Ni'Srilan: The Desert: a debt repaid;

She does not leave the sea for quite some time.

As a bird Enola Gay soars high above the chaos beneath, listening to her lovely swaths of sand and water become ravaged by elemental hate and fire. In time the madness ceases and Solira is but a burnt-out hulk of its former self; an uneasy silence settles over the land, and she realizes they have all gone. Like her senses, emotions seem magnified as an eagle, for she is keenly aware of heartache; of a strange tightening in her chest that she cannot name in her mind. This was it and now it is gone. She thinks, perhaps I shall never land again - perhaps I was always meant to fly high above it all. Perhaps I will stay here... alone with the sea.

But soon she senses, somewhere deep where thoughts cannot penetrate, that the Element is crumbling - that soon, it will all dissolve, or be ravaged, or melt into sand and sea and field. And then truly they will all be gone and lost to her. She remembers this feeling; felt it when Alshain died, when she realized he had not simply moved about for the time being but, rather, she would never, ever see him again. The squeezing tugs harder. She is not ready to lose it all; to wave farewell to the years spent here, the changes and triumphs and failures, memories and fleeting friendships and curled lips of hate. She is not ready to be forgotten, or to forget.

And so when Passchandaele cries for her, lying still recovering from his terrible wounds at the very edge of what once was Solira, my Vane arcs backwards in the sky and dips low, skimming her wings on the water’s surface as she soars gracefully to his side. It is poetic that she should shed a tear at the water’s edge, one that slips into the salty water and blends away, just as she draws her legs up under her and stands upon the sand once more – for it was here that Enola Gay remembers laughing, too.

Passchendaele tucks himself quickly to her side and they begin to walk away; with her back to her home and her child pressed nervously against her, Enola Gay’s sentiments tuck themselves back where she cannot find them and logic resumes its rightful place. She owes a debt to Hypatia and so the desert is where she will go… for this last little while. It will never be home, because, but for the shining and unusual exception of Solira, Enola Gay simply does not understand the concept.