Despite being on the first level of the Citadel, the massive courtyard remains hidden behind towering walls of stone and sediment. An elongated central patch of neatly trimmed grass stretches out for almost fifty-meters while maintaining a twenty-meter width. At the center of the grass is a large, ovular fountain in the shape of the Arcona emblem, with water running from the tips of each pointed edge. Vegetation grows along some of the walls, and an archaic clock-face is carved into the face of one of the entryways. A small group of rotating sharpshooters are scattered across the walls as the courtyard is supposed to serve as a safe place for Arconans to enjoy some quiet time, or to meet with visitors. It has served as the venue for multiple honor duels over time and there is a significant crater off to the side of the grass left behind as a result of a contest between Marick Arconae and Wuntila Arconae. The duel had taken place prior to either Arconae serving as Shadow Lords and in a quieter time before all Arcona knew was warfare.

Towards the back of the courtyard, closer to the base of the cliff that the Citadel is constructed upon, a tall tree shoots up from the stone, its shade guarding an entrance into the Citadel proper.

The garden thrummed around him.

Guardsmen and women marched up around the parapets. Island life he was just barely beginning to identify buzzed about, insects of innumerable kind and small critters, strange birds and, distantly, whooping animals out in the cliffs of the peak on which the Citadel rested, snug above the jungles below. Inside the castle, people were running about their duties, meetings were held. He could hear apprentices muttering about assignments, could discern the tired and weary sighs of soldiers and the rumbling stomachs of contract workers who, if what he'd heard about the city was correct, were still recovering from riot and famine. The temperature of the tropical sun on his skin shifted slightly with every flutter of the breeze and passing of clouds. The grass and flowers curled around his soft boots, their fresh scents filling his lungs with green, with life and promise.

He wished he could enjoy it.

Instead, there were stones in his stomach and his chest. His guts cramped with nerves, and his heart with sorrow. He smiled for everyone he greeted, but it was so very hard.

His cythraul whined and nudged him, and he carded his fingers through her sleek fur.

"It's alright," he told her. "Wait here for me. I...I have to do this."

And he did have to. It was a conversation that needed to happen, no matter his dread.

The source of his anxieties noticed him quickly at his approach. As Eleceos padded through the courtyard, Satsi Tameike unfurled from where she'd been lounging against one wall, an unlit cigarra between her teeth. Even not burning, it still stank to the Miraluka's sensitive nose, but next to the other scents on her, sweat and gunmetal oil and underneath it all, perhaps from that morning, a babyish soap, it wasn't so bad.

"You," her coal-smoke voice greeted, cool and waspish. He stopped a few feet away from her. "You're still here. Whadda you want?"

Eleceos took a deep, fortifying breath, holding tightly to the serenity of the walled-off garden they stood in and the Light whispering sunlight songs all around him.

"Well, first, to apologize for startling you the other day. I mean your child no harm, none at all," he said. She didn't really deserve the apology; she had assaulted him when her daughter had run up and hugged him, mistaking him for the cousin he had been grieving for. But, it was best to start things off diplomatically. "And second, I wanted to talk to you about my Yiru."

"You talkin' about Atty again? You're asking the wrong person, kid. We weren't friends. Get lost."

What she said sounded sure, but even just the barest hint of memories on the surface of her mental landscape revealed the truth. He'd known it when he first met her, at the statue of his cousin, and he knew it then. They shared strong emotion. They'd shared laughter and pain. There was gratitude there, and deep regret.

"That's not true," Eleceos argued. "You and Misiria were close, I can sense it."

Ugly laughter and a ripple of cruel anger poured from the woman.

"Oh, Shadows, you're just karking like her. Sticking your everything where it don't belong, running around in people's heads like you got any right. Do I have to explain privacy to you, too?" She prowled nearer, and Eleceos shrank back from the darkness pouring off of her, so thick he wanted to be sick. "You stay out of my mind and out of my life, boy, or I will HURT you."

"Y—" it took him a moment to recover his voice, but the young Miraluka did so, blurting, "Y-you're the one hurting! And you're lashing out at me because that's all you know how to do, all you've ever done."

"Get. Out. Of. My. Head," growled the Human, stepping up to loom over him, menacing, and Eleceos had to gasp and freeze a moment, drowning in all the flavors of her anger. They clamored and shouted and whimpered. There was so much hurt and pain and violence.

So much hate.

