Lighting flashed all around her, lighting up the darkness beneath the roiling clouds with earsplitting cracks. She could hear Kiuaji call out, her name a moan upon lips that ought to be wrenched shut in pain and fear. Her knees trembled, barely keeping her upright where she stood before the raging God. A mere mortal, quailing beneath all the pent up fury of a thunderstorm as she blocked the path to its preferred prey. She should have known such impudence would not go unpunished, should have thought about the consequences before she threw herself headlong into a battle that wasn't hers.

But she never learned.

Pain ought to be familiar to her by now, but the searing, burning agony of raw electricity arcing across her body was so new, so intense and sudden that it caught her unprepared. Unable to restrain herself Erthë screamed, the horrible, heartbreaking wails of a wounded child. She felt the stench of burning hair and flesh fill the air, and felt the nausea come over her twice as strongly in knowing that it was she who burned. Helpless before the immeasurable powers of the Time Lord she writhed, unable to fall and unable to bear the pain in stillness. Round and around her mind swam, pulled down into torrents of torment for what seemed like days, years, eons...

But it lasted for mere moments, and then it vanished. The sparking energy, the pain, the ugly wounds on her body - in a single instant it disappeared, gone as though it had never been there.

And so did she.

One moment she stood on the storm-swept rocks of the Veins, and the next her buckling knees brought her down sharply into the thick heather of a meadow that stretched endlessly in all directions. No trees grew tall enough to interrupt the vast line of the horizon, no hill or valley brought reprieve to the vastness of the landscape. Above her the sky stretched out, equally monotonous in its overwhelming emptiness - so uniformly gray that she couldn't tell if it was clouds or mist or just too blue for her eyes to comprehend. A soft breath of wind swept tousled hair forth to cover her eyes - hair she could have sworn was burned away completely along with the feathers of her wings - and it carried with it a scent both familiar and foreign, comfortable and terrible in ways she had no words to describe.

Snow.

She must be far north, for snow to be falling already. But that was impossible. She had been by the southern sea a breath ago, how could she suddenly be on the other side of the continent? Without a warning, without a trace of magic, without any sensation to suggest where she had been in the moment between there and here, between now and then. Had there even been a moment? Erthë didn't know, she couldn't tell; she didn't even recognize the landscape around her, and the light of day was so distant and faint that it gave no hint as to which direction she should head to get home.

How far north was she? How long would it take her to return, how much time...? Time! Did she even know how much time had passed? It felt like an instant, but what if it was more than that? What if she had moved not only in space but in time as well, been thrown off into some distant past or future she didn't know? Shivering uncontrollably the mare tried to rise, but her legs were as weak as a newborn foals. Clumsily she fell to the ground, again and again, until she in a furious attempt tumbled sideways and smacked her knees into stone, smooth and black and almost completely hidden beneath the dense vegetation.

Black light erupted before her eyes and with the dizzy, nauseous sensation that the world was spinning around her the filly collapsed onto her side, saw the sky contract, expand and darken over her head...

and for a long, long while she knew nothing more.

Big girls cry when their hearts are breaking