Rejuvenation. [Seeking, Howl ST]

Kiara
The drive out to the gathering leaves the Verbena curiously quiet.

It's a focused silence and unusual considering there's a guest in her passenger seat and Kiara was, at the very least, a communicative soul.

She'd exchanged some small pleasantries with Lavinia; smiled and cast the blonde occasional glances but for the duration of the drive - her tiny car winding out through suburbia and beyond; eventually leaving the lights of Denver in their wake; scenery whipping past their windows gradually replaced with the denser outcroppings; the trees gathering; fields with grazing horses replacing the closer press of city design - her fingers are tight around the wheel. The agitation that thrums through her is not aggressive but - distracting - all encompassing.

A drum beat in time with her heart.

It's been a long time since she'd paid heed to the traditions. Not that she'd consider herself above them but - as they climb out of the car; slamming doors; breathing in the night air and smelling - smoke; heavy and cloying - glimpsing the bright flicker of bonfires in the distance; through a thick subset of trees ahead; hear the rise and fall of voices - there's an energy when they gather she hasn't felt the pull toward for years. Not since New York.

Not since Aisling had passed.

The ground is soft beneath their feet as they descend into a small valley; it's a homestead of sorts; out near the outskirts of Morrison; not so distant from the Chantry but this residence is older; ramshackle in places; the wood warping around the porch; the grass beyond the heavy growth of trees that all but conceal the pathway from the drive growing wild and free; tangling around their legs as they find themselves in a clearing; moving into a gathering of people.

There's music coming from somewhere; strangers in all walks of dress and states of celebration moving around; some hanging on the old porch where there are lights blazing within; some lounging on the grass near the small fires; everywhere however; that same sense of reverence; that desire to be close to the earth; to be surrounded on all sides by nature. Kiara loses Lavinia at some point; the moon has dipped out from beneath the overcast; moody evening and a smattering of stars are visible as the brunette toes off her boots; carries them in one hand and finds the small altar that's been set up for the occasion.

Spread out beneath an old; old tree. Candles flickering amidst great bundles of weaved flowers; lain out for the wedding of the God and Goddess. To celebrate the joining of the night and day; the surge of new life.

Kiara bends before it; lowers herself to her haunches and lights one of the candles.

The Four WindsEverywhere Kiara walked here, the air was scented with smoke. In the house: incense. Outside: bonfires. And here beneath the tree, the candle flames flickered in the wind, sending tendrils of grey smoke curling up toward the leaves. It smelled of clean-burning wax and the perfume of woven flowers. The effect was slightly trance-like. Smoke often accompanied dreams and visions. For some, it was a gateway to the spirit world. A dissipation of the boundary between the physical and the ethereal.

It had been a long time since Kiara had attended this kind of gathering, but the memory of it still lived within her bones. For a Verbena, Beltane was a time of growth and protection. A turning of the seasons. Crops were sowed. Livestock let out to pasture. The fire was symbolic. It was meant to guard that which the people held most dear - their very food and livelihoods. It was also a ritual of life. They were here; they had survived another winter. There was joy in that, passionate and unrestrained.

Somewhere, Lavinia was likely enjoying the festivities. Nearby, a group of younger pagans gathered by one of the fires, dancing the way that people dance when no one is looking. A couple of the women were topless, with braided wreaths of flowers in their hair. Other, less exuberant sorts lounged in the grass, sharing drinks and food. The atmosphere was light and joyful. Alone beneath the tree, Kiara was slightly adrift from the people around her. With them, but also apart from them. Her heartbeat was a steady rhythm. Quiet, now, as she sat still beside the candles.

Then the wind picked up, gusting over her in a heady rush of clean, spring air. It made the hair on her neck and arms rise, as though in response to some inner call for movement. The direction of the wind drew her attention South, where a large bonfire burned in the distance. It glowed a bright-hot orange hue, flames licking tall and high into the dark sky. A lone figure stood beside that fire, indistinct but for the illumination of their frame against the firelight.

Something about that fire seemed to call out to Kiara. She could feel its warmth reaching out across the distance, beckoning.

