Tick…………………………………………..Tock……………….

Bones weigh heavy on her body. Coat, its once proud black stripes already in this time are fading to gray, slowly. Perhaps too slow even for their eyes. Yet the large mythology waits. Her last strength given to pausing her moment. She wants to know.

It was not her kind to be given to maternal instincts, and cares of the future. Yet this tigress had seen horrors in her time. The creatures of this land tearing each other apart. Brother set against brother. It seemed each that kindness, hope, and light were dead. It could only leave the wizened tigeress worried for the future. For though their worlds revolved around different centers, they were tied together in ways the legends only knew.

The songbird answers first. The answer though was still strange. Because she needed it. The great creatures head, heavy and low still manages to tilt. Her body was tired, but her spirit carried her on. Lungs, living all these weeks on half breaths, finally took a full breath, pulling their powers. “A flower needs sun. A fish needs water. And a horse needs breath.” The breaks came in her old speak, like the turning of a clock. “But there will come a day when they are not needed any longer.” Her breath sighs out easy now though, but she still looks to the bay trying her best to understand the girl’s phrase and pass on her own tongue.

This though, this speech and warmth (not from the fire, but other sources of light), give her strength. “Oh gentle Songbird, you help so many without thought, but remember the song of life is not always be what is needed.” Her faded grey eyes seem to shake, and shiver. In them she sees the bay girl as she had all those moons, soothing those who did not deserve, and healing those who were only full of hate. “It does not mean the song ends. Only that another begins.” The breath hisses from her fanged mouth, but it still seems to with care in those words.

Tick…………………………………………….Tock……………..

Another speaks. The antlered mare. In her she could see the pained eyes of reality, and her own soul mourned. Yet she too speaks. Her response brings a smile to worn tigress’s face, and a brightness of the past. “It is a choice to carry that heavy banner.” Head lowers slightly, but it brought back up. Of all the things she had done in her long life, these moments were, to her, the more important. “I carried it yes, just as strong as you do now.” Her life. How often had she thought of her life as a whole. Mythologies are given little choice in their destinies, yet all of us have the power to change.

Her thoughts were brought forward again by another question from the antlered mare. It though does not bring the same life though. It shakes her from the past and back to the present, where already she felt her body sinking with its weight. This time her voice sounds more like the question she first asked, rasped and worn. “Not all the world carries that banner….Its failure does not go unfelt.” She takes a ragged breath, and feels still the sting of the wounds as she speaks of them. “Murders. Wars. And hate, child. My hide marks the tallies, and this world has seen many dark days.” They were not supposed to talk of their kind, and their magic. A pang in her heart sings, but she feels it little. It is almost her time anyway.

…………………………………………..Tick……………………………..

The last mare finally speaks. She too, in her false helplessness, gains a gentle gaze from those grey eyes. It always amazed the tigress throughout her years how limited these creatures saw their power. “Innocent child. The will and heart to aid, is the strongest magic of all.” It was too heavy, the reality putting too much force. Through her own answers, hers were coming. There was hope in this world. There was light. So much so, it could even reach her. “The walls of limitations you see were made by your own hand, and none other.” Her head finally rests on her paws. And her breath no longer is full as it was before. Yet it is also not the shallowed wisps, but calm slow drawls.

…………………………………………Tock…………………………………

There is one more question though, one last curiosity. Her grey eyes shift back to the blue mare, with a calm peaceful face. What is that? The tigeress, with her last strength wills the silver locket to open. Never before in this universe had a mortal seen inside. “It is time….” Came the whispered voice. Inside the locket was a clock. But its face shifted with the faces of those across Helovia. It was never long enough to catch a face. Yet as quickly as they saw it, it changed, and the images faded to white time dial. The hands stopped, and still. It was indeed time. The tigress’s body lifted no more in breath. Yet a pleasant calm face rested like sleep.

…………………………………………………..

This tale is not over though. As she spoke before. When one song ends, another begins…..


OOC :: Please post again, this will be the last 'round' though I promise. Sorry for the wait. =] Suggest song:: Enya's May It Be
"Speech"