Eileithyia, a rambunctious woman even at over a hundred years in age, adored all time among the beautiful landscapes of their world. Princess though she was, none dared hold her back; she held abilities far beyond even those of her mother. Aristocrats often whispered of her power within the walls of their castle crafted on the blink of oblivion. As though she couldn’t snatch those whispers to herself from breath upon the air with nothing more than a flick of her wrist… After many a ruined secret, they decided they preferred to allow her outside of the walls rather than leaving her free to steal away with their whispers.

Instead, she danced among the treetops and lavished attention upon the clouds when they drifted near. The life of a single child was lonely, but she would not let herself drift on flickers of sadness she couldn’ pinpoint the truth of. She preferred the company of clouds over those cold aristocratic women and fragments of possibility anyways. The heavens stretched before her any and every day she desired. 

Far below the winds holding her aloft, the world spread out, a beautiful mosaic. Mountaintops, silvery resplendence topped in drifting white snow, cracked clouds open like walnuts. Mile upon mile of vibrant green forestry yawned below her, only broken by the gruff chatter of winding waterways. At the farthest reach of her eyesight she could just make out the edge of the forest where it broke off into the churning waves of flaxen plains.

Eileithyia appeared as though she might be an angel over the treetops. Wide wings spread from her shoulders, gently moving air about in order to keep her afloat. Each breath swirled deep into her lungs and took a soothing strain of life with it. The gossamer feathers of her wings were of purest white and reflected shimmering sunlight down on the world. Her white-gold hair whipped around in the playful grasp of invisible winds and brought a smile to her face. The deft canals of her mind whirled with options. Eyes akin to the night sky scattered with starlight flickered over the treetops, considered her path for the day.

Mother, the nobles, they might have thought her foolish for her daily escapes, they certainly thought she shirked her duties at every chance, but she would never turn away from the world around them. For what did duties to humans matter when their true dedication should be to nature? To the beauty which the world could craft? Every breath she felt the tug of the world deep in her chest. A chord of life tied her to everything around her. That connection felt as much a part of her as the wings which sprouted from her spine.

She knew the stories, the history, but surely humans couldn’t be such a terror as books made them out to be. Thyia wanted to focus on their lands, not some whispered evil which she knew nothing true of. After all, the humans who came as dignitaries to their halls were more than respectful of their customs. She shook her mind free of the questions which plagued her.

With a deep-throated groan, she allowed her wings to pinch in toward her torso and her body began to plummet toward the treetops. Sharp brown branches and countless dancing leaves rushed at her, her body started to tip, to spin end over end thanks to the weight of her wings. Adrenaline unfurled within her. The sharp feeling of fright decimated the worries plaguing her and by the time her wings snapped open to catch her, little more than a hair’s breadth above the tallest pine, her face was broken in half by the width of her smile. As soon as her body was righted and pulled up from the brink of danger, she adjusted her course toward the northern edge of the woods.

If she truly wanted to break free of the madness and conflictions consuming her mind there was only one option. Dessona. The delicate, green-skinned beauty which was her closest friend; the only one likely to be able to break her free from the tangled underbrush of her thoughts. In her mind Dessona swirled among the trees, vines and leaves stretched toward her even without the influence of her powers. As though they knew the honeydew colored woman was as much of them as she was anything else. For decades Dessona had been her calm in the storm, her guiding light when times got rough. She saw the soft curves of the other woman’s face and heat filtered through her cheeks, turning her pale skin to a sweet blush. Not for the first time she wondered at whether one day they might find more than friendship in one another.

As wind caressed her cheeks she allowed her eyelids to drift closed over the night sky of her gaze. Her smile twitched with the way air tugged oh-so-gently against the slender dark threads of her eyelashes, it brightened with the dancing form of Dessona behind her mind’s eye. The world sang around her. Birds called to one another, their voices a cacophony of longing and hope, the wind whistled tunes she had known her whole life. Even the streams so far below her sang in lilting music their kind knew well. Deep in her chest her heart swelled as the natural world overwhelmed her senses.  Delicious and deadly scents were pulled to her as her wings gathered wind underneath them in between each pulse which closed the distance between her and her friend. The scents tingled at the delicate curve of her nares.