(Come closer.)

KiaraAisling had been the first to tell her about the festivals.

She'd shown her - Sadie and Kiara - what it was to lose yourself in the celebration. To shuck off the inhibitions that clung to people like a thin layer of residue; chaining them to ideas of propriety; acceptableness within society. The first time she'd danced naked - Kiara had felt it; the breeze on her hot skin; the way the wind seemed to wrap around her and encourage her; propel her onwards.

More. More. Yes.

Sadie is absent from her now; she still feels the sense of her sister; the shape and surety of her presence out there but its indistinct; a shadow flickering on the wall. Neither drawing or keeping the brunette as she closes her eyes for a moment; feels that wind as it rushes over her; sends her unbound hair cascading over her shoulders.

Raises the hairs on her body.

She sees the bonfire in the distance when her eyes open again; looks at it; the haze and glow of the fire making the shape beside it warp; shift and change the longer she watches. There's a hesitation only as long as it takes her to push to her feet; to leave them bare; boots on the grass; a glance cast briefly over a shoulder as if to check - to confirm she won't be noticed - as she moves toward the beckoning gleam of the bonfire in the distance.

Her figure lost easily enough in the dark as she starts to pick a trail toward it.

The Four WindsPeople left things in their wake. Memories. Scars. Dreams. Sometimes people made homes for themselves inside each other's hearts, and when they were gone those homes remained behind - vacant. Kiara had spaces within her that belonged to people who were not here with her tonight, but the memory of them felt very close. Aisling had been the one to teach Kiara what these festivals - these rituals - meant, and why they mattered. Even for a young Verbena, so full of change and progress, the Traditions meant something. The seasons, the elements - the Old Gods who commanded them.

Kiara left her boots behind, walking barefoot through the grass as she made her way toward the fire. Beneath her toes, the ground felt warm. Blades of grass prickled softly against her ankles. If she focused - if she let her toes dig into the earth and connect to it - she might almost be able to feel some kind of heartbeat. Deeper than her own. Older. (The world was alive.)

As she walked, the sound of voices seemed to dim behind her, swallowed by the wind. The house disappeared. The people faded. She was alone now, apart from that shadow by the fire. But as she walked, the indistinct presence of her sister - of Sadie - seemed to grow fuller in her chest. As though she were drawing near. (As though she was there, somewhere.) The fire seemed to get bigger as Kiara approached. Its heat was bold and radiant. And then the figure turned to look at her, and Kiara recognized Sadie's face.

She smiled, basked in the bright glow of the flames as they roared and crackled behind her. "Sister, come... run with me!"

Maybe it wasn't really her, but her resonance felt so familiar. She jogged forward and reached out her hand for Kiara to take, beckoning toward the vast expanse of nature that stretched out around them. At night, the landscape might have looked like something out of a horror film (dark and wild and dangerous,) but for a Verbena? It was a time of high magic. The field they were in was wide and sloping, rolling hills and windswept grass, and surrounded on all sides by a thick pine forest.

KiaraThey all fell away.

The people. The sounds of celebration. The sudden stillness was louder in many ways than the party itself had felt. All but the steady pulse of her heart; the sound of her breathing as she walked; her feet sinking into tender earth; blades of grass and soil clinging to her bare heels as she moved; a single, solitary figure trekking toward that bonfire; toward the sense of - was it home? It was comfort; familiarity but something else, too - inevitability.

Something deeper. Older. Eternal.

There's the spark of fear, somewhere, a hitch to the way she's letting the air fill her lungs; expand her chest. A near-falter as that flickering; indistinguishable sense of the dark-haired woman she'd long since considered her sister; her other half; the death to her life; the resilient; persistent thrum that she'd come to associate with Sadie intensified. It was crushed leaves and newly turned earth; the full moon under city skies; blood of her blood. The remembered lick of flame and the burning; searing pain of awakening.

It was lines of blood drawn on palms; smeared together and the easy vitality of kinship.