He gagged. He couldn't breathe. He wanted to cry

Misiria, help, he screamed inside his own head, into the Force, but there was no one there to answer. She would never hold him in her warm arms again, never sing and murmur to him, never stroke his hair and tell him it would all be alright and cover his ears with her calloused, soft hands and press their foreheads together and take away his hurting, take the too much noise and too close into herself to spare him.

He was alone.

"Frak," someone distantly swore. "Kid? Are you having a panic attack? Frak. Okay, here..."

A hand.

"Don't touch me!" wailed Eleceos, writhing away. His back hit something — a tree trunk? — and he realized he'd fallen to his knees and scrambled back on his butt. The Tameike woman stood over him, flickers of...understanding?...falling from the stems of her rage like scattered petals. Compassion, almost empathy-- more pain. Familiarity with that pain. Anxiety, stress, fear fear fear. Clutching, drowning. Desperate.

And even with all that— still, the anger, the sadness, the desire to hurt. Satsi was a constant storm of emotion, the epicenter of a hurricane. She was a maelstrom. And she was sweeping him away.

Like she'd swept Atyiru away.

Like they'd all taken Atyiru away.

"Frakking Shadows. You see, kid? This is why I told you to never show that face of yours again and get the frak out of here. Not unless you want this place to kill another one of you Araaves." Her tone was cruel, bitter and poison, a stark contrast to the hurt that roiled and rolled off of her. "Or do you have a death wish just like she did, huh? Huh?!"

"My Yiru didn't want to die," protested the Miraluka, finding his voice, weak and trembling in his chest with his trembling lungs and trembling hands, but— but he couldn't not. She was wrong. She was! "She never wanted to die!"

And the woman threw back her head and laughed at him, great barks of it.

"You little shit, you didn't know her at all, did you?"

"Of course I did! She was mine! My family, my Yiru, my Misiria! She was my best friend and my sister and you all just...stole her! But she was mine! Mine first!"

"You're such a karking spoiled brat. Someone should beat some sense into you." Her tone hardened. "Maybe I should, huh? Maybe then you'll frakking listen and get gone."

"You're the ones not listening. I just want to know what happened to her! I just want to know why!"

He stood up, shaky, braced against the ancient oak. Satsi stepped closer again.

"Why what, you stupid kid?"

"WHY SHE'S GONE!" he screamed. "You're all so— no one will talk to me, no one will look at me, you're all so selfish, you think of nothing but yourselves and what you want, you all feel nothing but hate and greed and even your love is so, so twisted, you terrible, terrible things! This place is so full of darkness! I don't understand! Why would she have stayed here? Why did she love any of you? You're mean and cruel and awful. The nice ones didn't even know her, because she— SHE'S DEAD. AND IT'S YOUR FAULT! SO WHY?! Why would she die for you?! Why did she pick *you?!*There's no way she could have so it— it had to be you. You people took her from me! You're the reason she's gone!"

The pain was fast and white and hot, and it cracked into his mouth and nose as her fist crashed into his teeth. He was on the ground, his head ringing, the agony a different kind of blind than he knew, numbing his thoughts briefly and piercing through his skull. Still, he heard and felt.

"You aren't the only one who lost her!" came the reply, ripped out of her, a cry that hardly held a candle to the roar of grief and rage that echoed in the Force. It was like standing in the wake of a detonating star, supernova washing over him.

A moment later, fingers were fisting in the loose collar of his robes, hauling him up. He choked, and then he was flying, crashing again, shoulders biting into the ground and head knocking against small stones when she threw him. Her boots crunched as she advanced. She cracked her knuckles and rolled her neck and he could smell not just his blood but her own from where she was biting the inside of her cheek.

"That's it, baby cousin or no, I'm gonna...." snarled the woman, not even finishing her threat, seeming at a loss for words. She just gave a little shriek and gravel and grass scrapped as she lifted a foot to kick him.

He cried out.

A ferocious howl sounded.

Satsi screeched.

Coiled muscle and fur bounded over his prone form, landing in front of him on all fours, crouched and snarling and snapping. Blood sprayed in the dirt, and the Human attacking him backpedaled clumsily, limping and hopping and cursing. She growled in pain as she tried to set weight on her ravaged calf, sharp canine teeth having torn right through her pantleg and boot to maul flesh, but her little sound was nothing compared to the rumbling from the actual wolf standing between her and her master.

"Ashyrith," Eleceos whimpered, relief flooding him to have the cythraul at his side, even as he worried for her. He didn't want her hurt, and he had no doubt whatsoever that Satsi would hurt the creature. He could see it in her. She was a living war and a monster, capable of anything.

