"Warblood Child. You are a daughter of the dark and the damned, the spawn of savages and heathens. We are your salvation , we will give you truth. Give us your mind, child, we will cleanse it, we will save it." But... but it hurts... I'm frightened. "Silence child, what could you possibly know of fear?"
. . .

Home was a dangerous thought for Asavvi, hell, even her own name was dangerous. Anything that threatened the serene scape of the star-girl's mind had to be regulated, regimented, analysed and relegated to the recesses of her consciousness. Moment after moment she held tight the reins of her own thoughts, sorting and sifting to decide which she could trust, which were hers and which were leftover lies that her captors had implanted. Some were easier to deal with, thoughts that revolved around fact could be tested, proven, cataloged and forgotten, but others...ones like home and family were too volatile. When her mind approached them it sent her brain into a riot that pulled her heart painfully with it.

It was all a matter of control; after what she had suffered the girl had a bedrock need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was in control of her own thoughts, and what were emotions if not a source for doubt. 

It had taken her months to get to this point; to build up enough courage to set foot with in 10 leagues of the sandy shore that led to the place she had grown up. Even now she came only under cover of darkness on a moonless night. Her cloven hooves had found a place on the sand south of the Heart and she could force them no farther, would not force them farther. The Dragon's Throat had been too keen a target for her captor's mental vivisection; Megaera the Sunspear, Einarr the Warden... those proven warriors had been to warped in the girl's mind that she could not even approach the idea of seeking them out without quaking in terror or without feeling her through pinch on the bile of abject hatred. Savages. Monsters, and yet still somehow the girl's heart yearned for Mai, for Ave.

Because They had looked into her memories and seen no threat in a small boy beyond the strength of Asavvi's loyalty to him, thoughts of her brother had been left blessedly untouched, just as the silver cuff that held just above her right knee had been ignored. Nizho... her mind had whispered to her, over and over again in the past year in the spaces her mind could not push it aside. In the gaps between sleeping and waking when she could feel before she could tell herslef not to.  When she could ignore the longing no longer, she had come. 

In the blackness, beside the heaving swell of the sea, a little star appeared. Another winked into light beside it, and another, and another, and each was extinguished as the next appeared. Across the distance of the watery expanse they would be just a glimmer, a twinkle in the dark, a signal that only one would recognize. A shaky breath flitted through Asavvi's lips, whispered fear, whispered hope: "Nizho."

Does the secret fade—

            or is it everlasting?

Asavvi