The fire looms before her and the Verbena - stops; lets her eyes close - reaches out with fingers unfurling at her sides as if to ward off (invite?) the heat of that bonfire. It dances color back into her skin; the licking flames; the bright glow of it as she lets her senses expand; feels Her beneath her; above her; the vitality of the trees; the deep strength of their roots.

The surety of Sadie's presence. Like a key turning in the lock.

Kiara's eyes open and she watches the figure turn; feels the beginning of some spark of anticipation; feels the surge of adrenaline as Sadie (not her Sadie, perhaps) reaches for her. It's the evening of rebirth; all around her; her people are in high spirits though she cannot hear them; cannot feel them; or anything in the moment but the rush of yes and now and this as she steps forward; toward that fire; drifts into it - slips her fingers into the clasp of the other woman's.

Her skin prickles. A rush of sensation washes over Kiara.

She runs.

The Four WindsWhen Kiara stepped forward, the heat from the bonfire licked at her skin, scorching hot. If she stayed this close, she might start to burn. But in the brief span of a heartbeat - that moment of stillness before she grasped Sadie's hand - it did not feel painful. Instead it felt like a spark - a fire lit as much from within as without. And then their hands met, fingers interlocking as the two sisters bridged the space between them. Life and Death. The beginning and the end. Maybe it didn't matter if Sadie was really here. In a way, they would always be with each other, regardless of the paths they took.

Kiara felt Sadie's pulse beating in time with her own. And then? They ran.

They ran like children. Like wild horses. Like the very wind itself, racing breakneck over the field. Sadie's voice was a wild, unbidden laugh as the wind danced around them, playing in their hair and whipping at their clothes. It was as if the air was a living, tangible being - something they'd brought to life between them. It swirled in the darkness, making patterns in the grass. Danced and spun and rushed past them as they ran. Urging Kiara ever onward (faster, faster.)

It was a rush; a dynamic surge of vitality. And as the pair reached the edge of the field and broke into the trees, the wind came with them, stirring up a cloud of pine needles. Here the night air was underscored with the rich scent of resin and earth. Moonlight shone down through the branches, illuminating their path. They ought to have tripped on something. The branches should have scratched their arms. The passage here should have been difficult, but it wasn't. Their feet practically flew over the ground, lifted and carried by the wind, and the branches opened up before them.

Finally they reached a small creek, its water bright and clear as it tumbled over moss-covered stones. Sadie slowed to a jog and approached the stream, crouching down to trail her fingers in the water. She was still breathing heavily from the run - less from exhaustion than from exhilaration.

They were at the other side of the forest now. Beyond the creek was a thin scattering of pines, and a slope of open ground that led toward a distant city. The urban skyline looked very far away, another world barely glimpsed through the trees.

"We should turn around. Go back to the fire."

KiaraHer feet should have been cut open; bleeding and aching from dashing over rough; uneven ground. Her hair snagged with twigs and leaves as they ran breathlessly over the ground; her toes sinking into the grass; kicking up great clumps of dirt; leaving imprints in her wake. She should have been uncertain; unfamiliar with the terrain; with the darkness enfolding over everything like some all-encompassing blanket. Snuffing out the easy illumination daylight offer.

Casting everything with an otherworldly; silvery glow. The river has it; Sadie; the girl; this woman has it; her skin almost translucent as she approaches the creek where it gurgles; tricking across the stones; wearing them down; eroding them into re-shaped supports as it wound away into the trees.

Beyond them there's open ground. There's a city; the shape of highrises; the wink of lights far, far away perhaps. Kiara is breathing hard; her eyes fixed on the other woman.

"Why?"

She moves close enough for the water to touch her toes; to re-route itself around the obstacle she places before it. "It's nicer out here. Let's keep going. That way." She looks across; past the creek; through the branches; down into the open. Her mouth hooks into a smile; the first she's had to offer this manifestation.

This phantom come companion.

"I want to keep running."

 The Four Winds
Kiara

Her feet should have been cut open; bleeding and aching from dashing over rough; uneven ground. Her hair snagged with twigs and leaves as they ran breathlessly over the ground; her toes sinking into the grass; kicking up great clumps of dirt; leaving imprints in her wake. She should have been uncertain; unfamiliar with the terrain; with the darkness enfolding over everything like some all-encompassing blanket. Snuffing out the easy illumination daylight offer.

