Home… it would never truly be, again.

Silas crashed heavily into the soft brush laid across the bed of Africa’s golden cave. He was confident that they would not be found, barely be missed, and that both would be able to recover some while chaos rained outside. The night was growing old, a weary war had been lost by Ghost the Cadaverous and those who followed her in absence of the Czar. The zephyr’s breast rumbled angrily and sadly as he thought of the trauma which had touched the soul of his bonded this time; how undeservedly, those monsters from the snow had torn away her liberty and shattered what little remained of the heart so long ago fractured in their care. The were cruel, merciless, and deserved nothing of the liberty which seemed to surround them - they should have been locked away in that frozen hell years ago with no chance to maim further life.

He released the limp parrot from the careful grip of his talons and she rolled into the bedding silently. For a long while he simply stared at her, helplessly consumed by the pain reeling through their bond - even as she slept so soundly. There had been nothing similar shared between them, not even the misery of her time spent in the Basin, and he began to weep for all the suffering her life had endured. Hooked beak buried itself beneath the warmth of her sullied feathers and like a mother hen he cast his glittering, black wingspan across her frail body. They would not touch her again, what more damage be done? Still, he was weak, the blackness pooling about that Griffin’s claws left a sour aftertaste in his veins and he too fell into the depths of sleep, above her.

---

Africa woke with a start, and though the body she craned to look at wore not the blood and gore of her other, the wounds still echoed loudly through its midst. A gravelly groan passed her hard, parrot beak and she found that she was stiff - barely able to move. The weight of Silas above her shifted as his bleary lilac eyes opened. They were alive, they had each other at least; Zahra would soon be found and Midas returned to their safety. They could leave this home so deeply cherished, and its heartless, excessive captors and travel - find the sand that Midas adored so much. That was, if they could find the strength to rise through the agony.

The Roc propped his body up across his trembling legs as Africa tried to do the same. It was a task easier said than done, and she was more than grateful that he was hovering, leaning, desperate to support any attempt made. As her slight frame began to teeter, he was there beneath, and she leaned against him long enough for the pool of blood to leave her skull and flow down through the rest of her burning body - to rouse it, bring it back to life. So much emotion flowed through the bond between them, the pain, bitterness, grief - Africa so desperately need her lover; to touch him, feel the gentleness of his touch, the passion that her heart pined for.

‘Zahra?'

Silas shook his head slowly.

’We must find her, she…’ The breath caught in Africa’s dry, raspy throat and she swallowed hard the bubble of nausea, the pain rising through her core. ’…she, will be starving.’ So weary was she, even in thought, that her body slumped where it sat resting against the Zephyr. She knew that to travel quickly, to find the daughter she and Midas loved so dearly alive, she would need to fly in this form. The other was wounded terribly, gored - she could feel it. Exhausted but determined, she stiffened her posture to stand and stretched first one wing out and then the other. ‘May the wind be in our favour’… Surely these wretched Gods of Helovia would spare her that small mercy.

Fighting the surging agony tracing every movement to follow, Africa’s stocky avian body fluttered from the security of the love-nest and up onto a tree branch beyond - still higher she climbed. From their she cast her eye around the kingdom of the Gallant, the Ascended and his Czarina. The night Silas had created was failing - light was leeching away the thick anonymity of that fateful, dark hour. There was much movement; bodies everywhere, milling about like stupid cattle. She quickly recognised a few - Resplendence (to her horror), the giant black beast who had bid her and Midas touch an ‘un-welcome’ on the border of World’s Edge and even the horned wench who had pierced a bleeding heart thrice over.

‘How could they?’

Stone has no moral compass…

‘Suppose you are right.
She cannot grow here, not amongst these ravenous wraiths.’

Because in Africa’s eye they were nothing more respectable - feared, relentless, heartless. This place was no longer the home they knew, it would perhaps never be. Tears flooded the morbid picture before them and she turned achingly to sob into the cloak of her bonded. Silas opened a wing, and again embraced her. Come, he hummed soothingly, tenderly. Zahra… He withdrew in fair time and followed his weak beloved closely as she swooped from their vantage point to another still nearer to the north - a narrow glade spared the effects of this war.