And yet Atyiru had died, in part, for her. Atyiru, who had gifted him the very lupine friend that now stood in his defense. Atyiru, who was brighter than the sun and wiser than the moon and whose kindness was greater than all the stars. Atyiru, whose light he carried with him.

Atyiru, whose memorial was just down the hill, smudged in incense smoke and littered with flowers.

"Ashyrith," Eleceos repeated, and he didn't have to issue any verbal command. They were one soul, one mind, and she slowly retreated to his side, never sheathing her fangs from where they bared at Satsi, and lowered her back so he could throw an arm around her. When she stood, she pulled him upright, and he took a moment to breathe in the Force, to steady himself. He breathed it in, and the world breathed with him, filling his lungs, his heart, his mind. The hope in the birdsong, the fierceness in the mountain wind, the patience in the stone. It was all one with the Force, and the Force was one with him. The earth underfoot. The sky above. Ashyrith beside him. Atyiru, always, all around him.

And Satsi Tameike across from him, bloodied and broken in so many ways, wary of the wolf and angry at the world.

He breathed until he felt full to brimming of energy, until the pain of his nose was a distant thing, the bruises healed when he focused.

Then, he squared his shoulders, because he was angry too.

"I'm not the only one who lost her?" he echoed her earlier words. She wanted to hurt him, and there was no escaping that, but he would never want to harm her or allow his cythraul to do so if he could help it. He just wanted answers — just wanted his Misiria — and she was keeping them from him. But he could turn her own storm against her. "And who did you lose? Your daughter, she called my Yiru her aunt. Were you really like sisters? Because she and I, we were true family, One Family. All I see in you is...wrath. Lashing out. All these feelings in conflict. No peace. No calm. What did my cousin see in you? Someone to fix? Someone to save? Surely not actual family."

"Ain't nobody who can fix me, boy, and I don't need it. Frak you. You don't know what you're talking about," spat the woman. "You call off that mutt, now, or I am gonna put it down if it comes at me again."

The slip of skin and cloth, the creak of leather, the snap of a clip and rasp of metal.

She'd drawn a gun.

Eleceos went cold. His chest tightened in panic for his companion. Ashyrith sensed his fear and snarled. The Force flared in warning, rocking his bones to their marrow, and he saw the future even as it unfurled before him.

"No!" he gasped, too late.

The cythraul lunged. The shot went off, a thunderclap.

The young Miraluka threw out his hands, willing a barrier into existence, and screamed.

His sensitive ears rang. A faint burnt smell filled his nose. The blind boy took a few steps forward, his barrier failing as a deep sense of dread filled him to the brim. A pain bore deep into his very center as a familiar whine eclipsed all other sounds.

“Ashyrith?” his voice nearly failed as stepped towards the downed body of his friend. His protector. His family.

The world around him seemed to dull. What was once bright and filled with a cerulean light became a gray undefined wasteland to his mind. Blind as he was, the Force provided him with what his empty sockets could not. Paying no mind to the dark soul who held the smoking gun, Eleceos knelt where he needed to be. She had always been by his side, and no he would stay by hers, till the end.

He reached out to her, gentling the soft delicate fur he had known for so many years. The familiar touch was a warm relief to his shaking hand. Ashyrith seemed to calm at his presence, her pained whine resembling a fading song. Eleceos froze as he felt the warm wetness that poured from the ragged hole in Ashyrith's side. A sickeningly dry and sweetly metallic scent filled his nose. The cythraul’s fur was matted down, a river of thick heat that grew from her wound. He could feel her heartbeat weakening. Her breathing was ragged and strained. The familiar azure glow he knew so well dimmed.

“Ash...I...I’m here,” he choked out his words as he tried to stop the bleeding, applying pressure to the wound that the slug had torn through her. The woman’s aim had been true. His survival instinct had kicked in when he willed a barrier to protect himself. His fear left him unable to protect his dearest friend, no matter how much he may have wished it otherwise. Ashyrith whined in pain as she moved her head slightly closer to her charge. He could feel her breath on his face and the wet tongue weakly licking his cheek. Even now she tried to comfort him. To protect him.

“Ash, you need to rest. It’s ok. I will be ok.”

The cythraul was fighting, and he knew it was a losing battle. Breathing deeply, the Miraluka channeled the Force into his touch, rubbing the wound and whispering soothing thoughts into her pointed ears. She had protected him from so much pain, now it was his turn to do the same for her.

“Hush now...you can rest my friend. Y...you saved me...you saved your cub.”

