“Ah,” the cobalt mare mused, “from the Aurora Basin. And Time Mender? I can’t say I remember what that is.” She nodded slowly, tucking it away, trying to file it with all the other facts and tidbits that fluttered around in the breeze within her skull. “But, I’d take any help I could get at this point.” Again her shoulders shrugged, and she resigned herself to the idea that maybe this woman had something to offer that others had not.

The look on the Time Mender’s face was delicate, warm, welcoming, and Ki’irha couldn’t help but be warmed by it. When she began to sing, however, the blue girl had to suppress the desire to raise an eyebrow and ask how a song was supposed to help her. But the tune was rhythmic, and she felt herself being rocked, as if a child held in the arms of a mother, being crooned into sleep by a soft lullaby. The sound was magnificent, and she allowed heavy lids to fall, urged her legs to hold her, and she simply listened. She listened to the melodies, the crescendos, and she felt her soul come to rest, felt the stormy waves calm, felt the pain melt away. It was a beautiful sound, nearly as beautiful as the distant profile of the horizon from the lip of her cave, with the colors of morning painting the sky, lining the outlines of the pines with liquid gold, casting the shadows of the trees and the stones long across her valley.

She remembered.

It came rushing and crashing and pouring in. It was the sprawling landscape of the great frozen north; the feeling of shale and ice and stone beneath her hooves as she stood upon towering precipices and under the shadows of the evergreens guarding their gate. It was the blood spilled when she sparred the ram-headed devil Mortuus Nox, when she danced a waltz with the great northern prince Erebos upon the sandy shores of the endless blue. It was the love that made her heart swell and shatter when she brushed against the painted Clovenheart, and the pain she felt when he had left. She felt her body fly over rolling hills, within the gullies of the valleys, passing over icy tundras. It was the musk and sweat and fluttering heart she felt when she had joined with Mesec, the longing she felt to present her children to him. It was Vesper and Virga, feeling them grow within her, the knowledge that she had created something perfect and whole and untouched by the vulgarities of humanity. She felt the thrill of war, the tenderness of a caress, the warmth of family and love and kinship.

Her silver eyes snapped forward as the woman sang. Her headache melted away, her broken psyche snapped together and the pieces clicked into place. She felt her brow ache and pull and grow tight, and the soft sound of crystallization interrupted the Songbird, and she knew the somehow, in some miraculous way, she was being healed. She was a wildfire burning with conviction and violence and natural force. Her heart raced and the heaviness that had plagued her bones turned into light, glowing, making her want to dance and sing along to the tune she didn’t know, but would never forget.

“Lena,” she whispered, “Lena, I remember. I don’t understand how, or why, or what I did to deserve you crossing my path. But I remember.” She tossed her head, dancing back and forth on her front hooves. She felt contained, captured, pulled in a thousand different directions. She needed to go home. She needed to find Mesec. She needed to scour the threshold and every inch of the world for her son. She needed to do so many things, and she felt overwhelmed, but she couldn’t help but smile.

“I apologize,” she laughed, finally settling down, trying to contain herself to stop from looking like a high-strung yearling. “I just can’t believe that everything came back so fervently. I’m not sure what to do next. I want to come home. I want to go feel the Aurora Basin around me, reclaim my place as a warrior, protect my family. But yet, I think I should go find Mesec first, go find my children.” She shook her head, casting her silver gaze upon the face of her heroine. “What would you do? Which family would you choose?”

She rocked back on her heels, glancing towards the sky, unable to shake the smile. The expression upon her face glowed, but not nearly as much as the newest addition to her appearance. There, where the crack had been, brilliant diamond had emerged, and behind the precious inlay ran a vein of glowing white, setting the facets alight.
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@Lena ~