[Flashback] There's a Curse On Us (Dor)

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

“All this and still, no idea.” Duvalyon looked straight at the Kelvic, his face unmarred by expression, only a sensual sleepiness about his eyes. “No, Dor,” he answered with cool courtesy, “I will not go with you.” He sat on the edge of her bed, slowly unraveling some of the fabric wrapped snugly about his arm. It was convenient apparel for hiding objects. “But it is almost time. Tomorrow will be the day.” He waved his claws at her distractedly, “Whimper a bit for our audience, no shouts, that’s only for debuts.” As Dor made a show of pain, Duvalyon assembled a palm-sized bit of silver between his claws. “That’s enough,” he finally murmured. Stretched between his fingers like gossamer was the chain of a necklace with a sculpted pendant. “Light enough for even a bird to wear.” Duvalyon lifted the pendant with a jeweler’s care, showing a small mechanism. He pushed it and a bright little blade flicked out. A letter was etched on the blade, but was it for her to remember him or because he thought of her? “A beautiful objectYour heirloom!.” The Symenestra’s eyes kindled as he looked at the blade. The pendant was a deceitful thing, intricate metalwork hiding a wicked purpose. His admiration spoke of more than aesthetic tastes. Duvalyon retracted the blade with a sigh and dropped the necklace in Dor’s hand unceremoniously. “Tomorrow, you begin the solitary life. Don’t worry.” A wry look toyed with his mouth, “We all live alone, some just discover this later than others.” Duvalyon leaned against the wall and stretched his neck languorously. “Once you get your wings back, get to the tunnel nearest the woven gate and follow it until you see the light. Then to Lhavit.” She would recall that splat of ink on maps. Its name had been as mysterious as words like stars and trees. The Symenestra sat in silence for a time, watching the candle’s tongue sway. “Doryn Hardai,” he breathed the name, “That’s what your mother named you.” He finally looked at her as he spoke, no longer floating words in the air for her to find. “This will be our last meeting if the gods are good to you.” Duvalyon’s voice lost its usual indifference, tightening around the warning that followed. “Dor, listen to me. When you leave, do not return. If you ever see another Symenestra in the wide world, don’t let them near. Even if they treat you with all gentleness and velvet words.” Duvalyon paused briefly his courage flickering with his next confession. “I have brought home surrogates for others. And I would do it again for my people.” His red eyes sharpened, pinning her to the wall. “None of us are harmless.” Even if there were those fools who loved Esterian ways, the narrow percentage wasn’t worth the risk. Better she ignorantly fear them all than hold a viper to her breast. The rest of the sunlit races were fair prey, but not Dor. She was blood and blood was precious.

[Dor]

In a different world, in another time, there might have been some who would consider it a tragedy Dor seemed unsurprised Duvalyon rejected her questioning plea to accompany her. Resignation hardened an otherwise delicate jaw and there was perhaps a thing within her that hardened in correlation. These handfuls of nothing crossed with hours of grace, mapping out moments laden with more losses than love. They would ultimately create the cartography of her soul. Silk rustled as she settled on the bed beside him, legs folding beneath her and arms brushing as she ceased her dramatic whimpering and choked back distress sounds to lean in. Dark eyes were intent upon the necklace, widening with wonder at the sparkling make of it. When he folded it into her hand, she blinked up to his face and then down at the prize. One received the impression that were she wearing her wings, she would be pecking over it curiously. “Why?” She asked him directly, regard returning to the physician. There was no need to elaborate. Not between them. Why would he gift her a wonder, being already in the process of gifting her her life? She heard her name, whispered as it was out of necessity; but unlike so many other things, she failed to repeat it, to try to shape it with her own lips as if to learn it by the bone. Maybe she liked it better in his mouth, in her mother’s. It kept her silent as he continued to speak, black words fletched with urgency, with sincerity and warning. “Why Lhavit?” She wanted to know. Distant memory of a tale in a book, of pictures of swirling, bright things called stars decorating the top of a towering city. Don’t come back, she heard him saying between those syllables. Never come back and never trust anyone for this world is dark and filled with false faces. With his words he spoke only of the Symenestra, but they were his own people, blood of his blood and she knew blood to him was the most precious. What did that say of the rest of the world’s denizens? The rest of his words caught up with her, of surrogates and sires and what he would do, what all he would do for blood. “Duv,” she said very seriously, as serious as he. The words were grappled, wrestled down as this was import, so very important. “If this is the life you want, if this is all you ever want of Up,” and it must be, she imagined, it must. “Don’t ever show them your real face. Don’t ever, ever let them see. They’ll love you, see, and you’ll do it to them anyway because they aren’t me. You’ll do it and it’ll kill this face.” A hand rose, fingers unraveling to brush the air above his cheek but not to actually touch. “Better to hide and breathe.”