Ashyrith’s breath halted. Her light went out as her spirit returned to the Force. The pain tore through Eleceos like the very slug that stole her from him. His spirit felt hollow...broken...ripped to shreds. His face scrunched as he held his pain within him. There were no tears only because it was impossible for him. This pain...a pain he’d felt only once before. When his Misiria was taken too early.

Satsi watched the scene unfold before her with a slight hint of regret. She’d not meant to kill the beast, but years of instinct took over. Years of fighting for her life. Years of pain and suffering. She would never allow it to come to her again.

The woman re-holstered her slugthrower before she turned to leave. She didn’t need to be here any longer. She had no desire to see a broken boy sulk as he laid with his dead companion. The pathetic cousin of Atyiru, and just like her he was too soft. Too ignorant of the truth of the world. Too stupid and spoiled to last in this harsh life. She pitied him only for the loneliness he would now live with. The loneliness she had known all too well. A loneliness that she fought, killed, and nearly died to break free of. Maybe this would make him stronger, but she doubted it. He was a weak-willed brat, and she had no time for him. Not when her Sammy was waiting for her return.

“You...you did this.”

The faint voice of the boy crept up on her like a ghost in the night. His soft-spoken words filled with pain. With anger. With suffering.

“I warned you. I told you to control that frakken beast. You didn’t listen. I did what I had to. Go cry to someone else.”

“It wasn’t enough for you.”

“What the frak are you on about?” her annoyance was growing as she stopped.

“You took my Yiru from me. You took my family, and now you took my friend. My only companion.” Eleceos slowly stood up as his fingers dripped with Ashyrith’s blood. His head hung slightly in front of him.

“Go home. Today proves it, kid. You don’t belong in this world. You’re pathetic.”

Something within Eleceos snapped. The boy felt the void within himself to increase tenfold. He was broken. Anger filled his lithe body to the brim, a wave of anger he had never felt in his life. All rational thought was lost. His jaw locked, the pressure on his teeth neared its breaking point. Right at this moment, he knew only one thing. He wanted to cause her pain.

Satsi sighed before turning to leave once more. She pitied the boy. He would never survive in this galaxy as he was and would be a burden to anyone who dared to care for him. She would never have allowed herself to be like that. It reinforced the simple truth to her; he was weak. She walked away, attempting to vacate the courtyard.

Eleceos watched her blue-hued figure walking away. He reached behind his back and grabbed his energy bow. As he pulled it forward, the ends sprang loose, unfolding out into his deadly weapon. The purple plasma beam ignited, creating the drawstring of the bow. His slender fingers grasped the safety of the grip and he drew the bowstring back. As the plasma beam stretched firm a bolt of pure energy formed and notched, ready to fly. Eleceos controlled his breath and aimed, years of training coming to a head as he released the arrow to run its course.

The plasma arrow flew through the air, making only the faintest of a whistle as it sped towards its target. Satsi had been unprepared for the shot. Her guard was down. Pain shot through her as the bolt of pure energy ripped through her left leg. The flesh and muscle within her leg burned as it cauterized as quickly as the wound appeared.

Eleceos was undeterred by her shriek of agony. With the skill all his training allowed, he instantly notched a new arrow as he pulled on the glowing bowstring. Releasing the second arrow, he wasted no time pulling back for another shot and adjusting his aim. His arrows were not aimed to kill. He wanted her to feel pain. To feel his pain. All of his pain.

Satsi had to ignore the pain screaming through her leg. She saw the impending harm, and with a sheer force of will, she pushed herself out of the way of the next arrow. The third was right behind, and Eleceos had anticipated her ability to escape. The bolt of energy sliced along her right arm. Any blood was instantly burned away as Satsi hissed in pain. Her eyes filled with a fury reserved only for her enemies.

“What the frak are you doing? You little karking idiot, I’m gonna make you regret every arrow you fired. Your fingers will wish they'd never pulled on that string!”

The Human woman had to keep moving as arrow after arrow flew towards her. She could tell that none were kill-shots, and that fact pissed her off even more. He was trying to torture her. She had had enough of that in her life. Atty’s cousin or not, this boy was gonna pay for this.

“You made a big mistake kid. I was gonna leave you to waste away here, but if you’ve got some fight in you, I’m gonna snuff it out for good.

As two more plasma bolts flew her way, Satsi stumbled out of the way and grabbed one of her blasters. Her left leg would be a hindrance. Willpower or no, a ligament had been severed making walking almost impossible. It was time to teach this “boy” what pain truly was. She pointed her blaster and fired.