Smoke slithered its way into her nasal passage. It stung, instinct wrinkled her nose against the sensation. Vicious and weighted with the heft of its wrongness, the smell burrowed sharp tines into her mind. Her eyes snapped open as the scent assaulted her. With all the determination of a predator her gaze scanned the horizon for any hint of where the dastardly presence emanated. Not that it was necessary...already her abilities traced the swirling line of smoke in the air, her body was tuned to the piece of that smoke which belonged to her. The deepest threads of her being curled around that shred of air as it led her to its source. Recognition that the source was in the direction she had already been headed sent a sour sensation to her stomach.

That pit yawned in her stomach, worry and fear gnawed at the edge of it as she hoped against all of her senses that it would not be where she thought. Her eyes caught on a flash of red just at the edge of the woods when she was still well over miles away. Steel bands tightened around her ribcage with each slamming thrust of her wings, it felt as though she could not breath. Dessona’s home. Each shred of distance that was devoured by her wings revealed the truth of the terror. So much of the forest was engulfed in flames already, so many areas she knew like the back of her hand from days spent lounging or learning alongside her friend. Her heart ached… 

Within the cavern of her chest, tornados whipped into life, they twisted her from the inside out as true unfiltered rage sparked in her. Tranquil oceans frothed into tremendous hurricanes, the still waters of her mind fragmented and swirled. There was no breaking through the anger. It burned brighter than any sun in her chest. Fed by the heat of her terror, she could barely name it.

Tears bit at the soft backs of her eyeballs but she refused to allow them freedom. Around her wisp of a form the sky thrashed. Tendrils of unseen winds tugged viciously at the winter-clad strands of her long hair. Close enough to touch, the tips of reaching trees swayed with the force of her power. Even vast distances away the world danced under the grasp of her winds. Clouds which had drifted peacefully mere moments before were swept into the twirling column of air as she closed the distance between herself and the largest blaze. With one more massive burst she flung her body toward the flames.

Her form slammed to a stop at the edge of a clearing, one as much a home to her as the castle. Scattered throughout the forest floor were the remains of dead plants and animals. Far below, their burnt out husks lay haphazardly over the ground, another batch of kindling added to the rage in her soul. The normally forgiving nature she had nurtured within herself as she spent time alongside Dessona flickered and diminished. Hungrily her eyes scanned for the little home she knew resided among the treetops, when she couldn’t locate it something deep in the recesses of her mind urged her toward destruction...it whispered that she should not allow such a terror to go unpunished. Her starlight and darkness eyes drifted closed.

Fingers as slender as new branches twisted and danced upon the air. They flashed in motions known only to her kind, pressing and urging the winds to follow her direction. Her face darkened with the weight of her rage as she tugged in the errant strands of her power which had ripped out into the world the second she realized what was happening. That whisper of a tornado which had been brewing quickly multiplied. Two, three...four. They stretched delicate strands toward the ground even as their winds tore at the trees around themselves. White clouds swirled in the columns, clearly no natural set of storms.

Overhead blue skies hovered blankly, unreactive to the typically bitter storms which would have darkened them to a sickly grey-green at any other time. Eileithyia tugged on the strands of air which tied her powers, the tornados, to the core of magic in her chest. At her behest they finally connected with the ground. The moment those stretching strands touched down the fire arched toward them. Tendrils of living red and orange licked at trembling branches and snapped against the pull of wind.

Her wings beat heavily at the air.

Slowly she opened her eyes and stared into the raging inferno that devoured her home, leaf by branch by creature.

It crackled hungrily under her. The closest of the tornados pulled incessantly at her, but it was easy enough to cut off that pressure. Her wild hair drifted down over her shoulders, freed of the wind which had whipped it into a whirlwind of its own. Utter stillness resonated in a bubble around her as she lifted her hands. Despite the way thoughts of Dessona tugged at her attention, she forced herself to focus on the destruction raging through her home. 

