Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ashara Dayne looked into the vastness of the sea as she tried to still her mind. Arthur was dead. The foal was dead. Myles was dead. The Princess and her children, the future of the only world she had ever known--dead. The ravens had flown. The litany in her head did not stop. Dead. Dead. Dead.


She wondered if as he lay dying, the last sound Myles heard had been the toiling of the bells? They made a clangor in her head, on and on they went deep into the night until she was inevitably drawn again and again to the Palestone Cliff. To stand and gaze and watch the crashing, relentless sea below.

The news had come like a storm, all bright lights and electricity and turmoil. Nothing could weather it, nothing when they told her that he was dead. It all rose to a fever pitch in her mind, there was no relenting. Her sobs tore through her body like physical pain, rending everything in it's path. She did not know how long it was until she realized that this wasn't the pain of grief, but something much more devastating. The light inside her flickered until it was smothered.


She did not leave her bed for days. She did not eat or drink that she could recall, but somehow she lived. She was a pale empty vessel devoid of anything but the sounds of the bells who had stolen her happiness from her. Ashara could not bear to look at the empty baskets, set away to be used later--to never be used now. She did not even have the strength to smash them to pieces like her shattered heart.

Ashara did not know how long it had been when she finally pushed the empty basket into the sea, all hope of her future adrift, lifeless.

It took awhile to realize that someone was trying to get her attention, the sounds of the bells were too deafening. Concentrating, Ashara was able to dim them enough to hear the mare's words. She was ashen and she sobbed and she spoke. She could not believe the things the mare said to her, but she knew that she was not a liar.

For the first time since her encompassing grief, she thought of her friend, her Princess Elia and she prepared to go to her. But the ravens came. Dark wings, dark words.


She was unmoored, anchorless as she stood there looking out into that vast ocean with a hollow heart and mind. The litany went on. It had all been too much to bear. She had left her Princess at her urging. Elia had begged her to leave, to not stay as the King forced Elia to. Arthur had been urging her to leave too, and Myles. She gave into them because she had the foal to think about. She had gone to the home of her youth, of her ancestors. Ashara Dayne had gone home to Starfall

And now Myles was dead. Elia was....Elia was....she couldn't even say the words in her mind for what had happened to her friend, to her children. They made no sense, no sense at all.


She found herself wading into the ocean without thinking about it, without remembering that she had even gone there. The waves lapped at her feet like blood and the litany of the bells rang on.