They come across the corpse of their family in the woods.

No.

Blood never mattered beneath the whispering mist. Amaris was their sister, Kaj and the twins their uncle. Family is built on love and respect, and the girl never had a father to cast her eyes upon, so all her life she had chosen him. It was an unspoken truth, a question in her heart she dared not ask, one that would never be answered now. Lace. Friend. Mentor. Protector. Father is whispered between the pair, a silent exhalation of a long-forgotten word.

Their father is dead.

No.

The girl falls further into her own mind, swallowed by the darkness which creeps around her sight. This is wrong. Everything about it, every moment, everything is wrong. She stares at it all through dry, black eyes, her mind unable to comprehend, to accept it at all. They should be in the Edge. They should be beneath the glow of a crescent moon, a mourning moon. Dragons should be here. Her family.

The last of her family lies dead upon the ground.

Her heart thrums with the word, a heavy beat in her chest, a fierce and slow denial, a rage.

No!

Trees loom around her, casting suffocating shadows. They whisper and jeer; they watch in judgmental silence and she is swallowed, unable to move or speak. Bodies shift around her, and her brother lets out a mournful wail, throwing himself onto the figure of the small white dragon, nudging her gently with a delicate nose. She watches in silence, motionless, her mouth full of ash. He'll wake up any moment. He'll stand. It's fine.

But he doesn't stand, and it isn't fine. A roar of magic begins to fill her ears. It grows louder and the girl blinks, reality suddenly striking her with violent imperative, murderous force. Fire dancer leaps into action, embers rising from her coat in waves. "What are you doing?!" she demands of the girl with wings, of the buckskin unicorn, of herself. "Don't touch him! How dare you touch him!" Endless eyes are wild now, full of a flaming, powerful rage. She throws herself forward but it is too late; her body strikes stone instead of flesh, right shoulder blooming into a powerful bruise as she shoves it pointlessly against the rock, again and again until the boils on her sides shatter and bleed.

NO!

Fire girl turns to the daughter of the earth, ire casting shadows in the sunlight of her face. "What did you do?" she demands again, deep voice resonant in the silent woods. She does not care that the mare is larger, or has wings, or is completely unknown. She is angry now, furious, and this stranger makes an easy target for the emotions Tandavi cannot express. Ears pin back against gold and sliver mane, lip rises angrily above bared teeth; she advances on the stranger, slim body pulled into tight aggression, ready to burst at a trigger's pull.

She does feel the tears pouring down her face. Her anger builds a mask for the breaking of her heart.