A soft brush, a wave of her fingertips, sent her hesitant tornados forward. Fires reflected rippling flames in her dark gaze. Her heart thundered in her chest as she watched. She clenched her teeth together hard enough to awaken an ache in her jaw; it was daunting, controlling her abilities with so strong of an anger in her chest. 

Death and hatred warred with her compassion, they wrapped around and strangled one another as she watched with watery eyes. Smoke stung at her eyes in spite of the stillness which encased her. Her lungs burned with the weight of it all. She longed to pull the air from the lungs of those who had wrought such death upon the land which would one day be hers. The land which was hers. Had always been hers. Sharp as blades, her teeth sank into the flesh of her lower lip and drew forth blood as she continued to swirl her hands, pressing air to pull free the roots of the flames. 

The ones who might have taken so much more...

Trees bowed under the pressure of her winds, those which had taken too much damage from the fires snapped. Their brittle moorings shattered under the extra pressure and opened pockets of death in her woods. Each snap cracked through her ribcage. Hawk-like, her gaze never broke from the storms she had crafted. The moment an animal was lifted into the whirling winds she sent a strand to free them and carry them safely to the ground so far below. Her own body felt liable to break with the death of those which couldn’t be saved. 

Every moment that passed as those fires stole from the earth, her muscles constricted. They felt coiled to the point of snapping. Her eyes watered as the flames slithered up into the columns of air. In the woods destruction lessened, she ensured her air would let no strand of fire free to bite at the life around it. The tornados appeared as something out of a fairytale. Massive dancing columns of fire swirling through the sky, filled with promises of destruction. Bile curdled her stomach when she glanced back at the swath of woods which had been nearly decimated. 

Her fingers twitched, a lilting little movement that sent the tunnels of flame to lift above the treetops. She watched with empty eyes as the flames flickered and died there, nothing to feed them but the wind. Once the final spark had dissipated she held the bundles of air, just a moment longer. A little longer. Minutes passed with not even a burst of heat in those air pockets before she finally relaxed her hold.

Her body drifted toward the ground. Without thought she kept up the blockade against the wind. She didn’t even appear to be falling, she was moving, but nothing on her form so much as twitched. Her face was empty of emotion. She felt like the forest, burnt out from the center. The inferno of her rage had died with that last little lick of fire in the heavens. When her feet hit the ground she collapsed. Her bubble dissipated immediately.

Her mind blanked.

Ash painted her palms, her knees. The grit of it burrowed into her skin and set her nerves ablaze. She shivered. Heat prickled along the edges of her cheekbones, it seared at her eyelids. She felt a single tear trace a path through the light dusting of ash which had floated up to cover her face. Thyia’s throat bobbed hard against the particles that coated it, or was it against the sob which pressed there? Air flowed into her throat, long and slow. A deep breath to combat the incessant weight which began to dig into her the moment she landed. Helplessness coiled in her chest, images of Dessona branded themselves within her mind. She had to find her...but she couldn’t bring her body to move from that position. Crumpled upon itself. 

Her eyes stared blankly into the burnt remnants of a massive tree. Darkness studded with starlight, her empty eyes traced whorls in the wood for minutes, hours? Slowly, her head tilted to the side, Dessona, her hair bright blue and in brambles, twirled around the husk of the tree within her mind’s eye. She couldn’t help but remember Dessona’s adoration of the tree, how she’d demand it was a strong display of the power within every shred of their world. Gifts from the Mother. A muscle in her jaw ticked as sound broke through the imaginings of her mind.

Creaaaak.

It echoed through the clearing again and her stomach flipped. A sharpness returned to her gaze. With all the efficiency of a predator, she scanned the open land around her. Her eyes hunted for the source of the looming noise as it reverberated a third time. The nerves in her body stood on end as the sound drug out for longer, it croaked at her, seemingly proud to avoid her detection. Her heart dropped into her stomach as she caught sight of the way the tree she had been watching began to lean dangerously. It was still hundreds of feet tall in spite of having been damaged by the fire. The tip of it swayed far over her head as she watched it tilt.