Casting everything with an otherworldly; silvery glow. The river has it; Sadie; the girl; this woman has it; her skin almost translucent as she approaches the creek where it gurgles; tricking across the stones; wearing them down; eroding them into re-shaped supports as it wound away into the trees.

Beyond them there's open ground. There's a city; the shape of highrises; the wink of lights far, far away perhaps. Kiara is breathing hard; her eyes fixed on the other woman.

"Why?"

She moves close enough for the water to touch her toes; to re-route itself around the obstacle she places before it. "It's nicer out here. Let's keep going. That way." She looks across; past the creek; through the branches; down into the open. Her mouth hooks into a smile; the first she's had to offer this manifestation.

This phantom come companion.

"I want to keep running."

[respost for me]

The Four WindsCity skylines were unique. Anyone who'd lived in Denver would likely be able to recognize it from a distance, but this one... seemed indistinct. Its towering architecture gave an expressionistic impression: dark, dusky spires lit from above with the silvery illumination of the full moon. There were no lights in the buildings themselves - no echo of distant traffic. This city was asleep. (Or empty.)

Kiara wanted to keep running. Why turn back now? Why only go to the edge of the forest?

Beside her, the creek babbled and churned. The ground beneath her feet was damp and slightly muddy. Sadie let her fingers play in the current for awhile. When she stood up, she looked at Kiara for a long, silent moment. There was a sense... a look in her eyes, and a feeling in the air, of their connection stretching out. Growing distant again. Not a break (not a detachment.) But a parting.

Even sisters sometimes must go their own way.

Sadie stepped up to Kiara's side and kissed her cheek softly. Then she turned and began to walk silently back the way they came. Within moments her figure melted into the trees... and was gone, leaving only a lingering sense of their shared link (I am always with you.)

If Kiara wished to keep going, she would have to make the rest of the journey on her own.

Kiara WoolfeIt ached, a little. Feeling the tethers between them gather momentum; feeling the stretch as they were tugged against; as Sadie pulled away; the sense and surety of her presence. The comforting touch of someone she understood better than most - the press of her lips to Kiara's cheek has her eyes closing and her fingers curl reflexively at her sides as if to reach to keep her - the ghost of her best friend; her other half - but staying the motion.

She makes some small, aggrieved noise when the other woman pulls away; walks away.

Still, in the distance there's a city and she'd never been a creature well suited to obeying the lines drawn by another in the sand. The brunette only gives her companion's departure a brief moment - a beat of settling loneliness; the familiar pang in her chest; the way her bones seemed to ache a little for it - before she steps across the the creek; her feet splashing through the water; fingers reaching to trace over the trees as she passes; slips down beyond the clearing.

Starts to run again; feeling the burn in her muscles; the flutter and beat of her heart; slamming against her ribcage; feels an acute awareness of her body; the sweat gathering between her shoulder blades; the nape of her neck. She's a runner by practice; understands there's no hope to keep any sense of form climbing past rocks and leafy debris; it's a reckless plummet into the inky darkness -

But she runs, anyway. Feels the familiar surge of anticipation; the flood of adrenaline. She doesn't look back; doesn't linger in the afterburn of Sadie's presence.

She's never been one for that, either.

The Four WindsThe city: it was perhaps less a city than it was the city. As though the essence of all urban landscapes could possibly be distilled into one. (They couldn't, not really. But this was a place of ideas.) Kiara ran towards it in the dark, leaving behind the familiar comfort of the woods - of her sister. She ran and, at first, the wind didn't follow her. But soon she picked up speed, racing against the rough beat of her heart, and there she'd begin to feel it again: gusting over her skin, through her hair... surging forward with a low, challenging howl.

Perhaps distance was a mutable thing here, because one moment the city looked quite far away, and the next... she was there, stepping onto the cold asphalt as towering structures of glass and stone reared up overhead.

