Samaira has too many ghosts on her heart, living or not. Too many souls out there, lingering in her own, haunting the empty reaches inside of her. She walks, wherever she goes, with an unusually quiet bonded gliding silently at her side. Days pass—how many days?—and she’s kept to herself in the hospital, tending to her patients, keeping her head down.

Should she have told him about the desires of her heart?

Would it have made a difference?

She enters the courtyard filled with gathered equines and her heart stops when she sees Marisol standing there at the front. The same, it is all the same, and she is not ready for the way it threatens to pull her down and down and down.

Alaunus lands beside her and gently leans his weight against her side. Samaira cannot pull her silver eyes away from a different meeting on a different day and a small part of wonders why she has returned to the court at all. And another part of her knows why, and it is because when she walks the streets small things remind her of him; she is torturing herself.

The earthen pegasus waits until the others have finished speaking and then surprises herself by also raising her voice to be heard. “I am not here to ask to be a part of your regime, Marisol,” she says, and though her voice is respectful it is wavering, ever so slightly, beneath the smoky tones of her accent.

“I am content with my work in the hospital, but I have been under the tutelage of its best doctors, and taking patients on my own for some time now,” Samaira doesn’t even know what she’s asking for until the words are out of her mouth, slipping past her lips on a breath that says I need something else to do, something more. “With your blessing, I’d like to take the role of a Doctor myself, at last.”

She tries not to think of how Asterion had been so pleased with her decision to become a medic. Samaira has too many ghosts on her heart, from this world and the last, and each one has a name that will not leave her be.

What she’s asking for is anything to keep her busy, to keep her away from all these haunted places. What she’s asking for is a distraction.

"Speaking."

It hadn’t really sunk in yet.

Her mind had been a tangled mess the past few days, trying to sort out everything that has happened, and perhaps she has even refused to let the truth sink in, to absorb the fact that her friends had gone missing. Had refused, until the cold reality had slapped her in the face -- until she had gone to the training grounds beneath the afternoon sun, alone except for her thoughts, and had found herself looking for dark eyes and a kind smile the same way she had every few days.

Looking for a star-strewn boy who had become a king, who would stand there resting the butt of a training spear against the ground, and would gently chide her for the dark circles under her eyes as if he didn’t see the weight of the world resting on her wings. Looking for a dreamer who had asked her to teach him how to become a fighter, and oh, how the thought brought a lump to her throat even now.

Was he chasing his dreams, wherever he was?

Above her, the dark clouds begin to gather, hanging low over the Halcyon barracks, low enough to almost brush against the roof.

The spot where Asterion should have been waiting for her is empty. His spear is still in the rack, scuffed handle and all. She pauses, mid-stride, staring at the weapon rack as though it had suddenly grown two heads, as though it were something unfamiliar that she couldn’t quite understand.

Asterion isn’t here.

He isn’t here.

It sinks in like claws, sharp and deadly, and the last piece of hope she hadn’t even been aware she was clinging to shudders and dies violently within her breast. Abruptly the Champion reverses course, taking two steps back towards the barracks before her wings open and she leaps into the air, planning to fly -- somewhere.

Away.

Away from the awful truth that has wrapped itself around her brain -- that there is nothing she can do to fix this, nothing that she can fight to make this feeling go away, nothing she can mend to make the nation’s grief lessen. She cannot help the way she is howling with grief -- there is no sound escaping her mouth, but the storm responds with a fury, wrapping black clouds around her like a cloak, sending down sheets of rain that threaten to drown everything beneath them.

She is ripping apart on the inside, the girl with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue, the girl who cannot save everyone but would kill herself trying. How many times has she failed, now? Too many to count, enough to weigh heavy on her heart until she thought she would suffocate beneath the weight, this girl with a war raging in her heart and head, this wild girl who was more god than mortal in her grief.
The rain is beating a war drum against the ground, and she has no one to fight except herself. How could she call herself a Champion when she cannot protect her people, cannot protect Terrastella? Asterion had believed she could keep them safe, and yet -- what had she done to do so?

What had she done to earn his trust, his advice, his friendship?

What could she do to honor his memory?

She could help build a stronger Terrastella. She would support Marisol, of course -- would have always done so, whether as a common soldier or as a member of her regime; but she could be doing so much more to help support whoever Marisol picked as her advisers, as well. She could hunt down Manon, and Amaroq, and others who dared act against Terrastella.

The rain begins to soften. The storm begins to clear.

The light atop the citadel beckons her home.

When she lands before Marisol, there is only the storm in her eyes still, only a few droplets of water still clinging to her wings. When she hears Israfel step forward for Regent, it only solidifies her decision, and springs forth a new one.

She clears her throat and steps forward.

“If you have considered Israfel for Regent, then I would like to offer up myself for your Warden. I am not born of Terrastella, but it has become a part of me, and there is no other place I could imagine calling home -- let me serve our people as their sword and shield, the people you know that I have bled and fought for and would gladly continue to do so."