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

“Why?” Duvalyon lost some of his scant color then looked away, irritated at his own discomfort. It wasn’t his first gift, but it was the finest. If she were one of them, and a true ward, he would have given her much more in the seasons prior. “It will let you cut the collar to escape, strike flint to make fire in the wilds, and—there didn’t seem to be any harm in it now.” He didn’t have to worry about Dor creeping too near, encouraged by tokens and affection. She was leaving with a bitter taste on her tongue. Happy to alter the subject he went on, “Lhavit is a beautiful city, and very near. It is obsessed with ‘Up’ in the highest sense of the word. You’ll do well.” Or so he gambled. He was sending a babe into the wild world and praying instinct would suffice where her learning had tapered off. Then she caught him on her little talons, pricking his core the way she had scratched his arm since birth. Doryn grew serious, trying to teach him something. Duvalyon tensed, floating back from her an imperceptible distance. She was opening her mouth with pity girding her expression, the most perilous of all emotions. Made all the more horrible because it was birthed in what might have been love. Real, cold fear began to tear the Symenestra’s gut. Ever so gingerly, Duvalyon leaned forward, passing Dor’s hand so it brushed his skin. Gentle restraint kept him buoyant. “Don’t fret, my Dra-Dor,” he kissed her cheek but did not withdraw from the tender space. “The face they see is fairer and ever false.” His honesty was merciless, as was his deliberate twisting of Dor’s words. No, Duvalyon could not re-imagine his life and his philosophy now. It would be like walking down a road for a dozen years then considering a return to the original fork. If she were to truly see him, she would have to let the two Duvalyons stand side-by- side and not part them. He drew back, and for a sliver of a moment he dreaded her reaction to hard truths, but he would not tell her any more lies. Duvalyon took a deep breath and looked at Dor for a moment, maybe trying to take a sketch for memory.

[Dor]

It was but the second time in her life she had been kissed, both by Duvalyon in heartbeats now realized were orchestrated to manipulate her. The intimacy of his posture, of that familiar, cultured voice framing words cold as the stalactites constructed by centuries shot a chill through her that had nothing to do with the cool gloom of Kalinor. Clammy fingers closed tightly over the silver pendant and she held herself still despite the shiver of what she imagined must be her soul. The spell was breaking, dissolving beneath an interminable onslaught of truth. Truth pricked at the parts of her intellect that had sharpened in unconscious mirroring of her keeper's image and when he leaned back, her eyes followed but the rest of her could not move. "Duv," she demanded with words he had taught her, deadly and deliberate. "How is it you know what my mother named me?"

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

She was beginning to see. The truth was a mercurial thing, it would cast both blood and water on Duvalyon. His answer was given in the precise and emotionless manner she had come to associate with him when he was amidst his books. “She told me. At the Place of Purging I attend to surrogates, I specialize in births. We call it ‘husbandry’,” a morbid joke the Kelvic wouldn’t understand. “I treated her on occasion during her second pregnancy. She wore a collar like you.” Duvalyon’s tone began to deepen with something more than grim obligation to the truth. “She thought the head medic Svoreador, my father, had you killed. He intended to. I told her otherwise and she gave me your name. I also told her I would let you go.” It had been a dangerous business giving Dor’s mother the consolation that her daughter would both live and escape surrogacy. The conversation had made Duvalyon enormously uncomfortable. He didn’t want the woman to expect any especial pity from him, but he didn’t want to leave her pressed under a two-fold anguish when removing one layer was so simple. The Symenestra said nothing more, letting the memory evaporate. “You were supposed to be let free, Dor. If you had done what I asked and never shown your human face then things would have gone according to my intentions. What’s done is done, I only say this so you will leave knowing there were no hopes on my part to keep you.”