Her heart skipped. 

Branches cracked against those of other burnt out trees as it began to fall. It’s wide trunk picked up speed the further it tipped. The further it fell toward her. Wonder filled her even as her muscles refused to move under her urging. Wonder at just how heavy such a huge tree could be, wonder that it had survived the flames only to fall once they were long gone. Wonder that such a strong, stable, part of the world could be felled by flames. Her mind pressed her, the question ‘why’ surged to life in her skull and her eyebrows furrowed against it. Why?

Dessona would be so sad to see it felled.

Panic bled into the back of her mind as her body still remained there, stunned by the tree rushing toward her. She wondered at the thought of being crushed by a tree. It loomed close overhead, almost close enough to touch when her heart suddenly slammed a flood of adrenaline through her veins. Her body dropped to the side, another burst of ash flew up with the impact, though it held nothing to the dust storm which exploded into being as the tree connected with the ground. Branches bit into her flesh, they drew blood, rich and red, to the surface. Their weight pressed hard into the delicate wings on her back, dug deep into the soft skin. Her shoulder burned with inescapable pain. The tips of her toes grazed rough bark and her heart slammed relentlessly in her chest as she glanced over her shoulder at the trunk of the tree through the scrambled mess of its branches where they engulfed her slender form.

She was only able to focus on it for a moment before her eyes were drawn to the shattered wood mere inches from her face. Splinters speared from her shoulder, blood dripped slowly over the muted blue shade of her dress. Grey remnants of life, burnt out cinders of what had once held a strength unknown, stuck to her skin. It tinted her blood dark, a murky sludge of deep grey which was unhealthy in appearance. She shuddered at the sight even as it gave her hope. Despite the lack of life, the tree had a strength which could not be bound. Its power would be returned to the Mother, its life force taken in to encourage the growth of new life from the desolation.

With utter gentleness and care, Eileithyia found her way free of the tree’s death grasp. Her wings had been ripped in more than a few places, she’d probably have to walk a good deal of the way back to the castle, and her arm ached something fierce. With gritted teeth she yanked the broken branch from her shoulder. It flung her blood over the ground, as a sharp point was revealed from where it must have broken against another branch as it fell. She dropped it to the ground as she took stock of her body. Nothing seemed to have been too damaged beyond her shoulder. Her slender fingers tested a few spots on her skin which felt a little strange, but not outright wrong.

As she lost herself within the appraisal, soft cries filtered through her mind and out the other side. It teased and tugged at her head, just enough to capture her interest as she focused on making sure everything was in order. Once her fingers had drifted over one last cut though her mind connected the pieces of what she was hearing. It sounded almost like a nymph,  and her heart tightened in her chest. Her fingers spun in a small circle, pulling the sounds to her upon the breeze. The one making them might have been just before her, they sounded so clearly to her ears. There was no mistaking the sound of tears. Oh goddess...

Dessona’s image flickered in her mind for just a second before she took off, tracing the source of the sound. Her heart shattered time and again in her chest, each step brought her closer to the noise but it still did not feel quite right. It didn’t sound like her. Those tears singed her as they fought for freedom from her grasp, but she would not allow herself to be wrapped up in fear. The world rushed past her, a dark relic of the beauty which it had once been. Instead of beautiful vines and trees with leaves in colors unimaginable, she passed burnt out, ash covered husks of bark and withered strings of plants. Bones crackled underfoot when she was too distracted to pay attention to where she placed her feet.

“Thyia…”

That voice decimated her mind. She came to a stumbling halt as the cries continued on. They were nothing more than background noise as she focused on the sound of her name. The crumbling corridors of her heart halted in their collapse as hope flooded her veins.

“Onie?” She whispered, her throat mostly constricted by the lump which had taken up residence there.

Her eyes jumped through her surroundings, hunting for a shred of green, of blue, in the midst of the charred remains of their forest. The surface of her chest nearly vibrated with the force of her heartbeat. Though fear quickly sank its teeth into her again as her eyes turned up nothing.

