She seems to spend forever amongst the milling, shiftless bodies. Etro’s voice rings in her ear - a pure, tonal chime that cuts across the fogginess of the afterlife with all the beauty of a siren’s call. She keeps it in the back of her mind while pressing forward, just in case something were to happen. Yael is confident that nothing will, but it would be foolish not to have a safety net - and also, wouldn’t Vanquish be simply delighted to see his little princess when he comes back to life? The thought puts a smile on her face, though it looks so out of place there, where the shadows are neverending and land itself is bleached of color. Hope and happiness are but figments of the imagination here; the are of old lives, one’s long forgotten.
Finally, her summons find an echo and so she floats up, above the souls and casts a wide light in all directions, looking for some sort of disturbance. There - not so far away - the masses are parting while a heavier form shoves his way through. For a moment, Yael wonders where his wings are, and then she remembers. They were given on his return from the War; if she thought her heart had ached to see him age, to see him wingless was even worse. Though the magician can easily recall the days when she was bay and ran through the dunes with such simple joy, she feels now that the shiny feathers are so very her, much as she could be any color she chooses to be - but gold suits her. Oversized wings suit her. And Van’s dragon wings suit him.
They would be her second gift.
Yael returns to the faux-ground, hurrying towards Vanquish. As much as she wants to run at him, giving over to the longing that’s laid siege to her soul until it crashes into him at full force, she manages to restrain herself and slow down until they are mere inches from each other. She devours his presence with a starving gaze, noting the say he squints are first, a tiny flinch when she cannot help herself and closes the gap between them, pressing her sun-warmed flesh against his cool… something. A part of her that she’d buried deep, deep, down in the deepest canyon of her conscious resurfaces suddenly. No - this is what that beast felt like, this cool skin against her own, this frame that does not pulse in time to hers anymore. This shape that he wears is not his body. It is a shell, and the revulsion that she chokes down sends a sense of urgency through her.
“Vhy deed you xaf to go and get yourself keelled?” she murmurs into his ear as a good-natured retort, nimbly sidestepping why it took her so long to learn to navigate death.Why she held a tournament to pass the crowns on, why she slipped into a depression, and lay at the base of his tree,why she eventually went to sleep for a year. Her world crumbled, her children left, and her Kingdom fell quiet again. But Yael has rebuilt herself from that devastated puddle of mush, and she has every intention of continuing that work, but by Adonai, she cannot do it herself! So maybe this whole thing is selfish; maybe she’s just doing it to give herself a great big, winged rock to stand on. She sweeps her wings forward to arc up and around his broad, tall shoulders in the perfect imitation of a human hug. No, it isn’t selfishness. His words confirm that she is doing the right thing, and she presses the flat of her head against his own. “Let’s go, t’en. Etro ees vaiting for us.” She swallows heavily, not wanting to waste any time, thinking ahead to what she’s going to do with him once they leave the afterlife. “Breat deeply, love. T’is may feel… strange, ok? Just trust me.”
With those words, she melts herself into an orb of pure, white light - life - and folds the wraith of a stallion in with her wings. Her lover firmly in her grasp, energy-Yael rises once again above the monochromatic forms and follows the sound of Etro’s voice. Yael, her daughter calls, and then Yael, again, until the magician (who is only slightly preoccupied with keeping Vanquish within her grasp and making sure they both get out unharmed) can once again feel the thinning of the veil between the living and the dead. There is an unmistakable, albeit fuzzy bay form on the other side, and as she speaks again, energy-Yael pushes through, back into color and sight and smell and taste and beating, pumping, love-consumed hearts.
Still hovering, she slowly unfurls herself, revealing their pre-ball embrace, and a still gray, ghostly Vanquish. Her dainty lips purse into a frown as she shakes her head, muttering to herself. Without stopping to explain, she steps back and begins to build a body around the shell. Pulling from watching her own children grow in her womb, she crafts him new flesh and bone, attaching muscles to bone and tendons to joints, forming organs and hair and all the physical qualities that she so lusted after when they fell in love. He finally stands before them, and when the last bit is placed on the tip of his nose, she laughs in joy and relief and amazement.
For the piece de resistance - she weaves him wings of dragon skin and leather, fixing them to his shoulders, and whispers tenderly, “Vake up!”
Yael, guardian of the desert