[Dor]

The air in the Nest was suffocating. It was thick as the black of the gorge, coating walls of her esophagus, sticky as tar. It lumped in her throat as she continued to stare at him, overwhelmed by the sheer, monstrous yawn of his truth, her truth, their truth and Kalinor's. It left her blinking against nettling eyes, fat tears rolling down; but ultimately she did not know how to cry, never having done it before, and so she lifted her hands to try to scrub the damp from sunless cheeks. "Do you know if I have a sister? Or a brother? Do they fly, Duv? Can you get them too?" And what? What was she going to do anyway out in the Up? What did she know how to do but tell the names of anatomy and irritate the dickens out of a person? Elbows stuck out, silk cords, coral bright, sliding down bare shoulders as she pressed her palms flat against her breast. It felt like her heart had skin walked without the rest of her, sprouted wings to beat endlessly against her ribs, trying to get out. It was a panic attack. It would fade in another fistful of heartbeats when the sheer, stubborn determination of her self worth loving Duvalyon Hellebore had bred in her kicked back in. Until then, the silver chain attached to the pendant he gifted her sparkled, swaying from a tangle about her fingers as they hooked in a futile tug at the collar about her throat. It was not yet the time to cut it off. Her hands dropped, shoulders sagged. She sniffled. Not once had she reached for him, but he had taught her that too. "When do I leave?"

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Duvalyon watched Dor flutter and pulse, the edges of her gestures fraying. He did nothing, but waited for her to spend herself, like one would a man drowning. Perhaps he counted, perhaps he thought of what he ate last, perhaps he was absorbed by her and her alone, Duvalyon’s face was inscrutable. When she abated, wilting with piecemeal grief, the Symenestra answered her last question. “Tomorrow. They will transfer you to the Place of Purging for your first inspection. You must not reach it, but escape during the transition.” Duvalyon opened his hands. “I’ve given you the tools and opportunity to escape. I leave the mechanics to you.” Like all his other gifts and gestures, these stopped short leaving her to complete them. In the future, Dor might tussle between whether this was due to apathy or a design to make her independent. The topic of her sibling was left dormant. The Symnestra’s loyalty to his own a shield against her prying. It had come, he had sat for too long. Duvalyon’s face changed with the realization, and Dor could see it. This was the last he would see of this frustrating, deep-eyed, longing creature. Her affection clung around him despite his efforts to shuck it elsewhere and he marveled at that. Duvalyon wondered if a non-Kelvic was even capable of such loyalty, or if it was the blessed curse of her race alone. He stretched his legs and left the bed and its bower to stand in the center of the room. “Goodbye, Dor.” His voice was sterile but for a dose of courtesy. The coolness of his farewell was meant to be a final mercy.

[Dor]

A final plea for Duvalyon to make of her escape his own faltered on her lips. It might have been the first she learned of pride, echoed in the dignity with which her keeper held himself for their farewell. The angle of her chin sharpened and while she turned to keep him within her line of sight, she failed to crawl from the bed and after him. It had sunk in that she could crawl after him and into her death or fly away from him and into the Up. There was no other option or, if there ever had been, Duvalyon himself had buried it beneath a masquerade of faces and neither of them could see the truth through the lying trees. So instead she studied him one last time, watching the lick of candlelight gift color to an otherwise devoid frame. It exploded in his eyes, fracturing the shimmer of burgundy into something too bright and unreal. Never before had she noticed that his eyes were the color of blood, a reflection off the god whose dogma ultimately drove him in every act, sin or glory. It took fire to do that, a light against Kalinor’s black. Tomorrow, I want a candle to remove her smell. “Goodbye, Duv.” She blinked and did not wonder what it was that brought people to clarity in the last gasps. There would be a hole in her shaped like him and that was all she needed to know anymore.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

