Sikeax,

She is failing. Hobgoblin has long given up on telling her that Gaucho is no longer a cause to believe in, that she should let go and let him go. It’s not even like they don’t have the means to do it. Death’s fruit lingers everywhere, even in his jaws. Everything is a mean's to an end as far as he is concerned.
Yet in the last days, time spent near Gaucho when Sikeax is trying to aid him in his final days, Bella taken away with her father, he comes to feel some sort of pity for the man. No one deserves it, and yet there was Sikeax, desperate to give him some sort of length in this world.
In this time, it is that they become distant, pushed far from each other, only coming together and sharing one another's happiness when Bella, Cera and Ilaria are with them, smiling, playing, enjoying that sweet feeling of being a family.
During the night, together at last, they take short moments to swim and dive, to leave the pain of the Dragon's Throat in a silent truce between the two of them to relieve each other of pain. Their garden grows in the slow, harsh way that it does for two soul like themselves.
By morning, they are the property of the desert again, herbs clutched tight in her lips and silence in his. Food warms their stomaches. Heat is making them desire sleep, and without words, it can be said that they share a joint-agreeance in sleeping in the shade together, for the first time in a long time.
This morning is not the one that they want it to be. She is expecting Gaucho to be sleeping in the shade, Hobgoblin expecting him to be degrading futher and further into the zombie that he had recently grown accustomed to addressing him as.
Instead, upon entering the oasis, they are welcomed with a plume of rising fire, leaping into the air in only a way that reminds of her when she had so many tears in her eyes and was running away for sanctuary, looking for somewhere that will overlook the horrors she and her family had been stamped with without having done any of them.
Or maybe she was just blind to them, too young to know.
Life ignites in her joints. What was once sleep and fatigue is now replaced by energy and panic, driving her forward, leaving a heap and scattered, short trail of herbs behind her. Hobgoblin is closely beside.
At first sight, it would have been rude but typical of Hobgoblin to bring claim to the fact that all along he was right about Gaucho's coming death, but this is not the typical moment. Sikeax is crushing him. She is so quiet that one cannot hear the breathing still manages to carry on despite her held breath, still like she is made of stone. A thousand thoughts rush through her head.
I failed.
"Zombie dying. Not fault."
I couldn't do anything for him.
"Too far gone."
She can't bare to stare anymore. Something inside of her is ripping to shreds, screaming, wailing, begging for redemption.
There is only one way.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save him." is all that she can offer them as they weep over Gaucho's now corpse, lying in the sand and no longer burning, the final statement that he is not with them anymore. The last words she'll ever say as the Dragon's Throat's Sun Physician, savior of the weak and dying, rescuer of newborn foals, the one who couldn't keep the Wildfire that burned so vibrantly within the throat of the southern dragon going.

OOC: Goblin is actually going to steal a few of Vorsa's feathers after Sia takes off running. She's just standing off to the side watching all of it.
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