Tandavi

I'll light a fire in your new shoes.

They step across the threshold and inhale that imperceptible, delicious scent of home.

How much time has passed since her hooves last brushed the golden sand, leaving easy crescents in an endless sea of gold? Not long, she thinks, though it feels longer- minutes are years when you spend them as she has, among towering spires of marble stone, beneath the shadow of mountains and the weight of the sky. Mountains. And how glorious those minutes had been! Ancient mineral sent jettisoned into the heavens, spiraling paths on narrow ridges leading to ancient shrines and the voices of gods...

Why doesn't Helovia have mountains? she asks her shadow brother, and the boy spills a list of feeble contradictions into her mind, one the girl ignores with a shake of silver hair which hides a sliver smile. They're not the same, she tells him softly, and he sighs his agreement from frail lungs, three tails twisting to betray his overlying and resilient joy. The had loved the mountains, the Fire Dancer and her brother, basked in the cold air and the strength of the wind, but neither could deny the thirst for the desert which had kept constant in the recesses of their intertwined hearts. Homes, they had learned, could be built wherever one found oneself flung, but Home - the capital-H kind, the lodged-in-your-memory-and-heart-and-soul kind - would forever be the Desert.

The children are okay with that.

Her thoughts linger in the mountains, though, among stony peaks and gilded shrines. It skips along a stream of memory, traces faces and bodies, dwells on moments and dreams. The conversation between girl and brother often follows a similar vein (Hey, do you remember...? Yeah, that was amazing!), interrupted only by projection of future, dreams and ideas and ideals which ride upon carriages of assurance, new and inflamed with the passion of youth which has reached its prime. Success is a taste still new to the girl, one she longs to taste again and again- confidence is new found and delicious, and the boy basks in his sister's renewed flame, gold ears and easy smile. Soon she will go home, and bring there the things she has learned, the changes she has endured. She will counsel the youth and heal the ill, will fight for her home and contribute as she never did when she was young and broken...

But there is something to be done, first.

They find themselves at the southern shore as the sun makes its descent. Long shadows point toward the East; wistfully the Fire Dancer's black eyes trace their length, yearning to follow where they direct, to trace the line of the rocky shore until they find the trail of their home. The Dragon's Throat calls to them, whispering of future and past; reluctantly, painfully, the girl turns West, though her shadow still clings to the Eastern sand.

They reach the bridge to the Veins at the looming of sunset, and for a moment they pause, letting blue stone and orange sky reflect in shared eyes of onyx and gold. How long has it been since they took in this sight? How much has happened in the presence of those shrines, once mighty and full, now broken and forgotten? The Fire Dancer remembers it all, in quiet hot flashes and dark misty nights. She remembers when the world ended, and when light came again. She remembers her friends, remembers her foes, remembers the death and the Moon God, her family's god, the role she played in the murder of the girl's friend. If only she had been faster, worked harder, loved more...

No, whispers her brother, fierce and slicing through her mind. We did best we can. Can't go back, can't fix. Only forward, forever forward.

Quietly, the girl nods, clasping tears behind lashes of gold. "Only forward," she repeats aloud, raising a crescent face to the cloudless winter sky. Slowly slate hooves move once more, fueled by the determination which burns behind her eyes. She has spent too long in the past; it is time to find her future, to see what it shall become and make it all her own.

Fire Dancer begins the ascent to the home of the Gods, wiser than the last time, iron forged by fire into something strong, and new.