The wind was my companion now.

From the altitude I was at, the wind was all that accompanied me. It howled against the fluted shapes upon my skull, my ears which were pressed against my poll so that I wouldn't go deaf from the constant hum. Wildly, haphazardly, my hair danced and whipped about, the dreadlocks in my mane tugging my nape at their roots. I laugh, a colourful, angelic and yet slightly unhinged, the sound stolen by the wind almost as it forms in my throat. My wings stretch for many metres to either side of me, my heritage gifting me with one of the largest wingspans in existence, allowing me to fly great distances on a single downstroke. My magic blended in with that natural ability, and I found myself drifting from thermal to thermal on but a whim of thought, an idea, a simple and yet abundantly clear decision to simply fly wherever I would, and embrace what came to me from there onwards.

My plan didn't always follow that path, but at least I could try.

As I embraced the magic that hummed alongside my soul, I felt the very nature of the weather around me shift and change. Despite the TallSun season being upon us, the weather was never a constant - it was forever changing, forever growing or moving or evolving into something more or less wonderful, extreme or disastrous.

As I continued to live my life without you, I found myself living along similar lines.

A river stretched its way out before me, winding through the Meadow that I had seemingly decided would be my home. My altitude lowered, my descent long and winding, smooth and subtle, my shadow dancing along the surface of the water as my bodice eventually followed. The water gurgled happily beneath me, picked up by the wind I generated both through my movement and my magic, wetting the underside of my belly and limbs. I travel along the river in this manner, until up ahead, I spy the form of someone who tugs at my memories of familiarity. An image of a mare, broken, battered, bloody, blind and alone in the midst of the Deep Forest. I remember pulling upon the magic bestowed upon me by the Sun God, I remember speaking to her with soothing and warm tones, numbing her pain before doing what I could to alleviate the broken, damaged parts of her bodice. I remember her words of thanks. That was before the darkness fell - or was what had caused her injuries the very darkness that invaded the lands shortly after our meeting?

I don't know if I am ready to face someone from a time when you were still alive.

"Hello," my voice hums along the wind, my tones gentle and friendly. I wondered if she would recognise me - I wondered what it would be like to be blind, to rely upon one's other senses. But then I knew, if I was blinded, and presented with my family's bodies laid out before me, I would still be able to identify them without a shadow of a doubt.

It was a harrowing thought.

"Enjoying the river?" I ask noncommittally, my frame coming to land with smooth ease in the clearing that edges the running water. Perhaps it was a lingering habit from my days as a healer, perhaps it was a habit from the training my father instilled upon me as a warrior, or perhaps I was merely curious as to her wellbeing, but my eyes roved the palomino's body acutely, interested to know the shape and curve of her every muscle. One glance at her eyes tell me she is still without sight, while the rest of her bodice seems to be intact, an observation that brings me surprise joy. I ease myself into a casual posture, awaiting a response from the mare who represents everything in my past I have lost or left behind.

I should have kept flying. I shouldn't have landed. I wasn't ready for this. I wasn't ready to be recognised, to face the truth about your death, to face the fact that I ran away when my herd, my family, needed me most, to face the horror that is my own selfish want to live on despite your departure.. I wasn't ready for this.

I was not ready for this.

My casual posture seems to tremble, twitches travel along my spine as I attempt to read the mare's silent body language. She spins away from the pool, facing me with her sightless orbs, drinking in what she could of my identity with her other senses. Somehow, I feel exposed before her, like her sightless eyes might see something more than the pelt of mine which reflects the sky's mood upon it, the dreadlocks that decorate the crest of my nape, that she might look straight through the tribal star upon my side and into my heart, my soul within.. Can she see the gaping wound, the hole, left behind by you? Does she recognise that I am but a shell, an empty vessel, an abandoned ship, guided by no more than the whim of the wind?

Can she see just how close I am to giving up?

