Andarin: The Mountains: Love;

This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.:
The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save Us!'...:

...and I'll look down, and whisper, 'No'"
He remembers a time when he had hated Stelios. A time when all he had wanted was to butcher him like he had butchered Hawthorne, make him suffer for it. In a time when he had vengeance painted in his already black heart. It was more painful for him, because he had been nothing short of fatherly to Stelios. And yet, the murder still painted itself about him. Nicodemus then learned of his capture of the heart of his only daughter, the only thing he had left of his family, of her. And then learning that his dearest friend had been slain by who else… That was what drove him to hatred. Not the careless murder…but the fact that it seemed that Stelios was hell bent on stealing everything that was precious to him. He remembers screaming in the night, over her dead body….the cries that were more terrifying than your worst nightmare. It was true pain, and true pain was perhaps as rare as true love in this world…

Time, however, healed almost everything. Time had made the stallion open his eyes, to see that she would not have wanted for him to live his life in vengeance. Hawthorne would have wanted him to move on, to love again. Painfully he thinks of her then, Starweaver. How strange it was then that when he finally had found love, it was forbidden, a love that would go on unrequited. He smiles to Andraste then, his firebird who burned so brightly only for him. It seemed that unrequited love traveled in circles.

His eyes mournfully scan the Range, his Range. If only he could save them…his eyes clouded with Knowing that he could not. Knowing that he would try and fail.

He smiles, sadly.

But then the children come, and he straightens, Andraste swooping to land squarely upon her favorite perch; his wither. Keir had been nestled between his legs, eyes curiously scanning Andarin. Even his familiar was in a strange way these last days. It is the girl who speaks, and for her he ignites a small flame before them, swirling it about her foreleg, though it would not burn.

But then he feels her behind him, the girl they questioned of in their minds. Nicodemus Knows. He hears them and their silent query, and he knows who they are. There is no malice in him, and the girl who was just as bonded to him as Andraste….heard him before he even called her. She comes before them, her smile kind, her doe-like beauty radiating somehow even while being shrouded by the flames of her father. She had always held that strange beauty, the way that her awkwardness clung about her somehow became her. The sapphire eyes were those of Nicodemus and Andraste, hinting that she too had experienced death. And the paleness of her seemed to solidify that all the more. War was thick in her blood, Nicodemus and his half-brother Requiem (also known as the Aphotic here) were once heralded for their skill in combat. Her Aunt, Seaglimmer, Arrakis, had been one of the best. And yet the girl finds herself hating everything about war and battle. It broke her to think of sweet Stelios, out there getting hurt in the Krieg. Every time he had returned she was there, cloaked in shadows, making sure that he was ok, and every time they spoke his scars screamed at her. I suppose she was just too gentle to understand anything of that kind of chaos. Everything about her screamed peace; her pale cream scrawny body, long legs, too much like a doe and not enough like a horse. To her there was nothing that couldn‘t simply be solved with words. It was simply her nature.

She says nothing, the girl, simply watches, her smile bright, long white mane her veil.

“I burn because it is who I am. Flames are everything about me, every fiber of me.”

KNIGHT
**NICODEMUS**

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us.

FIRE III LIGHTNING III

Emissary of Andarin, Phoenixsong, Iriase, and Kaikua'ana

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