver to me information I that would help be decipher this mystery. My eyes think they see something, but I am not sure - it is a blur, a memory of a dream fading into unconsciousness as one wakes up in the morning.

The scent that is delivered to me is faint, and the image that is placed in my mind is from a time before you were born, a time where I travelled to colder climates with my mother, before my wings could bear my weight in the skies, a time where father was alive and well, where laughter was plentiful and spots were contagious.

"Who are you?" I demand, the haughtiness in my tone nearly overridden by the fear and nerves shaking the rest of me. Am I ready for this?

Will I ever be?