But where there ought to have been signs of human life, there was... nothing. No people. No moving vehicles. No lights. No hum of electricity. None of the sounds that made a city a city. The air here smelled overwhelmingly of ash and char. An old fire, long since burned out. The buildings were blackened and half-destroyed. Cars lay littered and broken and abandoned in the streets. Windows were cracked and shattered, their glass decorating the sidewalks here and there like sparkling tears reflecting the moonlight. It was a scene out of some post-apocalyptic storybook. Once, people had lived here. Worked. Played. Loved. Now only a burnt-out husk of their memory lingered.

(Fire did not always protect. Sometimes, it devoured.)

Kiara WoolfeIt's reflexive, as soft, giving earth turns to hard, unforgiving concrete to call out. To stand; catching her breath and staring at the crumbling ruins of a city and ask if anyone is there. There's the wind, pulling at her hair; wrapping the thin material of her skirt around her legs; howling through broken down cars and the jagged, arching cracks in the skyscrapers.

There's remnants of dried leaves; snagged in her clothing from her wild dash through the denser woods that she folds between fingers; that she holds to as she starts to pick a pathway around old; twisted metal; reaching out but shying from laying her hands on the old framework of cars. It's a dead city - not dormant but - empty; a carcass shed of all but the bones; picked dry and aged by the sun.

Kiara has the notion as she steps through the ruined city; that if she were to touch; it would peel away; dissolve into ash. The air is thick with it; it coats her throat as she breathes; walking on. Catching the distorted and unnatural reflection she casts in fractured windows; the glass spidering out with cracks. She stops by one; by the hollow; gaping ruin of a building and touches the tip of her finger to a spike of glass; heavy; dangerous spires formed where it had shattered.

"It's all gone." It's a quiet offer; a murmur of - what - empathy; lament. The scene of decay and death without any sense of purpose. No rebirth. No shoots of weeds springing as nature reclaimed what she was owed. What was hers before the first cobble laid. "There's nothing here."

That, a punctuation; her voice echoing.

The Four WindsSometimes, people made homes for themselves within each other's hearts. And when they left, those homes remained behind, filled with relics but empty of life. That was what this city was like - a relic. Perhaps if Kiara were to enter one of the buildings, she'd find memories of the people who'd used to live there. Half-destroyed photographs. Blackened books. Melted baseball trophies.

Not everything about the world was beautiful. Death, certainly, was not. But nature was like that - it gave life, and it took it away. Often, with little warning or sense of fairness. Humans might imagine that cities protected them from nature, but that protection only went so far.

Perhaps this place could be seen as beautiful, if looked at in a certain light. The angles and planes... the stark loneliness. Kiara felt the emptiness of the landscape keenly. As she walked, she searched for signs of life, but found none. Not even a weed growing up through the cracked pavement.

There's nothing here.

After a time, she reached a road that led deeper into the city. Ahead of her, she could make out the charred remains of what had once been a city park: a large stretch of open space with a dry crater that might have been a lake. To one side of the park lay the skeleton of an old playground, its swings swaying back and forth in the breeze. A few mangled, blackened tree stumps remained along the side of the trail. There was no life left in them, either. Once, the ground there would have been green and lush. Now it was only dark earth, layered with a fine powder of ash.

As the wind died down, the landscape grew still and quiet. Waiting. For what?

Kiara WoolfeThere was something deeply unsettling about empty playgrounds; the swings squeaking faintly as they were moved by the wind; the hush that kept them, suspended and still. It was the lack of laughter that made them seem so eerie. A place created for children; for the sounds of their play; for movement and joy.

For life.

The landscape was still; the silence stifling in her ears as the wind died down; wrapping around Kiara's body; around her senses like a vice; squeezing down; making it harder to breathe; harder to think. The wizened tree stumps drew her eyes as she moved past them; her heels painted black with dirt. She left a muddy; caking trail of it as she walked down; into the crater of what had been, at some point, full of water.

The earth here felt different. The dried cracks in the ground wider; gaping as if the earth had been gasping as it dried; beseeching the heavens for rejuvenation. Kiara shifts to her haunches; dropping a knee down to rest against the ground and places her palm; flat; against the caked earth. Lets her eyes close and listens.

