The bonfire reaches high into the sky, stretching and stretching towards the stars that are twinkling so far above them. Samaira stands with the heat of the fire on her skin and looks at the stars that she wishes she could touch. She can fly so many places now that her wing is healed, and still so much is beyond her reach.

There is a deep yearning inside her that Samaira is not sure can ever be filled now. She’s not sure where it came from, when it yawned open, or what it is that she’s missing. Here in Terrastella she has more than she ever had before. Doesn’t she?

A gentle touch to her shoulder reminds her that she is not alone. The bay pegasus looks at Alaunus where he stands faithfully by her side, leaning just slightly against her to ward off the winter chill in the air. The young heron is, perhaps, the most wonderful gift Samaira has ever recieved, even as he mindlessly chatters in the back of her thoughts.

“...I hope they are keeping an eye on this fire, how do you think they got it so big? How long do you think it will burn for? Are you just going to stand here all night or are you going to go mingle? You could go see what all those equines are doing on the edge of the cliff. Hopefully they aren’t thinking about jumping…” Samaira laughs to herself, and a smile turns up the corners of her lips.

“Are you listening to me?” he says suddenly, a little indignantly. Alaunus straightens out and narrow his sky blue eyes at Samaira. “Yes, yes of course. You’re wondering if a handful of horses are going to leap to their deaths. My goodness, Alaunus, I highly doubt that is what they’re doing.” He ruffles his feathers and glances toward the cliff.

“Well, then why don’t you go find out…?” the heron says suggestively, and if he had brows she knows he’d be raising them.

@Moira c:

The other woman's voice causes Samaira to turn, her moon-bright eyes regarding the pegasus who is made of ash and fire. She glows, perhaps from the fire light, but perhaps she just glows. Maybe there is fire light inside her, as well. She considers the words, and stretches her left wing before nestling it back against her side.

She had flown, and then plummeted and fell.

There is a faux spark in her eyes, made from the flickering of the towering flames. She remembers falling, and falling. And then nothing, until she woke here. In the swamp, whose trees cannot be seen from the cliffs. Especially not in the dark. "And if they are wanting to fall?"

Samaira remembers a different kind of falling. The kind that felt like flying, like drifting along on a cloud. The kind that Cassius had used to draw her in. The weight sits heavier upon her shoulders than her wings ever could have, even when they were useless. Even when they were her curse, to be the cause of her death.

She resists the urge to turn back to the equines on the cliffs to get them to neither fly nor fall. Not to condemn themselves in that way. Her heart, it sings a haunting song of the melancholy that has claimed her bones.

Alaunus, so young but so acutely aware of her feelings, ruffles his feathers. "Don't scare off your company now. You really need to make friends. Not that I don't like what we have but you should probably get some horse friends." The heron, iridescent and bright bright, turns his blue eyes on the woman of sunrise and smoke and begins to speak.

Not in a language any of them could hope to understand, but his strange croaking barks fill the air. About them, a few patrons turn and stare, their conversations halted. Samaira is used to it, Alaunus speaks more than enough for the two of them whether or not anyone knows what he is saying.

"Alaunus, please," Samaira thinks, perhaps, he might be asking their new companion something like 'please make her friendless existence less boring'. She might be exaggerating, a little bit, but she certain wouldn't put it past the young heron. "You know we don't speak 'honk'", she says, though she's teasing.

"Maybe someday I'll get lucky," he says, turning toward her, "I'll never know if I don't try." And then, if he could smirk she knows he would because she can feel the knowing that passes between them. "Now… doesn't that sound familiar?"

It is indeed something he has told her before. Samaira sighs in something like resignment. It would be nice if this was one of those times he chose to be blessedly quiet. "Why don't you go fishing?" Alaunus ruffles his feathers again, this time in indignation, but eventually bows his head to their company, gives Samaira as stern a look as a heron can manage and then opens his great wings and takes off into the sky.

"He's… well he's quite special, but I wouldn't trade him for a thing," the earth woman says, finally settling her gaze back on the other pegasus, the barest touch of a smile curling at the corners of her lips.

@Moira not really sure how to explain this post...