[open quest] round one: and with strange aeons, even death may die.

[Sabra]

I did not see the star fall. My eyes had been glazed and clouded over with the fog of absense for moons on end. My soul and body had lain in separate plains for a long time, since the violence I had begged for had drawn us apart. It had been a necessary respite, the kind of deep sleep some called eternal.

It had not been the case for me. Not when Klaudius had savaged me and driven iron through my heart. Not now, so long after Leilan had torn the fragile skin and tissue of my throat, and spilled my lifeblood on the river's current. I had crossed over then, found my peace and reconciled the ways my life had gone so very wrong. Still, life beckoned, the threads of existence tugging persistent at my soul. I could go back, if I wanted to.

Yet it was not until the collision that the magnetic pull of life grew too strong to ignore. It was a crashing, breaking thing, an impact that tore through countless plains and smeared the very lines of reality with its passage. What had been a stretching elastic thread between my soul and corporeal form was released at last, and with a wheezing gasp they reunited. The very earth beneath me trembled, and with a moan of horror I became aware.

Cave walls. Stone above and below, the very same sort of prison I had been kept in before. Dragons, they're all alike. Keeping their prizes in cavern prisons, to be freed only when they grew tired of them. My newly animated form trembled at remembered claustrophobia. Weak-legged, I rose up in the cramped space, the action made far more difficult by the growling, heaving earth.  It was this that saved me.

With a rending scree, the tumbled stone sealing the cavern entrance fell away, sharp spears of light piercing my eyes. Moonlight, soft as it was, still seemed harsh to one who had not seen in years. The fog of rock dust faded, and my weeping eyes adjusted, the night scene revealed as my quaking limbs took their hesitant first steps toward the open air.

The earth had steadied, the rockfall the gift I'd needed to be free. No broken wing would hold me here. Not this time. A plume of rising pigment caught my eye against the horizon. Smoke or fog or heavy dust, i couldn't tell, only that it curled against the dark night sky, silvered by the blessed moon. My eyes traveled back to myself, taking stock of what was, of what had been. So long I had lain there, the wound that had allowed my soul to flow out was now long knit. New lightning would be the only reminder, a flickering fractal scar among the rest. My wings felt heavy with disuse, muscles atrophied and weak.

All of me, in fact, was thin as the breeze. I'd been starving myself before I'd met the dragon at the river, and no nourishment was given to the dead. I was a wraith of the woman I had been. Yet somehow felt more alive and at ease than I could ever remember being. It was fighting nature and my own fragility, but I had always been a stubborn one. Stubborn enough to take to the air on this strange night. Not for long, of course. It was only with the help of merciful updrafts that my wings allowed the journey to the base of the mountain, where my waking catalyst ate the earth.

It was not ash, I discovered, or steaming mists. The rising cloud that was my beacon was choking dust, coating my throat with its scratching mineral flavor as I neared, forcing me from the sky into an unpracticed landing. My heart faltered at what was revealed beneath the dustcloud. A cavern, sinking beyond sight within the volcanic soil, dark as the sky above. Every instinct screamed. I had only just escaped a cave. Had only just returned to fresh air and freedom, I could not dive inside this hungry mouth. I could not fly again so soon, but I could force my legs to walk steadily away.

One pace, two, and then I stopped in my tracks. Surely not. But there it was again. A thin, reedy sound, not unlike a crying foal. The whine of something lost and needy, it drew my eyes back to the bottomless depths with inexorable awareness. Silence, and I could almost believe that I had imagined it. That the cry was a figment of my so-frequently fractured mind. I should have known better. When the cry came again, it was unmistakable, and I knew I could not ignore it. I had ignored so much in my life. Had walked away from those that had needed me most, and it had destroyed me inside and out. This time would be different.