Feels. Pushes with her will against the ground; into it; beneath it. Searching for the spark; the sense of life; stirring; somewhere; deep in the recesses.

The Four WindsThe earth here had a complex smell: full of ash and mineral. It was parched and dry, marred by deep, thirsty cracks. Kiara's feet left tracks in the dusty silt, her bare feet coated in a fine layer of the black char that seemed to coat everything here. The place seemed empty, but was it?

As she knelt down, she pressed her hand to the earth, seeking. And for a while, she found nothing. But then...

It was so small. So easy to overlook. A tiny seed, buried deep beneath the ground. Almost, Kiara missed it entirely. But then she felt it... this tiny flicker of hope. Of germination.

Maybe the thing that Kiara called nothing was really just a possibility. Verbena were gardeners. They knew what was needed to make life grow. Earth (death made for good fertilizer: the ash and the bones... all of those patterns broken down into their base components,) Air, Water.

Something rumbled overhead. Dark clouds, partially obscuring the moon. Kiara's heart gave a few quick, anticipatory beats. She could feel the ozone in the air - the electric current that presaged rain. And then... drops began to fall. First one, then another. Sporadic pin-points that struck her skin and splattered into the parched ash.

Kiara WoolfeShe'd found the promise of life in the house where her mentor had died. Where so many of her coven had; casting; mundane and vulgar tearing at the threads holding everything together; sending feathers from cushions and light-bulbs shattering from their fixtures. It had been the first true taste of it - the electric afterglow of it; the burning; smouldering ruin.

The first occasion she'd had to tender closed the sightless eyes of another Verbena.

There'd been a flowerpot tipped over; the dead and decaying remnants of a flower and somehow; trodden and trampled and yet - enduring; the tiniest shoot of life. The feeble insistence of a new bulb; reaching for strength; building on the decay of its creator; taking life from death. She'd planted it beside Aisling's grave; let it sink its roots deep into the freshly turned earth; take sustenance from the one who'd nurtured it. There was a maudlin poetry to it for Kiara.

Blood on her hands and in the earth. The earth here is not so giving as it had been then; it was old; worn. stubborn and long denied the nourishment it needed. The air gathers potency around her; the hairs on her arms rising; moisture gathering; the humidity of the world before the rain; the throb of the plants; the earth; the ache in her limbs.

She sets her palms into that earth; buries her fingertips in it; presses her thumb against a sharp stone roughly enough to pierce the skin; to feel the sting as blood wells. She gives that back to the earth, too. Her blood; her sweat - her will. Pushing as she sets both knees to the ground; pants into the thick; heavy air.

Rain begin to fall; fat; heavy droplets landing on her neck; trickling over her collarbones; dripping into the earth. Little whirls of dust stirring as the dirt is saturated and Kiara's body; curled down; her eyes closed tight against the gathering storm; that building potency. She was a pagan; a daughter of the earth in more ways than one and this; giving back to the earth; invoking strength; forging new life from the dust and bone of the old; was her calling.

The circuit; the pulse of energy; feeding into the ground where Kiara pushed into it; against it. Giving the hollowed out; empty city the spark within her.

Somewhere, her brothers and sisters were celebrating. Their voices rising into the night; dancing to the rhythm of the world as it turned; throwing fodder to the bonfires to spark the flames. Kiara's heart beat as if in sympathetic time to it; the ancient drums; the sacred rituals.

Return.

Was it a whisper or a thought; a prayer; a chant. Invocation.

The Four WindsThe earth here was so thirsty. Starved of that nourishing element that rained down from the sky. Aching for life, for rejuvenation. It was a never-ending cycle: birth, life, death... and rebirth. People mourned the losses, because they hurt, and because they mattered. All of the life in this city had mattered, from the people to the trees to the birds and the rats. Even the insects. And the ash and bone they left behind would fuel the new life that was to come.

Life was sacrifice. Blood in the earth.

