I heard that he died.

I don't know who told me. I don't know what their name was, I can barely remember what they look like. It's said that such a moment is unforgettable, but all I remember is the cold fact, and the immediacy of the pain that it caused me. I'd wandered around hopelessly in this land, knowing that any left after the sundering had made their way here, looking for him, and at last I found him, it just wasn't the touching reunion I had envisioned.

I don't know what's become of my mother and I don't much care. Given her tendencies to cower in the face of danger, she's most likely dead. And I know that he is. So that makes me alone. That makes me an orphan, I suppose. And it's not that I won't do fine on my own, because I've been doing that for most of my life now. It's not that with every inch that has grown to my beard and tail, which now both stretch to hit the ground in thin sheets of black, I haven't gained enough experience for a year of someone's life. It's just that my attitude of fatality and my general apathy caused by a sense of defeat at last feels justified.

Because I'm not sure what I have to look for anymore. I have prayed each night to the Gods of Light and Fire, but for too long I have been abandoned by their graces. I remember that once there was a time I saw the great fox himself, his glowing form just barely grazing the surface of the mirror that lay within the frostpine. I haven't seen or heard from the gods in months now.

I hadn't really seen or heard from anyone until two days ago, when a passing outcast gave me the news. And I still don't know where to find him, even after that. Though now I'm not sure it's worth it.

Would seeing his corpse really help anything? No, likely not. Nothing really ever helped anything. Which is exactly why I have landed here and folded my wings, let my whiplike tail extend outwards and far beyond my form until every hair only just graced the ground, lifted my head just high enough that my horn, still decidedly and disappointingly short, fell between the patches of shadow. I have blended with the darkness that I had in the past months slowly started to become, not expecting anyone to find me, not certain of what I'll do if they did. Because nothing will help; nothing ever does.

He calls me an abomination and I'm too far gone to fully care. A chortled snort presses out from betwixt my nostrils, which protest the inhalation of the dense, Tallsun air that follows. My body is weak, I'm not meant for such toils and terrain. Nor am I meant for such encounters as these. He has called me a monster and I'm certain it's because of my wings. Borne of the phoenix, the gift of my father, my wings rest discontentedly as I work to keep the flame alive. Any that knew him might see the feather paired with his eyes that rest in my skull and recognize me as his daughter, but I get the sense that the pair of unicorns before me are more likely to be acquainted with the likes of my mother.

The mare comes in, her horn gleaming and sending a bolt of fear down my spine as I recall the scars shaped just the same that rest beneath my twitching black hide. Every hair on my side seems to quake with the memory of my mother's horn striking flesh and finding its mark- the scars themselves feel numb, as if they remember the very path taken by my blood as a child. She speaks of conversion, and I feel a filly once more. Lost among the ranks of the sect, I would stand with my wide eyes as the gleaming horns of the unicorns in Ultima looked down upon me and called me filthy names. They would make me believe it to be truth until I left.

Now I have left, and what have I come to but the very same thing? My head reels with the prospect of my life as a circular path, and suddenly I find myself longing once more for the company of my only childhood friend. What happened to the Tome Guardian during the Sundering? Surely he hadn't passed- as a filly I had viewed him as a being that could not ever die. To hear that he too was gone would be too much.

But I can't stop thinking about it. And when the third mare comes in, with painted wings bringing a faint life to my own as the phoenix's embers rise from my shoulders, I am lost in the memory of the Islands where my father had once lived. I am only faintly responsive to them all as they arrive and speak of and to me, I only break the silence with sad and slow glances up from the ground and back to their gazes as my tail sweeps across the dirt. I turn to the pegasus, answering the question she has posed for the others with a bitter sort of pessimism that has haunted my thoughts of late. "They don't seem the type to know any other way of saying hello," comes the quiet reply, accompanied by an unfaltering and piercing yellow gaze. The gaze of my father.

I turn to the others with increasing disinterest, my head lifting as I do so. "Hello," I speak cooly, ignoring their lack of manner and countering it with my own. The stallion heads for me foolishly, and I become aware of the fact that this all seems to have happened within an instant. With a hiss my wings unfurl and wrap around me, creating a barrier between myself and the stallion. As hot as it could burn and as fierce as it looks, I keep the fires cool so as not to harm the stallion. Through all of this I won't lose my principles- I must keep one thing safe.

[Perfectly fine; She'll appreciate a friend of her father's.]