Eleceos body was moving on autopilot. The Force warned him of the incoming danger and with each shot, he adjusted his position. His face was blank as he angled his body with a dancer like grace, swerving in and out of the blaster fire. His singular focus on the woman pushed any feelings of empathy aside. She needed to pay, and she would. The boy notched another arrow and fired twice more in rapid succession.

An arrow flew.

Pain streaked across his consciousness like a strike stone sparking in the dead of night.

It almost made him smile.

Another arrow, another spark. Another. Another.

Another.

The agony was just an echo, not his own; it resounded from her in the Force. A lash, a tongue of fire. A bit of warmth that blazed over him when all else was so, so cold. A flash of light plucked from the string between his fingers.

Spark. Spark.

He almost smiled.

Satsi snarled and whined and shot right back, but her aim was rocked by the shaking of her arm, the burns littering her body. She spat litanies of curses like his Yiru had once whispered litanies of prayers. They were not lovely canticles, and there were no hands holding his while two pairs of knees knelt in the dirt their ancestors had churned and plowed just as they did so many years later, but they brought him an equally divine sort of relief; broken open and pouring out and knowing his devotion was rewarded.

One of his arrows made another hole in her other leg, the one where Ashyrith had delivered her last defense, and then his lips did stretch up and wide on his pale face. It was a little like they were together again, attacking as one...and yet not at all.

Because Ashyrith was gone, and Atyiru was gone, and it was Satsi's fault, and so she paid, and paid, and paid.

Real pain, not a phantom, sliced across his cheek as he jerked his head just aside of a lethal shot, the Force a riptide washing warning through him. His teeth stayed bared in a rictus not unlike his cythraul's had. He fired another arrow, heard the yelp as he shot her gun from her hand and inhaled the stink of smoldering flesh that had overtaken the springtime scents around them.

"FRAKKER!" the Human shrieked at him, struggling to drag herself away, perhaps behind a fountain or outcropping of rock or a tree, but it was a pitiful effort. She was barely inching backwards, clawing up clods of dirt with one branded arm, collapsed onto her back and dragging both legs, blood trailing only one of them from the shape of lupine teeth. Mostly, she just left patches of blackened, charred skin and sinew behind. Where the blisters tore away, more blood followed. The metallic, wet tang grew stronger the closer he stepped, the more she struggled, and if his world had color, then he knew red in that smell.

Eleceos stopped firing his arrows only when he stood over her, sensing her glare boring into him, tasting her ragehatepainfear as her arm gave out and she crashed fully into the dirt. The fear was beginning to cloy, thickening more than the anger, even. Her mind was a wild thing, so open and easy for him to see, and with the pain and the growing fear came so many things. He saw other times on her back, other times on her knees, with another standing over her, wielding hurts. He saw hot metal and flame, saw sharp edges and long fingers, whispers and teeth and smiling lips. Pinned and bleeding, nailed down and burning, hands and feet and throat. This was not the first time she had known helplessness.

It would perhaps be the last.

The Miraluka dropped his bow, tossed it aside. Drew his lightsaber and listened to its hymn as it sprang to life between them. He leveled it at her, the tip humming at her heaving chest, trailing up to her bared neck, judgement held waiting from on high.

"You took. Everything. From me," he forced the words out, heard his voice cracking on each breath but couldn't feel it. Couldn't feel anything that wasn't Satsi's pain.

"I don't even know you, you little slimestain," the Human spat and gasped, panting. "Do it, you goddamn coward. Ya gonna k-kill me? DO IT. See you try."

"I will," he whispered, and he meant it, he did. He did. He did.

His arm wasn't moving.

"So weak," Satsi rasped, and even then, even then, there was the war in her, so very mean. He knew she was in utter agony, knew she was afraid — it coated his tongue, it painted his lungs — and even then...

"Why are you like this?" he was asking. "W-why...why di-did you h-have to...why did she...did they..."

"I'm not here to give you answers, kid. DO IT. Or don't, since you're really that pathetic. You know, even Atty killed." His breath whistled, he inhaled so sharply, and she gave a grin that was far too sharp. "Didn't know, didja? Didn't think. Yeah, she did. One of the only things I respected about her. Oh, frakkin' sure, she'd rather have died every time, but when it came down to it, if she had to, to save people, she'd say...she was a killer too. She had steel in her, under all that soft. I almost thought you did too, way you came at me. But look at you."

His arm did move then, and it shook.

"Look at you," Satsi crooned again. "You're just so weak."

"QUIET!" the Miraluka screamed, swinging, and then she lunged.

