Ni'Srilan: The Desert: maybe we'll stand here together again, and I won't have to close my eyes and pretend

She is a small and weary figure against the vast, grand spread of the desert, worn by her long journey here and by time: unfeeling, relentless time. And yet Sidra walks with the triumph of some warrior coming home – perhaps only one among a multitude, a face in a sea of faces, unremarkable besides the heroes, but at least here she is, still here, after all, still Sidra. She had caught the rumors in the wind, and though she thought them awful and possibly (hopefully) untrue, Sidra had followed them until she knew for sure that she would be coming back, and there was dread but there was also a small piece of joy that shadowed her steps.

She is changed. But of course she has changed. Time has filled what were once bony, hard lines. She is still slight in size and delicate-looking, but she is much more rounded now. There are more bends and arches to her body than there once were. The trip has lightened her rosy dark skin with dust and wear, and her hair does not fall along her neck in a pale curtain but is rather wild and knotted and not quite moon-white. This gives her a feral look, which is only too right for the desert, I suppose.

This, Sidra thinks, as she wanders, her head and eyes drifting everywhere with a shadow of her old, childish wonder. This is Leviah? But she doesn’t know anything. The faces, as she passes by them, are new ones. The layout of the land is strange: this is lying there and that has gone and this has sprouted up. For the most fleeting moment Sidra doubts. But her heart tells her believe, and she hasn’t heard her heart for such a very long time that Sidra follows it blindly with great, sweet relief.

When she has walked like this for a good part of the afternoon, Sidra finds herself climbing one of the larger sand dunes at the desert’s edge. Sand slips from beneath her feet and trails like a veil in the slight breeze, and she walks with such light steps (they are light still) that it looks as if she could slide and disappear like a dream. Reaching the top, she lifts her head and stands very quietly, those dark sloe-eyes taking everything in with something akin to yearning. Everything is so very immense and majestic in that immensity – the desert and the blue, blue sky – and Sidra feels so small and ephemeral in comparison, she cannot imagine how she can go on being and all this will be gone, just like that.

She remembers how, as a silly young thing, she would think of herself as taking pieces of everything – sand-breaths and pieces of blue sky that shine through clouds and voices and moments and blue eyes and snow-pale skin – and storing them carefully in her heart, her heart that seems to grow fuller as it brims with these precious collections of hers. But no, it is not only thought, dear mare-child. I see them brimming and spilling now while she stands so still. I see it in the shine that rims her eyes and the way she stretches her neck out, the deep breaths she takes, and the almost-smile that lingers over her lips. I can only guess what she thinks of – herself, as a skinny, ungainly young thing, shy and unsure and painfully wanting? Or of them, all of them? Illuiette, dear mother-mare, who was so beautiful and so sorrowful and, at the end, so broken? Tybalt with the kind gaze and gentle manner, always so mild and gentlemanly? Vinci, perhaps, just as bright and whimsical as she. Oh, but her dear silver-fox for sure, ‘Maki-san, the only one she might really, really love for always. But then there is him… Vittorio. Sidra blinks and scatters these memories against this forever-stretching desert and sky. They are no longer here, and she isn’t the Star-child any more, and those dreams she lived in – oh! and what dreams they were! – have emptied from her heart, and this… this, she isn’t even sure if it is Leviah or not.

All of a sudden Sidra bends at the knees and falls to the ground like a leaf from a tree, gently and nonchalantly, pressing her ear to the ground. The sand sifts and presses at her cheek, gritty and warm. I see her chest rise and fall with even breaths; she breathes and smells how the sand is musty and parched, and at the corner of her mouth she tastes a little of its dryness. Lying like this for some moments, Sidra feels quite uncomfortable and is about to get up when ah… she hears it, the heart of Leviah thrumming beneath this strange new place, humming in her ear… she does! A beatific smile spreads her lips and her eyes flutter close, and one can tell that behind those eyelids she remembers wisps of dreams, of how to dream. “Come back,” she whispers against the sand, a longing, forlorn murmur, though I wonder if she means her dreams, or those who she loved, or the times of her youth, when she knew happiness and passion and living. She lies like this for a long while, my little star-ember, and she looks just like she is asleep, for the tapering lines of her face are lax and at peace, and though her eyelashes tremble at times, she is very still.

But eventually her eyes open and Sidra blinks a few times before climbing to her feet. She heaves a great big sigh, a contented sigh, and lifts her face towards the sky, that lovely, wide smile still on her face. “Thank you,” she offers, feeling how the breeze snatches the words from her lips and ever so glad that it does, for it makes her feel like she really is giving these words (and parts of her heart strung through them) to the desert. She closes her eyes again and breathes in deeply, and takes another breath. She is ready. She is glad she came. “Goodbye.”