She was learning, and it was bittersweet. The urge to show appreciation for Dor’s unrequited regard suddenly flooded Duvalyon. It filled the back of his throat with feathered words. He clenched his jaw and let the sentiments fly against his teeth. To hide the twitch of his jaw, he dipped his head in an abbreviated nod of farewell. The Symenestra turned away to keep himself from saying anything that would make Dor hesitate when only inches from daylight. He knocked on the door and the attendants ushered him out with smiles and questions. Somewhere in the cloud of murmurs Duvalyon gave a bored answer. “Adequate, but not entertaining.” Dor would hear the voices drift further away, the feminine hums punctuated by Duvalyon’s glib ripostes. The noise was as empty of meaning as the clatter of crumbling stones. And then nothing remained beside her, save the warbled shadows made by candlelight. Bells later, Duvalyon was in a home stripped of even rumors that Dor once inhabited it. Her tangled bed had been undone and neatly folded between stacks of her clothes. He’d give them to his mother to distribute among Symenestran daughters. The bright and gleaming things Dor collected from around the house for her “nest” were returned to their proper place, and the bird’s feathers had been gathered and thrown into the chasm, each one rocking and twisting on its way down. All but one. Duvalyon looked at it now. It had fallen from the pages of a crude child’s reader found under borrowed medical tomes. The Symenestra twirled the feather between his fingers then looked down at the page it had marked. Gently, Duvalyon returned the feather to its place and shut the book. And there it would stay for seasons to come, ever marking: “B for Bird”.

[Dor]