“Dessona?”

“Here…”

The word caught her attention and this time she was ready. She captured it upon the air, and traced the breath which carried it. Her steps stumbled and tripped toward it, though it was hard to ignore the whimpers which still carried through the air to her. The closer she got, the more she could capture the shreds of a battered breath as it drifted in and out of crisp lungs. Agony lanced through to the deepest parts of her soul with each shuddering breath she heard. It was impossible to ignore the truth of what she heard, but she pushed it away until she pressed through the burnt trees into a small oasis of greenery amidst the dead forest.

Vines curled and stretched before her. They yearned toward the heavens so far overhead and only visible due to the leaves having been burnt off of the trees around the area. Grass moved gently in the breeze which followed in Thyia’s wake, a manifestation of her inner turmoil. Beautiful flowers, absolutely out of season that late into the year, unfurled petals as stunning and perfect as anything nature could craft. Moonbeams, Dessona’s favorite flower, flourished throughout the little oasis. Dove-white petals floated open upon the thousands as the gift of a Flora pressed into the earth and tugged them into bursting life.

Dew collected at the corners of her eyes as she searched the little oasis for the source of such beauty, there was no question in her mind as to why it all flourished and bloomed so quickly. Power was leeching back into the Mother. Her gaze followed the patterns of growth, her steps traced to the center of the tiny clearing. Searching vines wrapped around a blackened thigh. Delicate greenery brushed against a face the color of honeydew.

Bright blue eyes, washed feverish with pain, connected with her own. Eyes she knew as well as her own mother’s. There was a hefty weight in that gaze which could be called nothing other than love. Even in the face of death, Dessona welcomed it with open arms. Eileithyia’s breaths shook her chest, for the first time in her life it felt as though the very winds she was tied so tightly to were fighting against her hold. She could barely stomach a glance at her darling friend’s frame, but a glance was all it took.

Skin once so soft a shade had been darkened and split by the heat of the flames. Fingers akin to those of the artisan elves had been melted to the point that there was no defining one from the next. Thyia’s stomach revolted at the sight of such a terrible destruction. Still, her fingers slipped under the scorched flesh and pressed comfort into it. Until Dessona whimpered.

Tears broke free from her eyes as her heart settled itself into her throat. Dessona’s soft face, barely touched by the fires, curled into a petal-soft smile at her. Those stunning eyes crinkled at the corners with the pressure of it even as her lips quivered with pain. Her sharp white teeth were as bright at the Moonbeams she had brought to life with the expulsion of her power. Her voice crackled like the flames as it passed her lips, little more than a whisper on the wind.

“Help them…”

Thyia’s brow furrowed with confusion. She had seen no one else in the clearing, no bodies except that of the woman she held oh-so-dear. The pain in Dessona’s eyes lessened, softened by the breath leaving her lungs. Each one a tug closer toward the end.

“Those cries...they need you.”

The sound broke into the shell of her mind once more at the urging of her friend. Her skin crawled at the thought of leaving her friend’s side.

“You need me.”

Her voice was stubborn, but gentle. It was joined by the feather-soft caress of her wind as it floated over Dessona’s burnt flesh in a bid to help lessen the discomfort. The darkened sky of her gaze ate hungrily at Dessona’s appearance, searching for something to be done, some help to be had. Her fingers tugged on the waterskin at her hip and she popped out the cap as she lifted it to her friend’s lips. Dessona closed her eyes and drank deeply, but only for a moment before she turned her head away. Her smile was softer when it came again. The depths of her eyes pressed into Thyia’s.

“Go.”

The breath left her lungs with a finality as shimmering green light lit up around the edges of her battered form. She seemed to glow from within as she slipped her melted hand from Thyia’s grasp. Those tendrils of vines that had curled against her burnt skin as Eileithyia approached slithered toward the center of her chest. The truth bit venom-filled fangs into Thyia’s heart and awoke the burning pit of anger and loss in her soul.

“No!”

