There’s a crash.
Thunder. It has to be thunder.
Another crash but louder shudders the world around her and she can no longer stay curled up trying to sleep. The muscles in her body become rigid as the ground trembles and quakes as though stirring from a century-long slumber. Cerva’s eyes reel open and she tries to quickly stand but her legs fail her once, twice, before she is able to attain her balance. Everything is shifting and rolling, crashing and splitting.
No, not thunder.
She wanted it to be a raucous storm, but instead her eyes watch the world tumble in disarray. What had been the Gates surrounding her is now nothing recognizable. Her eyes shut out everything, but she can still hear Beqanna screaming and roaring in all its might. All that she has known is crumbling and she is so afraid, so worrisome, that she is rooted in place instead of fleeing like so many others. She can hear their stampeding footprints which also sound like thunder, but she doesn’t follow. Where they are going, Cerva isn’t quite sure, and she can’t even fathom where she would go in this world that is flipping and shifting on itself. The meadow won’t be where she knows it, or the Valley, or the field.
Maybe she won’t even be alive long enough to run. Perhaps Beqanna is purging itself of life and so she does nothing as though waiting for death to find her.
But it doesn’t. Instead, silence does, and for a fleeting moment Cerva assumes that she is dead – gone in the blink of an eye.
But she breathes and when she takes that deep breath it’s fresh and invigorating. A hum of curiosity passes over her and so she opens her eyes hesitantly. Beqanna is reborn and unraveling in front of her. Debris coats her body and boulders jut from the ground at her sides. There are trees still and flowers that invite her into their embrace. How is it that after so much destruction there can be beauty? A feeble smile presses to her lips, but it flickers when she realizes what this change means. Nothing can be the same and so her home has fallen. Zeik, Magnus, Sahm… where are they? What of father? Swallowing the lump in her throat Cerva finally detaches herself and immerses herself in this new world, this new meadow, that hides every horse under a shroud of settling dust.
Cerva