His blade met another, spark spark, popping, crying out. Her grip slid, bloody, but she still held on even as her fingers slipped past the emitter and skirted plasma, burning herself as surely as he had burnt her. And she was strong. Stronger than he'd thought, than she'd seemed, all her injuries, how—

His surprise was all she needed. She shoved him away one-handed and he flowed back on instinct, the dance of his form too ingrained in him. As soon as there was space between them, Satsi rolled away, and when she came back up on her knees, wounds grinding into the stones and dirt, she held that short lightsaber in front of her in one hand and pointed another pistol dead at him with the other.

Her arm didn't shake at all.

She fired.

This time, his barrier was not fast or strong enough as it shattered, half-formed, and there was no one to protect him then. It wasn't even the pain that surprised him so much as the force of it; the bullet spun him around like a ragdoll and dropped him to the ground. His mouth opened, and no sound came out. He curled in on himself, gasping silently, but—

But he was still alive. Alive, when Ashyrith and his Misiria were not, and what, then, was the point of that?

"Surviving," Satsi answered, and he realized he had whispered his question aloud. She didn't stand over him, then; she'd collapsed right back down, sprawled less than a foot away. If either one of them reached out, they could have touched.

Instead, like binary stars, they stayed in their shared, separate orbit, and quietly bled out each their own.

"Why?"

His right side was getting very cold, particularly around his fingers. He felt with his other hand and found the hole gaping in his shoulder. She hadn't even risked nicking something near his heart. Why?

Why why why why why—

"Because," the Human sighed out, so very tiredly, and oh, that's what was missing. The anger. He couldn't sense it anymore. Not hers, and not his own. Was it because they were dying? Were they dying? He had never been close enough to know. He just felt empty, and she just felt hurt. "That's what you do. When you lose everything, that's what you do."

"No." It was an effort, but he made himself talk. "N-no, why did you? Why did. Me."

"Didn't I put one between your eyes? Er. Not eyes. Whatever." She gave a huff that might have been a laugh. "Because I'm weak too, and I couldn't when it came to it, not thinking of her. You're right, I knew her. And I miss her. And that is so frakked up like you don't even know 'cause you don't know a damn thing about me an' her."

"Why?"

"Why what? Shadows, kid, use yer words."

"Why did she pick you? Why did she die?"

Satsi got quiet then, and it was just their labored breathing and the zephyrs through the leaves and the shouting of the guardsmen and women up on the parapets whose flurry of motion and collective sense of alarm was a very distant thing to him.

"Because," said the woman. "People die, brat. And because...she loved all of us a lot more than we ever deserved."

If he could have cried, he would have. If he could have sobbed, if he could have wailed, if he could have changed a thing...

The garden thrummed around them. Insects and wildlife buzzed, and the mountain stood, and the sun shone, and people came to haul them onto stretchers, and he wished he could change a single thing.

"Don't arrest him, just treat 'im. And get the dog," he heard Satsi ordering one of the guards or medics, he didn't know what, and they saluted her, radiating respect and deference for reasons he didn't know. All her edges were back, the moment they were not alone. "I shot it, s'hurt, or dead. See if ya can help it or just give this idiot its body."

"Lord Emeritus," one of them answered, confusion in their voice. "Do you mean the cythraul? It seems fine."

"What?"

Eleceos gasped. Turned his head back towards the great tree, though he hadn't eyes to look with, and saw all the same. His sepulchral gray world narrowed in on two specks of shining light.

One was Ashyrith's. And the other, standing beside her and gently stroking her fur where once had been a wound, was a woman. A figure that smiled. Put a finger to her lips like a secret.

Everything will be alright, came a whisper on the wind in his mind.

And then the ghostly figure faded away, and only Ashyrith remained, but she was there, and then she was there beside him, bounding over and licking at his hands, his face, his wounds, circling as the medics lifted him, and his world exploded into light and color again.

"Well I'll be damned," Satsi was muttering. "Frakkin' sparky stuff, I swore that thing looked dead as dead...you a great healer like Atty was, kid?"

"No," Eleceos breathed out. And. Laughed. High and bright and maybe unhinged but not alone anymore. "I'm not really."

"Oh, for frak's sake, you're as crazy as she was. Gonna be more of this kark..." her grumbling faded as she was carried away, and the Miraluka let himself be lulled by his wolf's presence as someone injected something cool and soothing into his arm.

"It's okay, Ash. I'm alright, we'll find a way to be alright, everything will be al...right," was his last waking promise to the cythraul.