Andarin: The Mountains: The last tears;

She moves with lithe steps, the girl not yet realizing that her father had left them to save the others. She had always been young at heart, naive even, and yet now there was the beginning cloud of darkness for her. Now that Formaldehyde was gone, and her only daughter Decembruary with him, it brewed in her like the storm. Now that the Element, her birth-place and her home crumbles around her so destructively, she knows the darkness in this world, and still her heart remains so optimistic and pure...I don't think that Skylar would ever lose this about her.

Soon, she feels it, in her earth and the way that it trembled beneath her. She spins, only to see her brother and the way that he looked into the distance. "Where is father?" she begins to tremble then the first wakes of fear stealing in her heart. Skylar had always been very close to her father, and now, in the wake of doom, she needed him now more than ever. And then she sees him, a bare beacon of flame and light, blazing among the now dead land of Andarin. She feels tears in her eyes. Her father was a savior, that she had always known.....but what if he couldn't save himself? Skylar screams then, a single muffled scream, and in vain she lunges after him. "Come back! Daddy!!" Tears are a plethora as they soak her face, and Tristan holds her back. Her shoves against him were meaningless, weak as she had always been the more light of the family....she could never fight in battles.

"Brother! Let me go! He will die! Please brother!" Her voice was a weak thing, the phoenix's eyes burning against her physical weaknesses.

But Tristan had been given specific orders. The unspoken words of his father rang softly in his mind....Protect your sister. At all costs. Do not let her follow me... Quite possibly his last words he would ever think.

"Sister....I can't let you. Do you think he would want you to get hurt? Look at me." Skylar's eyes floundered to him, pain and emotion the most powerful thing there. "He won't leave us. I....I promise." There was a certainty then, and even though there was no real way of telling if he was right....somehow he knew. Somehow he knew that his father would be safe, and he would follow them to the ends of the earth...It was his code, the Knight in him.

And naive little Skylar, always loving and happy, trusted her brother just as she trusted her dad. Silently, she wept into the shoulder of her brother, letting him lead her away from the element. Away from the death and destruction.

But she chanced a single look back, and in the distance she saw the phoenix, and the thoughts pulsed into her.....

He will be okay, little one.

* s k y l a r

The best dreams die hard