The lyrical belle replies to me, her tones just the right level of volume. Somehow, I am reminded of my mother, who could soothe all my troubles with a single phrase. But then she confirms my fears, she listens to the tugging of her memories, she mentions that I am familiar to her, and I watch as her façade betrays the realisation. You travelled with another young creature… It is those words that seem to bring everything crashing down around me. The wind that was so recently supporting me stops altogether, and for a moment, we are graced with just the drought-like heat of TallSun, beating down upon us through the power of the Sun Lord.

Then the temperature starts dropping.

It was subtle, at first. Without the wind to speed it up, it was a dry, brittle cold that settled over us, like a cloud interrupting the line of the Sun's rays - which also happened. The cloud was heavy and dark, pregnant with chilled frost and snow. Its load wasn't yet delivered, but still, the temperature continued to drop. I shivered, for I was not ready for this. I was not containing nor controlling that which had taken control of me. My magic wove its own story, and right now, the fear, the depression, the anger and rage and sheer confusion amongst the jumble of emotions that poured through me all congregated and culminated in the approaching freeze.

"Yes." The word chokes itself out of my mouth, my tongue dry from the disappearance of humidity at this altitude. Shivers rattle my frame, from the cold, from my nerves, I cannot say. "I.. He.. Gone.." My tiara bows down and I stare at the dirt between my feet, watching as my forelegs tremble, struggling to hold up not only my physical weight, but also the much heavier metaphysical burden of guilt that has made the hole within my soul its habitat. I blink, and my vision goes blurry - saline drops escape over the rims of my eyelids, though they turn frosty upon my cheeks as the temperature plummets further.

And just like that, I stand, bowed and cowed before the blind mare who has unintentionally and yet unequivocally catalysed a storm within and around me, one that I cannot see an end to.


[[ @[Rasta] <3 Aaaand as usual, idek what Cirrus wants to do most of time. ]]

Shaking. Trembling. It is hard for me to hold myself steady. The fracture in my soul seems to have catalysed a further split of my being. I feel ripped apart, torn and thrown about, tossed to and fro, like a rattle banging against the sides of its shell. The cold penetrates my skin, any moisture that was on the surface, any sweat, saliva or tears, freezes on my pelt, I become dotted with icy speckles. Even my nostrils gather a bunch of icicles, my eyelashes become stained white, and it takes some effort to blink them open once more. I tuck my wings close to my side, seeking warmth amongst their downy folds, but they feel hard and brittle against me, and I only shiver more. I feel the layers of fat, muscle and skin be penetrated by this chill, I feel myself go numb, and I allow myself to revel in that numbness - for while I am numb, I do not feel, I do not care, I am not afraid, and I can pretend that I am no longer broken.

Until the fissure becomes bigger. The harks atop my poll capture the other's, Rasta's, utterance of my name, and I jolt in surprise to feel her muzzle against my forelock. In my numbness I neglected to observe her nearness, and it has been so long since another has truly touched me that I am jolted, as if from another dimension. The pain of your absence returns. The hole opens up again, or at least I become aware of it all over again. Sobs rattle me, unwillingly I choke them back, blinking again against the onslaught of frozen tears that painfully attempt to carve their way down the hard contours of my façade. I lean away from her, my ears pinned down against the frosted skin of my nape, my dreadlocked forelock falling stiffly across my brow. I was lost and broken, alone in the world and unsure of how I would survive. I had made the choice to live on without you - I could have fallen upon my spear the way my grandmother had, for she had lost her mate, her lover, but I was too selfish, too weak to give in to the urge to simply end it all. Some might argue that it was a stubborn strength that carried me on, but I knew better. It was weakness, hopelessness, a wretched sense of unworthiness that was as alluring as it was despised.

I understand, she says, but how can she possibly? What does she know of my pain, my torture, my loss? I know the hole.. her words echo around me, and it takes a few moments of lost time for them to completely register. My breath holds during this time, and it feels like an eternity before I remember to breathe again. "No." I breathe the word, I live the word. A denial, denying your existence, denying her and whatever it was she called a companion. Denying my will to live to this moment. "NO!" I shout now, my entire body twisting so that my crown is pointed at her, as if the hot breath and expanding lungs weren't enough to get the message across. I refused to accept this, to acknowledge it, to even process it in my fractured mind properly. No no no no no NO! I snorted, harshly, in her direction, my ears still slicked down, my nose scrunching in anger and repulsion, my lips peeling back to snarl at a foe who cannot even see the faces I pull in her direction.

