Andarin: The Mountains: Time is running out...

**SKYLAR**

Before him she had been incomplete. She remembers faintly what she had known she felt for Stelios. It wasn't the same. And there beside her always was Formaldehyde. He had been there for her when everyone else had not. He had come that night to console her for her father's leaving. No one else had been there for her, and perhaps it was that night that they had stared up at the stars that she knew. It had always been Formaldehyde. Never had it been another. That had been her youth, infatuations, nothing more. Back then...yes, she had thought it was more. Back then she had pushed Formaldehyde so carelessly aside, angered by the idea of him. But she was too young to understand the difference. This is love. Her smile was overbearing, her paleness seemed brighter. It seemed obvious to those she passed and smiled warmly at, she was in love. They often said no diamond in the world sparkled more brightly than a woman in love. All in all she was truly glowing. Perhaps others would have seen the changes in her, how bright she was even in this time. The Gaurdians would know of the impending doom of the Element, but for now Skylar was blind. To her this would last forever. Her and Formaldehyde happy in her Andarin forever, with the sweetness of their child soon to come.

She sighs, because sometimes she just wants it to be her and him. No children, no anything. Just their love, undying and perfect beneath their earth, her wind, and his fire. She envisions how it would be, so quiet beneath a cloak of starry nights, silent save for their breath commingling with one another. She glows at the thought of him, the warm embrace of his earth and flames, her white roses and his black. Skylar was too much a girl of dreams and not enough of reality.

There is a pull in the earth, a sway in the winds. It is all that she needs to know. That and the steady kick she feels to her stomach. And it is all that he needs, and soon he is there, beside her, the redness of his pelt and the flames that shrouded him, a great phoenix sailing high above them, for His beacon. Keir had stayed behind, perhaps on his way to find the other. Nicodemus, father, says nothing as his daughter collapses to the floor. It is not right for any of them to interrupt…Skylar screams, the pain a constant, her hooves digging deeply into the earth, her air uncontrollable, swirling into mad vortexes all around them, extreme enough to tear down some trees nearby, strong enough to hurt the men she loved so much.

Time passes.

And passes.

Soon she’s pouring sweat.

Then she’s drifting in and out….

Afterwords there is blood coming from her nostrils in strain of pushing.

Nicodemus is there, tears….for the first time in his life, spilling freely, and he can do nothing, nothing. Something wasn’t right. All he could do was pray. Pray with all of his might that the last thing he had of family, his last light didn’t burn out. Pray that his only daughter would not leave him alone in this world. The stallion wept, pressing his face to her neck, unashamed, sobbing. Don‘t take her from me. Hawthorne…..you will see her again….but not now. Please, please not now. He needed her. There was a cry above them, louder than any lament there had ever been before, and more terrible than the scream of a banshee. Andraste‘s flames died out, and with a second cry, the Phoenix crashed to the ground, landing perfectly crumpled.

It seemed as though hours passed, though soon the child came, Skylar’s earth forming a soft plush for the babe to lay upon. She should have risen. Skylar should be up, nursing her baby, her child, to health…..

But she was suddenly still upon the soil of Andarin. And she wasn’t breathing. Blood dried upon her nose, the first blood ever to mar her perfectly pale cream coat. It didn’t look right there. Nicodemus prayed, oh how he prayed! Still, the girl lay still upon the grass. Her eyes closed so peacefully as if in death…

Somewhere around them the winds chattered. Somewhere around them there was a whisper….

Meanwhile, just beside them in the midst of there mourning, their grief…a phoenix faded into dust around them…

"You have spilled your own blood rather than the blood of an innocent. That was the final task and the most important."

Air III Earth III, Teacher of Andarin, Lorelei and Onipa'a

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