The TwiceBorn

The Wind And The Wing Of Madness

 "Take what you must, take what you must of what I've lost as I have roamed"--Patty Griffin

She crooked one leg over her saddle and settled in. An ill wind tagged behind the Anarchist's legion and once they had departed she was enveloped with the calming scent of grass and newly turned earth. She took a ragged breath. Blixen tugged hesitantly at her tunic.

"M'Lady?" He breathed hollowly, his eyes luminous. She took in his fawning posture. His awed stare.

"What?"

"Can I go down? Oh please...can I go down too?"

He squeezed his hands tightly together as his little hooves beat a random pattern against her knee. She realized she hadn't even felt him scramble up from the ground. She waved her hand towards Lochedge, not trusting her voice, and he was gone, shagging madly through the tumbled dirt, his tail high.

She lifted her eyes towards Lochedge and watched as the village began to burn. The screams of the peasants carried on the wind and all she could see were indistinguishable shapes in the darkness. Shapes that ran from Lochedge and were dragged down by larger shapes. A wrestle of blackness she was glad she couldn't see.

A yellow cone of light suddenly shot upwards towards the sky and billowed like a sheet in the wind. The sudden brightness caused Alora to squint her eyes. Alderon shuddered beneath her as a long drumming boom resounded across the grasslands.

Something had exploded. The light that had laced the sky which such intensity was gone, quick as a lightning flash,and now a rolling angry orange lit up the night. Crooning softly beneath her breath, she rested a soothing hand on Alderon's neck and felt him settle beneath her.

The oven heat of the night coupled with the blazing intensity of Lochedge's demise enshrouded her. She shuddered herself, much like Alderon,but there was no one to lay a forgiving hand on her flesh. The scene before her held her as tightly as a coffin with too many spikes.

Gooseflesh rippled her arms even as she broke out into a sweat. Cold fire. Screams echoed over the grasslands.She could hear them above the crackling and breaking of timber. The heat was immense yet inside, she was cold. And still.

For no reason at all, she suddenly remembered when she had told Islinn that all the stories the peasants whispered about her were true. Now she realized she'd lied. None of it had been true. She'd gone past all of that and had become something far worse.

Tears welled in her eyes and the fires before her blurred in her vision and ran,bleeding,into the ground.

"Oh Abigor,what did I let you do to me?" She whispered.

She was scared. Not frightened. But scared, like a child was scared. A teeth-chattering, skin-numbing sensation swept over her and she suddenly wanted to run. Slide from the back of her cream-colored horse and just run, hard and fast, sucking in air through clenched teeth until her heart burst. One trembling hand rose and pressed against her mouth, as she watched Lochedge.