I turn away from her, sweeping my tail over the dried, frozen grasses, shuffling my stiff wings against my frosted body. My legs, stiff from the cold I do not even realise is generated by me (but so used to odd weather patterns by now that I barely bat a frozen eyelid at it), put distance between us, several strides. The thought of flight enters my mind once more, and my wings spread wide - but there is no wind, and my magic feels numb to me, even though it is anything but. My wings raise, high, towering above my crown, as I stretch and try to restore warmth and blood flow to my extremities. Several more moments pass, and though the annoyance, the sheer denial within me still lingers, it seems to have thawed. I speak, softly, dryly, tonelessly, once more. "What was his name?"

It begins to snow.


[[ @[Rasta] <3 I'm sure Rasta wanted to experience snow in july, right?? ]]

The landscape has changed. The grasses are stiff, but not from dry heat, from a layer of ice that has solidified along their stems. The ground has a thickening layer of frost turning it white. The areas where my hooves have scraped against it reveal what was summery dirt beneath, but the imprints lasted only seconds as the snow fell down, muting and freezing everything. Finally, now, I look to the sky, I realise the damage I have woven. Snow falls upon my nose, my whiskers curl as my nostrils snort the flakes away from their opening. Shit, the thought tumbles through my crown, loud against the denial that had filled it previously. I am pulled away from my denial, from my self-pity, and plunged back into the reality - the reality of my magic, of the weather taking on a dangerous shift. I was shivering still, my thin, summery skin not taking kindly to the sudden chill.

A voice sounds behind me. My ears, once tucked beneath the knotted and dreadlocked ropes of mane and forelock, lift to catch her words. Regalis, they say, my hawk's name was Regalis. I let the words wash over me, I let them fill me up, wash away the denial, the hate, the sorrow, albeit momentarily, but it is a moment of reprieve, of relief, and I cling to it, selfishly willing to deny the hole, the broken soul, the damaged and rotten remains that decay in the coffin that is my body. My bodice turns around, back towards the crème belle, and I feel the softened curves of a smile start on my face. They freeze though - literally and figuratively, as I realise the full extent of the damage I have wrought. I stumble - for my lower limbs are numb and a bit useless by now - towards her, and I sling a wing over her shoulders, rubbing them slightly to encourage warmth to spread back between us both. Sorry, I want to say, but the words do not come. My muzzle leans towards her, and I blow warm air towards her, hoping that it would fill the blanket my wing creates and start the thawing process. I look to the sky again, begging it to stop, but the snow only continues to fall. Salty tears continue to freeze around my eyes, some of them managing to drip a ways down my façade before they are halted by the sub-zero temperatures my soul has orchestrated around us. Please, stop, please, I beg to my own magic, feeling it vibrating within me, feeling it wave its conductor's baton at the skies, heedless of my begging.

"Sitka.." I murmur, barely a whisper. It is a pleading, a wish. If I am to die today, I want it to be with your name upon my lips. "Sitka, please," I beg, a bit louder, and I feel a shift around me. It like the sensation of a hot breath washing over me, and I feel a warm, summery breeze pierce through the snowstorm. My magic becomes more tangible to me, and I cling to it, grappling with it. But it is slippery, like a bar of soap in the shower, and it takes several moments of internal argument before I convince it to cease the freezing conditions. I breathe again, as the snow slowly clears, as the cloud above us slowly dissipates, as the warmth returns to thaw our frozen bodies. My attention turns to the mare again, to Rasta, and I hope I haven't hurt her beyond repair. My wing lifts up, and I fold it back across my own back, before stumbling a few steps away from her. It was as if the nearness of our bodies might allow her to see damage within me, and I was afraid of that..

I wasn't ready to face this. So my stumbling, stiff legs kept moving, slowly putting more distance between us. I was not ready for this.


[[ @[Rasta] <3 She isn't gone, just kind of half-heartedly walking away, lol. ]]