The cry broke from her lips even as the ground beneath her knees shuddered. Each time her fingers stretched toward the place where Dessona lay amidst her foliage, there was a vine there to snap gently against her skin. She sobbed in the face of her loss. Her body crumpled on itself, she felt as though she had no bones to speak of within her flesh.

“Onie, Onie…” Her name repeated on a loop from Thyia’s lips, painted in anguish. Her heart shattered in her chest. More than a hundred years of friendship, gone just like that? It felt likely to rip her in twain. Even loving the Mother the way she did, she could not ignore the loss of one so dear to her heart. She couldn’t convince herself that it would all be worth it in the end. She couldn’t even remember the words for loss she should have uttered and her entire body shook violently with the force of her sobbing.

Through the wavering tears in her eyes and the imbalance wrought by the shaking of her form, she watched while Dessona took on her other form for the last time. In the spot where the shattered remains of her love had lain, a single green sprout rose up. She could still see the rise of Dessona’s chest beneath all of the foliage and her own chest ached at the sight of that tendril just over her friend’s heart. The covered form of Dessona diminished with each shaky breath Thyia brought into her lungs, the sapling grew taller as the mortal body of her friend molded itself into something new. Something where she would never hear that lyrical voice again. Never hear the laughter she knew so well as they played in the waters nearby.

Where would she go when the weight of a Queendom was too much to shoulder alone? Tears still flowed down her cheeks as she pressed her fingertips to the beautifully light green bark which formed from the tree before her. So close to Dessona’s skin...even if it was a thousand times rougher than hers had ever been. A single light blue leaf caressed her cheek as she watched the trunk expand and grow upward before her. Infinitesimally the pain in her chest lessened with that soft touch. She forced herself to her feet as the growth of the tree slowed, slowed, stopped. 

Thyia pressed back against the weight of her sadness as it threatened to overcome her. The tears slowed and dried upon her face as she pressed her fingers into the bark of that unnaturally colored tree. She ran her thumb against the grain and drew strength from it. That anger in her soul sparked again as she whispered to the tree.

“I will protect you. Forever. I will make whoever did this pay.”

She couldn’t say for sure whether that was something Dessona would want, though if she was completely honest with herself she knew it wasn’t. But there was no stemming the rage which awakened in her heart. It didn’t make sense. They were supposed to have hundreds upon hundreds of years...they weren’t supposed to die in such a terrible, monstrous way. Devoured by flames. There shouldn’t have been such a fire in their woods.

The words reverberated in her mind and pushed her toward the edge of the woods. That cry from before was little more than a whisper in the back of her mind. She couldn’t focus on it. She couldn’t take more pain. Another dead, dying, nymph...she couldn’t. Instead she pulled on the fire in her soul and stoked it into an inferno. Her soul raged at the death of love and pleaded with her for recompense. A single hard pulse of her wings suddenly sent her soaring through the treetops overhead. The sharp planes of her teeth ground into one another as she glared toward the edge of the forest where humans could connect to their land. She searched for signs of ruin.

The crying fell away far below her. 

Her gaze narrowed on an area at the edge of the woods where there were no leaves to speak of and heavy recognition settled into her stomach. She drove her body toward the sight with the pounding of her powerful wings. In the press of her anger it was easy to ignore the raging pains which awakened in her delicate wings. She thumped to the ground just inside the clearing at the edge of the plains.

A few trees, just as burnt as the ones which had enwrapped Dessona, curled around a small clearing. The corpse was nothing more than a half-moon, the trees wrapped around a little shack in the middle which was just as burnt as the forest. She stared straight through to the hills for a moment, transfixed by the wide open swath of land, so unlike the rest of their land. It rolled outward for miles; just the barest hint of mountains was visible on the horizon.

Until that cry cracked her mind open again.

