[open] but the sight of the stars makes me dream;

[Whim]

The night she was born stars lanced across the darkness of the sky to announce her arrival. Another oddity in a world full of strangeness and magic. Her mother named her Whim. A capricious, happy child raised with the wildflowers of the Pampas.

She returns now, the pale blue of her body glowing softly in the evening light.

The Pampas had always been a quiet place when she was growing up. Now it is one of the last safe places of their world. There are strangers here she does not recognize. Scents mingled with the fragrance of the red flowers. Still, there are trails she does recognize wending through the grasses. As she traces the lines of one, memories drift to meet her - the softness of her mother's muzzle on her forehead. The gentle presense of her father.

As familiar as this land is to her, it is also alien. Not a mockery of her chilhood home, but a misplaced piece perhaps. She decides she should not try to force this place to bend its shape to her memories, but to see it as it is; changed.

She hears the trickle of a stream - sees the coolness of it - and realizes her thirst. She lowers her lips to the surface, ears swiveling to catch nearby sounds. There is the flit of birds and the low buzz of insects in the fading light. And then there is something else. She raises her head towards the sound.

[Castor]

fallen star, I'm your one call away

He does not understand a great many things.

He knows this to the marrow of his bones, has never pretended otherwise even in the throes of youth.  Whereas others might have become boastful or brash, sure of everything and their place in the world, Castor became more aware of the chasm of unknowns that yawned before him.  Of course, he sought to fill that hole any chance he got; he set off from home as soon as he could to map out his own destiny and experience everything that was possible.  From the mountains of Hyaline to the swaying stalks of the meadow, he took in all he could before the day they vanished.  He laughed and lived and learned, all the while realizing that an eternity would not possibly be enough time to see and breath it all. 

He does not understand why.

He does not understand why they are made to suffer.  All of the faces he met on his journey called the vanished places home.  He can still hear their voices, those he met Before, how they had been like threads weaving a tapestry of their lives (how many had been the same, how many had been so vastly different).  He remembers the story of Nerine’s birth, of the Jungle women starting over on the unforgiving jut of stone over the angry sea.  He pictures the Ischian sea parting to reveal paradise, how the Daleans had found sanctuary there.  Tephra’s volcano appears in his mind billowing ash into the air and then raining down on the backs of those first citizens, how sulfur had seemingly singed their noses.

All gone.  For now, maybe forever.

Castor’s steps are light despite his heavy thoughts as he weaves between the flowers.  The pain is unbearable if he lingers in it too long.  Instead, he smiles as a pair of robins swoop past his head, their rust-red underbellies dull compared to the colorful roar of the wildflowers around him.  It is a sign that life goes on, that precious existence could never be completely snuffed out.  So, too, is it a sign when he sees the stream just up ahead and the woman drinking her fill from it.

“Why hello,” he says a good distance away as to not startle her.  Just like his awareness of all the things he does not know, he is certain he similarly does not know her.  But he means to change that.  “I’m Castor.  And you, if you don’t mind sharing?”  The creek bubbles happily away and for a moment, he thinks about following upstream to its source.  Surely, whatever – or whoever - can make the water so happy could spread the cheer throughout the land?  He shakes his head and focuses his bright golden eyes on the mare nearby.  Perhaps she will have more insight on this place.  Maybe she will know about this last refuge of Beqanna that is still so eerily quiet.  “Do you live here amongst the wildflowers and under the shining sun?”