I wanted to go home. I wanted to hide myself away in the sand and work until I forgot the pain of losing my brother and my father in such a short span of time. I didn't want to think about dad's attempt at escaping the Basin or the lightning. I didn't want to think about the sound of his flesh sizzling after the lightning strike or the way it was charred and how it smelled, but it was impossible. All the way to the Heavenly Fields the scene replayed endlessly in my head, making it hard for me to concentrate on flying which made my movements clumsy and jerky like when I had been young and learning. Even with my clumsy movements I still flew as fast as I could to get there before whoever was there left and my father's body was gone.

Despite my best efforts I didn't make it in time. The field was empty and when I saw that disappointment and despair squeezed my chest like a vise and made it hard to breathe. How could they have been gone already? Where would they have gone? What had they done with my father's body? I angled my body toward the ground, grunting when I finally landed. "No one's here..." I said, though Gaucho didn't need me to point that out to him. "But ... where would they go?"

I began looking around and saw marks in the grass that looked like something had been moving. I didn't know what it was that told me to follow the trail, but I did and it brought me to the Hidden Falls. To my father's body on some kind of rolling contraption. My sides were lathered with sweat from a combination of running and flying as I followed the trail the thing had left.

There was another mare there, one winged, grey, and with flaming hair, but I didn't know her. I'd never met her before and the very brief times that I spent with my dad he never mentioned her to me. How was I supposed to know right away that she was his lover? It was easy enough for me to figure out, though, when she was given his every possession that he'd had in his mortal life. She was even assured that he hadn't suffered and I stood to the side watching and listening like the bystander I had been my entire life.

"Wait!" I called out desperately to the turtle as he disappeared. "Tell them I love them. Please..." But he was gone. I felt out of place, like I didn't even deserve to be there and I wondered if maybe I should have just gone home. I didn't know what to do and I looked to Gaucho because he always seemed to know what to do or what to say to make everything better.

"."

@[Gaucho]