Her gaze fell from the wide-open expanses to the little clearing around herself. It was more of the same. Plants burnt to a crisp and the world doused in ashes. She barely spared a glance for the shack, her attention was tugged to the brittle, half-burnt bodies strewn throughout the corpse. All of them were similar in size and shape to her nymphs, to the humans she had seen sparingly through the years; they lay mostly surrounding some twisted hunk of creation which she had never seen before. Metal and other materials which made up whatever that thing was had been melted and were misformed due to it, which must have taken an intense heat. More than a couple of the bodies looked liable to fall apart into dust with nothing more than a tap of her fingers. Curiosity lit within her at the mechanism.

Hesitant steps brought her closer to the center of destruction. The scent of burnt flesh wriggled into her nose and embedded itself there. Her mind whirled; even in her anger it was unwilling to believe that these beings had wrought such mindless destruction within her land. Her fingers itched with a need that she couldn’t recognize as her eyes scanned the construct before her. She took surprisingly careful measures to ensure she did not knock into any of the corpses. Anger took a back-burner as she wandered around the edge of the thing.

It was well over twice her height, a twisted conglomeration of metals and pieces which she had not even the slightest idea of a name to call it. Her eyes devoured the thing, hungry for knowledge, for something to distract from the raging center of her being. Until she neared the front.

Huge metal prongs broke deep into the surface of the world. They stabbed relentlessly into the supple earth and ripped apart the plants at the edge of the woods. That alone was enough to turn her stomach, but it held nothing on the sight of that machine devouring life. Or having devoured life. It was no longer moving, no longer taking part in whatever terrible acts it had been crafted to partake in, but the tree half out of the top of its twisted hulk, clumps of dirt still dangling from its shredded roots and burnt to a shadow of its former glory, said all that she needed to know. 

Unstoppable, rage lifted to the tips of her fingers, to the surface of her heart. The loss of Dessona pooled in her bloodstream and tinted her vision red as her past acceptance of humanity twisted within her. For so long she had looked upon them with something akin to pity, willing to accept them for the sake of turning them toward the good of the world. Finally she saw what her mother had hinted at for so long.

Thyia looked back at the shack. Her mind felt liable to split with the pulsing of energy within her. She was not surprised to note that the ramshackle outpost was little more than held together by strands of energy. Rage set her fingers to twitch and wind surged around her, just the smallest of brushes and the remaining structure of the shack collapsed in on itself. Silence echoed around her.

Humans.

Bile churned in her stomach. Why had they touched their woods? They were foolish, dangerous...everything her mother had promised. Her fingers tightened, wrapped themselves into a fist as tough as a rock. She allowed her eyes to fall back on their bodies. Red and black covered the majority of their flesh, but she could just make out the soft features which had made up their faces. They were twisted in agony. Good. Vindication settled over her shoulders.

The sound of a wheezing breath bit into her mind. It was quickly followed by the hurried stampede of footsteps. She whipped toward the source, her anger clear in the lines of her emotive face as she stared daggers. Small and weak, a being glanced back at her with wide eyes, fear pulsing into the air from it. It’s little body throttled the air in its bid to escape her. Her fists remained at her side as she stared after it, a human clearly. Eileithyia drew air into her lungs, it filled her to the brink and still she did not move. It felt as though a hand pressed roughly against her shoulder. Her clothes swirled and danced in the eddies of her winds, awakened by the fire which swirled with heady life in her soul. In that retreating form she saw the destruction of her people.

Of her land.

Sluggishly, her blood pumped through her body. She merely stared as the wisp of a thing darted from the clearing. Confusion dug deep lines in the width of her forehead. Her eyes dropped to near where the shack had fallen, where the little human had been hidden. She tilted her head at the sight of two bodies, close in size to those behind her, most likely fully grown. Yet, they were so far from the rest. Wrapped in one another’s arms. Dead without a chance to react. Her heart gave a dull thump of hope...maybe…

The thought fluttered in her mind for a moment before it faded to the background. The weight of what had happened settled around her shoulders, akin to a blanket. Normally such a weight would have calmed her, soothed her. But there was no comfort to be found. Death wrapped around her, humanity tore love from her grasp, unknown intentions blurred the truth. The only thought which remained in her mind was of Dessona.

Tears burned their way free of her body as she sank to the ground.