Kiara bled for this place - this city that was all cities and was also a home she carried with her in her chest. She had been bleeding for this place. And now it felt as though it might bleed her dry. She buried her hand in the dirt and felt the earth pull the blood from her veins, desperate and hungry. Her heart beat harder, sending blood spilling out into the ground to mix with the rainwater. When the wind came back, it was much more than a gust of breeze - it was a rush of chaotic, vital energy. It howled past her with a force that sent her hair whipping like fire and the ash and dust billowing into the sky in thick clouds. The sediment made her cough, but it cleared as the wind swept it away.

There. She could feel it. A pulse. The seed. The earth. Life. Strength. It coursed through her, filled her even as it drained her (devouring and rejuvenating.) And with that strength she poured everything she had into this act of rebirth. The sky thundered. Lightning cracked across the clouds. Rain fell thickly onto the parched earth.

Beneath the ground, the seed began to grow. It burst through the crack in the sediment in a bright shoot of verdant green, winding upward, outward, branching out until it became a sapling. And then a tree. The roots coiled into the ground, burrowing around Kiara's feet as the trunk got wider and wider; as the branches reached up toward the storm. And then... the clouds parted. Behind them, the sky grew light as the rain trickled to a slow end. It was dawn, and there, finally, was the sun, shining down through the leaves.

When she looked around, Kiara would find the landscape much changed. The blackened city was covered in green: fresh shoots of grass, crawling vines, moss, flowers growing out of every crack and crevice.

Life was all around.

Kiara WoolfeWhen she finally pulls her hands out of the ground; they're covered in soft; vital earth. It feels damp between her fingers; the coarse granules of newly turned dirt; the earthy; sweet aroma of the world after the rain. The nearly audible hum of satisfaction in every drop of rain where it fell from the flowers in fresh bloom around her; the grass; the insects; the worms turning and writhing in sudden; greedy abandon.

Kiara is filthy; her hair wild and matted; buffeted by the wind; the rain; the earth. She's as much a vision of some ancient pagan as she'll ever seem; her legs folded beneath her; fingers idly caressing her palms as she cranes her head back; feels the first touch of sunlight on her face; the pulse of life around her; within her.

Connected to her.

It's not without cost, though. Her limbs feel wobbly and unsure as she pushes to her feet; as if the earth had taken her offering and pulled the deepest draughts possible from her veins. Heavy; total exhaustion washing through her and yet - there's a smile; there's a weight that lifts; the invisible hands choking off her ability to breathe are gone - the air is purer, now.

Rejuvenated.

She lays her hands on the tree; strokes her fingertips over the rough bark as tenderly as if it were a newborn. Reaches down and picks one of the flowers; weaves it into her hair; securing it behind an ear. There's a reverence to the way she touches everything, now. The city was in bloom; nature returning to claim back the towering buildings; to curl vines and bring spiders to spin webs in the broken glass.

There was a balance.

When she moves throughout the city now; she lets her fingers brush the edges of moss covered walls. Lets dirt and blood and sweat linger like tiny imprints of her presence.

The Four WindsLife returned to the city, and Kiara moved through it with a sense of awe and reverence. Not running this time, but touching, exploring, leaving tracks in her wake. This place was hers. This life.

Distantly, she heard a laugh, bright and high-pitched, and when she came around a bend she saw children running through the street. They had flowers woven into their hair. Some of them came loose as the children ran, drifting free on the breeze. Nearby, a mother stood watch. When she saw Kiara, she raised her hand in quiet acknowledgement. Behind her, Kiara felt a stir - a delicate rustle in the wind. Warm and peaceful. And for a heartbeat, Aisling's resonance washed over her.

And then it was gone. It felt like a goodbye.

Kiara blinked, and the world around her grew softer, more dreamlike. Gradually it faded, and everything went dark and still.

Then she opened her eyes, and she found herself lying on a soft bed of green beneath a pine tree. It was morning, and the scent of dying embers clung to the air. A bright assortment of wildflowers had sprung up around her where she lay, waving gently in the breeze.

The Four Winds[When Kiara wakes up, she will have Arete 3, Life 3, and all of her Quintessence will be spent.]