Ranjiri had left the Throat, taking with her the last fraying threads of hope and family Cera had been so desperately clinging to. There was a void in his chest that could not be filled, and he wondered idly when he became such a failure that he couldn't even manage keep his crumbling family together. For years he had tried so hard to be the glue, the cement that kept his family close and connected. And time after time he had failed. There was no room left for pain or tears. He had cried himself out long ago, and in a way had become numb to the agony of loneliness and purposelessness. He could not forsake Ranjiri for her decision, not when he had seen her and saw how happy she was in the Falls with her mother and Archibald. And Murtagh. Gods, he had a distant brother out there somewhere, and the two had never met. Cera understood her need to connect with the boy, had felt the same himself when Ranjiri had still been a knobby-kneed filly with big, useless wings. And while the two visited each other as often as they could, it would never be the same as living alongside his baby sister. 

With the change, his own routine had to adapt. No longer were there opportunities to run about and shirk his duties, and with his open time slots he settled into crafting with a single-minded intensity. It was easier to forget how much he missed her when there was work to be done. And though he worked his body to exhaustion just to ignore the absence of her presence at his side at night, there was no reason to slow or stop. In time he would find a new purpose, but for now, the solidity of an old and unshakable one was enough. 

Compiling metal was perhaps the hardest, most laborious part of crafting. While the magic seeped the energy from his bones and body during the shaping and tempering, pulling and consolidating raw alloys was far more exhausting. The earth and sand was adorned with gleaming metal in various bundles, Cera wandering between the piles and humming soft comments to himself. Plans unfurled and built before him, each pile assigned to a future date and task. The hours spun on like golden thread, the sun ticking by overhead, sweat gleaming dark on his flanks beneath the scorching heat. 

"Cera?" The soft call was like a voice from the past, a ghost raised from a grave he had already mourned over. For a moment, tension ripples across his pale canvas, not daring to believe that it is she who speaks his name. That she has returned after all this time, after leaving again, leaving him and Gaucho. Cera is so tired of being abandoned, and yet as he turns his verdant eyes to her glowing ivory form against the backdrop of summer blue skies, his gentle heart cannot bear to scorn her. Instead he tries to rejoice over her return, wings flaring out and trembling with excitement, fanning hot air upon his sweat-laced flanks as he goes jogging towards her with an eager gleam in his eyes. 

"Sohalia!" his voices rises in a jubilant cry of her name as he skids to a stop before her, musculature gleaming with health and an increased exercise regiment. He is taken aback quite brutally to realize how far above her he stands. She had been his mentor for so long, that she had always appeared larger than life in his mind. And yet here she stood, the pupil instead of the mentor, so astoundingly small. He had embraced the adulthood the years had blessed him with, no longer the cherubic boy with the shy smile Sohalia may have known. But his heart was still as pure as it had always been, and he proffered his soft nose to her eagerly and without hesitation, awaiting an exchange of scents and the gentle brush of kinship. 

"You've returned," he noted, carefully avoiding any inflection that may give her the wrong impression. "You look well. How are you? What brings you to my little corner?" A lopsided, boyish grin cuts across his handsome face as he pokes fun at himself, overly large wings folding neatly against his side as he cocks a hip, comfortable in his old mentor's presence.