A rather large part of Sohalia the Transcended was numb.  Ever since that day, she had forced herself to keep moving, to constantly find something new to focus her attention on.  She had trotted morning patrols along the beach, picking a different stretch each day, pushing herself to gallop when she reached the deepest, softest sands.  She would have flown, but that would have been too easy - she craved the physicality of running, the way her muscles burned and her lungs screamed, and sometimes she wondered what would happen if she tripped just so - but she would never leave her family, not like that, and so she always slowed back to a walk, breathing hard and sweating harder, retreating to the metal piles to move as much as she could before she collapsed into fitful sleep.

If her thoughts were dark, her dreams were darker.  Each day she pushed herself harder, hoping that maybe she would avoid the terrors that plagued her nights.  Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him.  He was dead, his eyes open and staring, and yet she was still screaming at him, blaming him.  And in his lifeless eyes, she could still see the hatred that had clouded their last meeting, the accusations that had flown between them, the defeat with which they had parted ways.  And every time, she woke with a start, tears streaming down her ivory face.  Every morning, she sunk into the waters of the oasis, dunking her entire body as though to bathe.  In reality, she was washing away the tearstained guilt that marred her snowy hide.

Wanting to be strong for her children, the Transcended pasted a sad smile on her face and kept her tears a secret.  It was bad enough that Vinati had seen her sobbing over Gaucho's body - she didn't need to prolong their pain even more by falling into the pit of depression that threatened to consume her.  Vinati, oddly enough, was handling her father's death well.  She claimed to have seen his spirit rise into the sky, as though to be with the Sun God.  The Transcended had grasped the thought, obsessed over it, slipped into her magic time and again throughout the days following her ex-lover's death, but despite Sohalia's best efforts, her brief trips into the spirit world had yielded no results.  It would seem that, even in the afterlife, her former mate wanted nothing to do with her.

If she stopped moving, if she stopped forcing herself to work, if she stopped running from the nightmares, she was forced to acknowledge the gaping hole that bled where her heart used to be.

She kept telling herself that it could be worse.  He could have been killed, brutally murdered, torn apart by some great monster.  But somehow, that might have been better.  He would have died a warrior, a hero, a martyr.  She would have been proud of his death, though it would still have hurt the same.  But this... this mystery disease that had claimed the WildFire... it was silent, it was sudden, it was unexpected, and it left her grasping at straws, desperately hoping that one of them would help her to understand why.

Several days had passed when the mare realized through the numbness that with Gaucho gone, their only leader with Sikeax.  While she respected the mare's healing abilities and had faith in her leadership, she knew from firsthand experience how daunting the title of Sultana could be.  As the ivory dove set out on her morning run, she found herself thinking about the healer.  Though she didn't know her personally, she certainly knew of her.  Perhaps, she thought, it would be prudent to pay the new Sultana a visit.  Perhaps she could be of service somehow.

Perhaps Sikeax could give her some task to fill the emptiness in her chest.

"talk talk talk"

@Sikeax - I figured this was a good stopping point?  So you can decide where she is when Soh finds her and all that?  IDK IT WAS JUST GETTING REALLY LONG.

Brighter than the northern lights
Want to live to feel the daylight