[open] find what you love and let it kill you; gates, any

[Camelia]

I will run the streets and hostile lands, I will touch the rain with all I have
I will breathe the air, to scream it loud. My feet will never touch the ground.

She’d been awake. Camelia had heard the rumbles in the distance, a sound like ancient rock departing from even older rock. It had grated at her ears, making her grit her teeth at the godawful sound. But panic didn’t strike her chest just yet. Beqanna had seen many things in its many years, and she supposed this was just another demon rising from the depths of hell. She had continued her grazing, enjoying the coolness of the evening melt against her slender shoulders.

When the deer began running the other way, Camelia did look up. Having lived in Heaven’s Gates all through childhood and maturity, the dunskin knew the flora and fauna incredibly well. She was well-attuned to the behaviors of the deer, especially. In her youth she loved to observe the flighty creatures, watching as they ate or slept or ran with their white tails flicking into the bushes. When a mass of them (a wild combination of slender legs and graceful necks and wide, frightened eyes) flew right past her, Camelia’s instincts and knowledge caused her to raise her head and glance around for the disturbance.

When she saw what they were running from, her feet immediately began to follow in a panic. It was as though Beqanna were folding into itself. Rather than the evening sky rising above her head, Camelia saw the tall mountains that should have been in the east, only turned upside down. She could almost pick out the clearing of the Chamber’s gathering place, but it was still too high up to notice much else. Birds were flying high and far, and the trees shook with deeply-rooted fear. The upside-down world was crashing closer to the ground and Camelia felt her legs move faster. She didn’t know where she could go – if anywhere.

The sound rattled in her ears like a hundred hornets. It was a crashing, buzzing, destroying, thundering sound that ripped at her eardrums and shook through her entire body. The ground suddenly shuddered under Camelia’s feet and she tripped, landing hard on her right side. Her shoulder sliced against a rock, creating a gash on her pretty skin, but the adrenaline pumping through her body dulled the pain. She rose again, glancing up for a quick moment to see the mountains of the Chamber crashing closer until their trees were brushing against the tips of the Gates trees.

A terrified scream ripped out of her throat and then there was nothing.

She wakes slowly, groggily. The pain in her shoulder has flared into a dull ache in the bone and a biting pain on her skin. Her foreleg is sticky with a combination of dried and freely-bleeding blood. Camelia groans, eyes blinking open to take in her surroundings. She is in the meadow. Her brow furrows in confusion. How had she gotten from the Gates to the meadow without remembering her journey? The aging mare struggles to her feet, a quiet gasp leaving her mouth as she places weight on her right foreleg.

There are others swarming around her and it looks like they have been hit by a decimating war. Stunned expressions, wide eyes, dust grimly covering their faces. Her brown eyes glance around for anyone familiar, anyone at all who could explain what has happened. A piece of her knows it was Beqanna itself – finally too fed up with the sinful ways of the members of its lands to dramatically wash away all the old like an echo of Noah and the Flood.

Her eyes catch on a familiar hide (much similar to her own coloring) shielding a gray body beneath a tree. Camelia limps slowly toward Magnus, her warm brown eyes dim with pain. By the time she reaches the once-Gates-member, there are several more crowded around. She shoulders her way deeper into the bundle until she is beside Magnus, her eyes worried and confused. Her eyes find his face and she mutters only four words. “What about the Gates?”

Camelia