Somnolence shrouded the orb that was Kalinor’s Nest and within the interminable gloom of the subterranean city opal gloaming lights were winking to life one by one. Far and seven centuries of feet above, the earth was beginning to burgeon at the harsh hand of spring. A thaw had seized the ground, forcing mineral rich waters through the cracks in the world to eventually topple from the cavern ceiling and add fresh breadth to stalactites from which the spiders had formed their homes. Though there was no way for Doryn Hardai to know it, the sun of which she had read was creeping steadily out of the east on green-gold feet, leaving behind a patchwork of light to nourish the wilderness. It was the same sun her mother had remembered with the determination of a prayer as her final hours waned and her belly waxed in the black. Liet Hardai had known both exile and what it was to be hunted prior to being taken for surrogacy by the Symenestra. Yet she had known other things as well, from what it was to lead to what it meant to love. Betrayal had bitten her bitterly, knifing teeth through her family and all those loyal to her husband. His ideals. Her endeavors. Their dreams. All slashed and shattered in the summer sun. Being taken by the amoral ambitions of a desperate race had not been Liet’s life tragedy. It was instead just her coup de grace. “You look like him,” the woman murmured while sinking to a seat on the edge of the bed. Dor had begun to surface from a restless sleep at the Symenestra’s entrance to her bedroom cell, shivering from her fetal position in a tangled nest of blankets. They were soft as down feathers, those blankets, soft as cobwebs and the sweep of pallid hair coiled with excruciating elegance atop the stranger's head. Dor blinked with dark, hazy eyes at the woman, imagining she was one of the Nest’s many attendants with their airless smiles. She uncoiled to push into a sitting position and lean back against the array of bright colored pillows in her bed’s bower. “Are you here to take me to the Place of Purging?” She asked while bidding her heart to be still. Pale fingers slid against the bedding, bunching silk in her fists. She blinked. “I look like who?” “Your father,” the Symenestra answered while folding long fingered hands in her lap. Coal dark talons clattered softly together. “Oh, the coloring’s all wrong,” she went on, “And you’ve your mother’s face, but it’s in your bones.” “My bones? What? Who are you –“ “Yes, your bones,” the woman rose her eyebrows, meeting Dor’s dark eyes directly with a regard that seemed to have been swallowed by the summer sun. “And your blood for those who know to look, how to look. You’re his child and make no mistake.” Dor felt bewitched and held herself in terrible stillness, the pressure of threat holding her sure as a straightjacket. The Symenestra tilted her head, a small, sharp smile appearing on what were otherwise soft features. “Not even failure could cast your father down, but we’ve taken care of that now, haven’t we, Doryn?” “W-Who are you?” Dor spluttered. The silver pendant gifted her by Duvalyon spilled from the neck of her shift as she leaned forward to search the face of the stranger. “Narevelia Eglantine,” the lady introduced herself. "Wife of your brother's father." Desperate questions voiced and left to wither in the air of this very cell swamped Dor's memory. Their tones still lingered in the flickering candlelight, the fresh, fair scents of the candles unsuccessful in the driving out of demons. Do you know if I have a sister? Or a brother? Do they fly, Duv? Can you get them too? Old, mysterious forces listened in the womb of the earth, waiting amid the shadows of Kalinor, watching their own eyes. They threw out answers to lost questions only to watch them sink like stones into a mass grave. "Why are you here?" Words found shape in her mouth, but every syllable hummed through the bones of her with which Narevelia seemed so enamored. The anguishes and shocks of the past days had piled too high, forcing her to accept that everything she knew was layered in lies. "To see you," Narevelia considered, rising in an abrupt motion to pace at the foot of the bed. "To know you. Hellebore had no idea what he was doing, did he? But he's brilliant, eh? Did the perfect thing all the same." She shook her head and turned back to Dor and the bed, arms crossing beneath the swell of her breasts and head high. "Little matter now. You'll feed my purpose while your corpse feeds his child." Cold crept through Dor, as stabbing deep as that scythe smile on Duvalyon's face. No sedative will be necessary. "You're a traitor to your people," she mouthed, half mumbling the words for they dripped with sudden disgust. Shock smacked Narevelia's exquisite face, covered quickly over by a tide of banked rage. "You know nothing, Doryn Hardai. Nothing. Greater forces than I have hunted your father past the horizon, out of our reach; but I've my revenge through his wife's son. His daughter's child. They'll be Symenestra and they will never sing to his gods." "Viratas will smite you," Dor opined with an hiss. Her heart was beating too wildly -- wildly perhaps as the footsteps of a hunted man -- to cower in her fear and confusion. "I share your blood through your adopted son. You keep concepts of family bound up in physical forms alone when the god of it himself is intangible." One last thing Duvalyon had managed to teach her. Narevelia was laughing, the sound so soft that the air of the Nest could have crushed it. It had crushed less fragile creatures than that sound. "You're going to die screaming," she informed the surrogate. "Far from the sun. An animal to breed. Don't speak of family, Doryn, not when you can't stop helping me destroy them." A dismissive hand cut the air and the Symenestra turned her back on her son's sister, stepping toward the door. Animals were what the Symenestra considered the women who bore their children, who supported the continuity of their race. Animals maybe because it was a necessary crime to distance themselves from the horror of what they had been reduced to. Yet in them was the blood of all these animals, intermingled and passed from generation to generation, spread as intricate and sticky as cobwebs. Dor could not help but wonder then if in the Symenestra's pride they had raped and killed their way toward damnation in their own god's eyes. There was a curse on them all. Yet an animal, she was. The blood of her, the bones of her, as Narevelia Eglantine had said herself. And animals, when pushed to the wall, when caged and no scratching, no beating would tear them free, were distilled down to one thing: fight or flight. Broader thoughts banished by more banal instincts, Dor finally exploded beneath the pressure of seven hundred feet of waking earth. Bed sheets tangled and tore as she half crawled, half flew from the bower, her hands scrambling for the candles wheezing in growing puddles of wax on the table. The first gasped out, extinguishing