Andarin: The Mountains: In which the dead are reborn;

There is a fire-bird screaming.

Her eyes had seen him collapse from high above. At first it had been meaningless, thinking that he had settled down to rest tenderly upon the ground. But then she looked around, realizing that this was the last place he would have wanted to do that. It was raining, and there was an ocean nearby, the high tide near enough to swallow him whole. It was then that she realized it was suicide.

She couldn’t lose him. The man had meant everything to her and more than others would ever know or understand. Yes, she had disliked the other girl. The reason she had felt his pain in those times was because she knew how unhappy it had made him feel. For the girl there was nothing but a malice. Malice that she could not receive such love from him. Of course he had known of her love, and he felt a pain in his heart that he could not feel for her the way she wanted him to. As they say, a bird may love a fish, but where would they live?

But the Phoenix couldn’t go on without him, and she knew it was not his time. It was with a mournful cry that she dove for the ground, burning brightly like a falling star until she crumpled so lifelessly to the ground. Soon after, in another pained cry she faded into naught but ash and embers….

But that was not the end for them. It couldn’t be, for here they stand beneath an old oak, mourning for a girl who shared the fate of death as they had, one of them in countless times before.

She flew through oblivion, further and further into death with no caution. She knew she couldn’t share that fate. She could never die forever. Haste took her, haste drove her until finally she found him, shrouded by demons and darkness, calling out for her. Hawthorne.

She had clutched at him with all her might, dragging him back to rebirth, and in the night there was a blinding light emanating from the fire that had suddenly emerged on that beach. A fire that could only be produced by the birth of a Phoenix.

The changes that the man would take were not always so dramatic. In the process of being brought back to life things always changed. In her act of saving him, a piece of her soul had broken into fragments of his own. It had in turn made him harder, more dark than he had been before. Yes, it had always been there in the knight, yet this time it was more obvious. Fury sometimes consumed him, and his eyes were completely new. The very piercing eyes of the Phoenix emblazoned within him…

It was twilight then, and with that the sudden silence was broken, a chime of crickets and their sweet serenade to the coming night uninterrupted by this tragedy. All proof to the fact that life goes on. It made Nicodemus angry. Perhaps it was then that he chanced a look around, noting that the cry had not been his imagination. Andraste was gone. It was then that he saw a pile of ash and ember around where she had fallen. Soon after he stepped back, watching the lifeless corpse of his daughter with sudden hardness. Like he really didn’t care to see it there, didn’t care to cry for her or cradle her or say his goodbyes. His body was set in stone, and secretly he was praying even harder.

Had it taken this long for him? Nicodemus didn’t know….

She was supposed to die.

Andraste knew this as she flew once again through oblivion, deeper than she had been for Nicodemus. With Nicodemus, he had been falling to death slower, because his soul wasn’t truly there. There was something in him alive, something that made him fight. But with Skylar now, Andraste knew it was supposed to end this way. She knew that there was some form of fight, she felt it in the tension of the air around her. Skylar was fighting, but she was failing miserably. Skylar had never been a fighter, she had always been the weaker of the family, and her fight was futile, only giving her the slightest of hope. She was fighting for love. Andraste felt that, knew that. The love of the men, and the love of the child. In this sort of death you could see into the mind of the dying, and Andraste felt her cries…..

But suddenly they were stronger. Suddenly the Phoenix was thrown back by a force of air stronger than before. Suddenly a light was there, and Andraste was flying straight into it….

Skylar was given strength somehow. She was fighting and winning. Andraste delved into her mind once more, finding there Skylar’s voice in answer to her.

“I am not supposed to die! You are wrong! I will not leave them! Not father who needs me, nor Him, nor the child!” The voice was angry. “It can’t end the way that it ended for my mother, Andraste. I won’t leave that child alone to think that my death is her fault. I lived with that burden for too long. My innocent child does not deserve that!”

Andraste smiled in satisfaction and turned round, clutching the girl gently in her talons.

A blinding light came then, and with that Nicodemus laughs.

The birth of a Phoenix….

He rushed to her, Skylar who was suddenly breathing once again, standing and turning to lick the child that still lay upon the grass. She turns to him with a smile, to them, the men that she loved so much, the men that she had fought her life for. Her eyes were a glowing amber, the same eyes of the phoenix now, only softer because they were the love where Nicodemus’ was the anger. They were still a sapphire blue, only now more expression ate than ever before. And were she angry, they would reek of blue flames, piercing into the soul like no other but her own father’s.

“I made a promise to you all. I’m not going anywhere.” She smiled to them, to Nicodemus, to Formaldehyde, and finally to her first born. Decembruary.

s k y l a r

"What tomorrow brings, we cannot know."