Andarin: The Mountains: this is our final hour; [any + chapal]

My Vane felt it coming; felt the ground shudder. It could be said that she might have felt it before any of them, so keen were her senses – but even heightened senses are no match for the instincts of an animal, and of course they all already knew, could feel it in the air, the hairs on their neck raised in nervous anticipation.

She wasn’t afraid. Enola Gay already knew what she was going to do – she’d been granted wings and she intended to make use of them, perhaps for the rest of her life. And it wasn’t in her nature to fear for the wellbeing of others, and so though she stood tucked next to Chapal, Passchendaele still staring inquisitively up at him, she did not fear for them. They would find a way out or they would die with the Element – this was logic, this was how the world worked. In any case she would be parting from them, now. She had to. She was damned near woeful about this whole ordeal, about losing these creatures she had come to know so well, certainly about losing her only Home, and she had no intentions of starting over, of finding lost friends and her lover and son and picking up broken pieces of broken lives. She would return to the beginning, where she was empty and alone and safe. Though she would never see these loved ones again, Enola Gay, in her typical way, would not regret the decision. She would forget them, eventually, let them slip into the recesses of her vague and dreamy mind.

But that woe… that might stick with her, for a while.

She turns to Chapal, ignoring his questions of their son, unimportant in the dramatic spectacle they both knew was about to unfold. Her empty blue eyes seek his, her brow furrowed ever so slightly, so unfamiliar were the stinging pangs in her gut. No, she will not regret her decision, but she will surely miss this stallion. They are different things, regret and loss, and loss she does feel, heavy, so heavy, on her shoulders. She presses herself tight against him, a soft shudder but no tears. She mutters into his neck,

“Take care of yourself, Chapal. I’ll be watching.” This is true, she realizes only then – bird or no bird, at first she will simply have to follow, pulled by invisible strings she quite accidentally forged. Their love is a strange one, but it is no less powerful than the norm – she cannot run from it as easily as she might have thought. She will watch, and hope, and love, until Time’s dull scissors relentlessly break through the hold. She pulls back and holds her muzzle to his, an equine version of a deep, last kiss – and then she turns away.

To Passchendaele she offers a gentle smile, and leans close to brush her nose to his. She doesn’t care for him, much. Nothing much happened, beyond that first instinctive need to hang on to him rather than leave him as she had done Fenrisulfr. Now she will abandon him, too, though at least he has a fighting chance – and he will make it through like his lofty sister, or he will perish, and that is what logic and the Earth demand. She pulls back, slightly, rests her muzzle next to his ear, and says softly, “You’d better run.” She can hear the soft suck of his eyes widening – he can feel the rumble in the ground, too, and had hoped his mother might assuage his fears. She feels his terror cool and damp on her skin. Her smile holds – terror will make him run faster and farther. Terror will pull him through the long, lonely dark nights.

With a last soft sigh and a final woeful glance to her only love, the Vane takes to the skies.