She watches from the sidelines, a flickering shadow beneath mist-laden trees.

Hours pass, days- or maybe only minutes, seconds, drawn out like heartbeats in the silence that fills her ears, threatening to swallow her beneath its daunting embrace. Bodies ebb and flow around her, into the clearing and away; voices are raised and silenced, tears are swallowed and wept. Her own black eyes are painfully dry: she has cried too much in these past seasons, and her reserves of emotion are finally run out.

Bodies and voices flow around her, but the Fire Dancer only cares for one. Like embers in her gold-slashed face her black eyes follow the dragonmare, her cousin, her sister, her long lost beloved and the only thing she has left - the only one to come home - Amaris. Had the girl expected to see that scaled beauty once more beneath these trees? No- and now she watches listlessly, wishing she could approach but not daring lest her cousin disappear again, like so much smoke and mist.

Disappear, the way Lace had.

The way Sacre had.

The way her mother had.

The way Mirage was, even now.

Distant flames light the wan lines of her slender face, but still the girl does not draw near. She watches silent, distant, as her aunt dissolves into so much ash and soot, and still her eyes are dry. She does not draw near, for she does not feel the urge- not after the disaster that was Lace's memorial, not after the sins she has committed with Reginald. They left her for a reason; she knows this now, accepts it, and so she stays away.

But her brother is not yet broken, and he strains against her blooming despair. At the bottom of her heart there stirs a dull ache, a longing which is not entirely her own but which threatens to break the walls and start a cascade of destruction- so she rejects it ardently, shoving him further away, and the kitsune whines his sorrow. But ideas have been stirring in his floundering mind, and the sight of Amaris fills him with fresh hope; he runs from the girl at this final straw, flees to the side of their estranged kin, his body a shadow and his voice a sob, and presses himself into the dragon's hock.

By the time he turns back his sister is gone, but it does not matter to the boy. He will always find her again. And now, he will have backup.