Gwaihir answered the zephyr’s friendly greeting and dipped into a lazy swoop below the bird. To the eagle, the hierarchy of winged creatures was quite literal; to expose his back in flight to the younger bird a mark of respect for it’s royal status. After soaring below for a moment, he swooped up again and climbed higher. Haughty and proud as he usually was, the zephyr had captured his deeply ingrained curiosity, with it’s extra set of wings and iridescent feathers (even Gwaihir’s glossy golden head looked drab in comparison) and for the first time, the companion was quicker to accept the new and the unknown than the pegasus below.


She had expected defiance, something akin to Cathun’s childish reaction weeks before, but got none of it. Her eyes had been painted with prejudice and the Sunpear had expected, even hoped, to see the haughty, vain, little viper that she expected would be the spawn of the wicked goddess, but there was no trace of that creature in Mesec that Megaera could see. He had addressed her with all respect that her station deserved (even if she at the moment did not) and not with sarcasm or anger. She had help back much of what she had wanted to hurl at him and was thankful that her restraint had not failed her. He didn’t shrink away, didn’t yell or sneer or babble excuses. If the stallion was tense, it seemed it was only fear of the sword she herself had hung over his head.

“He told me that her actions were not my fault, I could not choose who my mother is.”

Gaucho had said that……of course he had. Meg had no trouble imagining the scene for she had experienced it first hand. How could she have forgotten? How could she have been so unjust? If Mesec had stopped speaking at that her mind would have been made up, but each word that he spoke after only served to affirm that their situations were more similar than she had realized.

No one chose who their parents were, Meg least of all. What did she know of her mother? A vain and selfish mare. Her father? A tyrant and a murderer. And perhaps she had been lucky to never know the pain of loving them, for she had only ever hated them… Hated both and killed one before coming to the Throat and discovering what it was to love and serve a family that one chose instead of the one that birth ordained. She had felt filthy, unworthy, when she had confessed as much to the Wildfire but his acceptance had washed her clean and she had sworn to be better than her blood. If Mesec was or had ever been tainted than so had she.

Mesec’s crimes agains Dragon’s Throat were no greater than her own had even been, just better publicized.

Her eyes closed when he spoke of service. It hurt her to look him in the eye at than moment for it was like she was looking at herself two years past and being about to cast that wild girl out before she could have truly found her family. The faces of Gaucho and Cera, Hector and Tandavi swam across her closed lids, then Mordecai and Einarr and Meg pulled her head close to her chest as if to clutch them to her.

How? How could she withhold what she had been given so freely? A chance? A chance to learn and to love in this desert paradise. A chance to give her own sweat and blood to serve those who she knew would do the same for her. A chance to live.

Mesec’s last question hug in the air for long moments until she finally gathered up the courage to look back at those strange silvery eyes. She sighed deeply and spoke. “No…” She said it softly, and her body, too had relinquished its stiff, prickly stance. She had her share of pride, but she knew, when she was in the wrong, and as always the remorse made her sick. The only hope she ever found for it was laying it bare, admitting her shortcomings and then she felt free to move on, and to do better next time. “No, your presence does not make me uncomfortable, but my actions do.”

“No one can change or choose their blood, and I am guilty of forgetting that. If I were to say yours was as black as your coat, then mine would be just as dark and more so by my own doing. She sent a glance in the direction Gaucho had withdrawn with a little wry smile and turned to grant the black stallion the courtesy of open honesty that he had given her. "My father was a tyrant on his own right, cruel and dangerous, and I came here with his blood on my hooves and his bone as a trophy. I was bitter, and angry, and I came here to hide from that, from him and from what I had done. I did find safety here, but more than that I found forgiveness and acceptance. I found family. Already you are more honorable than I was, for you come to atone for another's actions, and I have not shown the same grace that my much wiser mentor showed to both of us."

"My father may not have had the power your mother does but that does not make him better. I chose to be better than he was, better than I was before I came here and it was Gaucho that gave me that chance. I have forgotten what that meant, and I am sorry for it.” Her voice shimmered with bare honesty and true remorse. She couldn’t look down of him then, not in anyway, for on these terms they were more equal than any she had known in Helovia. She hesitated, not knowing if he would accept the olive branch, but extended her right wing towards to brush the tips of her feathers upon his shoulder and rest them there. “I have spoken before thinking, accused before understanding… Will you forgive me, and allow us to start again?”

Megaera the Sunspear