in a pale wisp of smoke, but the second tumbled to the bed and ignited upon the expensive silk, the weaves of cotton. The third candle was thrust into the bower drapery, a line of fire crimson bright as Dor's hair racing up to with a gulping exhale festoon the overhanging curtains into flame. Narevelia had spun around, staring with a reflection of flames in her eyes at this madness. "What are you doing!" The Symenestra shrieked, surging forward. She caught Dor's arm with her hand, talons scraping porcelain skin, causing blood to burst forth when Dor jerked herself away. She tumbled to the floor of her cell, fingers scrabbling against the end of a burning blanket until she could jerk it loose. A wing of fire flared, littering scorched threads across the floor, and came to roost in the center of the thick rug cushioning the cell floor. Narevelia staggered backwards as the two-legged animal sprung, crashing them both against the far wall by the door. The hem of Dor's shift was burning, tiger colored flames crawling up until she jerked her leg, forced to release Narevelia while tugging and scratching at the clothes that bound her. Silk ripped, mouthy and incensed, and Narevelia screamed. Beyond the walls of the cell, voices were raising with alarm. The door crashed open, revealing the form of a startled guard. It took but instants for the man to start yelling, shouting words that echoed and bounced through the Nest even while dragging Narevelia out. Smoke billowed after them as Dor danced and tore, escaping the burning shift they had dressed her in to prepare for the conception. The burning remains of the shift she threw after Narevelia, watching as fire raced toward fresh source of oxygen, the cell pulsing with heat like an oven. The hem of Narevelia's gown only fed Dor's fury, spreading fresh flames into the Nest, catching upon all of the fine, soft cottons, rugs and pillows, cushions and silken chains adorning the diseased heart of the Symenestra race. As panicked screams braided in the abruptly bright din, surrogates and attendants all rushed for the stairs winding up toward the Nest's entrance in the ceiling. Guards and workers carried the animals made heavy with their children while the Symenestra defied gravity with the wiles of their race to scurry up the walls beyond which a clamor had begun to soar. The heat was debilitating, the smoke choking and blinding, leaving the cause for the inferno reeling in the leftover whirl of evacuation. A guard had latched onto her minutes ago, but she had clawed and kicked until he released her for the willing escapees. Now Dor tripped across a table toppled in the surge for the exit, landing on a smoldering stretch of rug. The flickering maelstrom of fire light played tricks on her senses as did the heat and the lack of air, the symphony of sound pulsing its way into the dying Nest from the rest of rousted Kalinor. It was as dizzying as the gorge. She could not tell which way was Up. In her panicked scramble, her hands and then her knees stumbled across something heavy and soft. It moaned at her and that sound blended with a strange, tidal trembling that began to groan through the walls and the floor. The Nest itself was shuddering, domed walls weeping massive, dirty tears into the black of Kalinor. The stalactite was cracking, melting from the internal heat. There came the sharp call of a Symenestra guard from above. "You! Hurry!" He said while hurrying through the hole in the ceiling, feet finding the remaining steps. "Here!" Dor gazed down at the slack face of Narevelia Eglantine, sprawled and trampled by the hysteria of the exodus. Her head swam, pain prickled, and a portion of the far wall crumbled beneath the maw of fire. "Here!" The guard screamed. Dor twitched, teeth gritting against a thing both bitter and proud, and moved once more into action. Clumsy hands slid around the prone body of Narevelia, hauling the lady into her arms. Twisting, Dor struggled up the steps, dragging Narevelia with her while fresh oxygen slammed through the Nests crumbling walls and shoved the inferno into greater heights. It roared, that fire, ancient and monstrous as any damned creature lurking in the bottom of the cave of the Symenestra city; and while it did, Dor thrust the still breathing body of her brother's adopted mother into the arms of the guard. His eyes widened on a point beyond her, sweat streaming his pale face. His eyes dropped to Dor and his arms tightened about Narevelia, hefting her into a cradle against his chest and feet staggering backwards, up the steps, up the wall itself. "Hurry!" He shouted again, but it was too late. The bottom of the steps collapsed, taking Dor with it. She slipped with angry tongues of fire, splintered furnishings and sparkling streams of melted minerals through the breaking floor of the Nest and into the black. Air thundered in her ears, blanketing the sound of her own screams. Above the Symestra swirled, water being cast too late on the implosion, evacuees absorbed into the arms of a stunned people. Dor fell and with her did a conflagration, shattering the pitch of the gorge like fireworks to illuminate a lower hell in hues of blood. There may have been a god that was watching along with Viratas, one who knew too well the explosive nature of fury and grief. Desperate hands scratched at her throat as she plummeted, sliding over the thick leather of the Ochya's collar, tangling into the delicate links of Duvalyon's silver chain. The pendant was branding hot in her palm, but the blade the physician had so carefully sharpened to a razor's edge sprung free on the third try. Screams had shrunk to gulping, mewing noises in her throat and she cut herself -- her fingers, a scrape to her neck -- before managing to saw through the collar. It felt an eternity, but it was in truth under a minute from the Nest's collapse to escaping the collar. A different kind of light burst in the gloom, motes of magic spinning like a star scattered hurricane amid meteorites of fire. The glow coalesced in a matter of moments and when the falcon's wings were liberated of flesh and history they were trailing smoke and embers. A harsh caw shot like a cannon through the gorge, rebounding off distance walls to carry and drum as wings beat and beat and eventually bore Doryn Hardai up, up, up. There might have those that saw the falcon rise from the falling ashes of the Nest and shoot like an arrow through the gloom toward the tunnels. It failed to matter to the falcon, however, for in her mind was a goal that blinded her to all else. It was the illustration of a summer sun in a book once shown her by Duvalyon. Somewhere between cowering and exploding, somewhere between sin and grace, girl and bird she had found the way to Up. "S" is for spider, but also for sun. I take you and pile high the memories. Death will break her claws on some I keep. - C. Sandburg. OOCPlease note that both Poison and Colombina granted permission for the Nest’s destruction by fire.