Night.

A pale moon glimmers weakly, framed on either side by the mountains that tower over me. Their steep crevassed sides look like black teeth silhouetted against a star-spattered indigo sky. Soon it will be dawn, and that jagged black mouth will swallow the moon...

How long I have been lying here in this barren desert, I cannot say. The sky has darkened and lightened, the stars' voices ebb and flow...

I try to move but again, as each time before, I feel only the pain. Not an inch of my skin is not cut or bruised or singed. Not a bone beneath the skin does not ache. My broken wings hang useless; feathers once shining proud now melted and burned. One by one they scatter to the wind, strewn like dry autumn leaves across the desert floor.

The stars sing their lament, a howling, keening noise that burns me to my very core. Sounds I cannot hear but only feel, with a pain far greater than broken wings, a weight pressing more heavy on me than the weight of a thousand suns…

Dawn.

The golden rays of morning pierce the keening night.

I will not die here.

You will be pleased to know that I did not die in that valley. Arhuaine healed me, and the stars stopped screaming. The next memory/vision was a much more pleasant one.

In the second memory I am male. I am dressed in desert-wear, what looks a little like a toga, made of cream-coloured silk. On my feet are soft leather sandals. I am in a walled garden in the desert somewhere. It is more like a courtyard than a garden; the floor and walls are made of sandstone and there are pillars also of sandstone, supporting trellises of vines and other climbing plants, heavy with fragrant blooms. Flowers and herbs grow in terracotta urns, and there is a fountain that cools the air.

The garden is secluded, and it is here I have come to meet my lover. Our relationship is forbidden by both her people and ours. Though I love her very much, I have come to tell her that I must leave, and we shall never see one another again. She is beautiful, she has long black hair and dark eyes, and she is dressed in pale blue silk. She cries, and holds me, and she is crying still as I turn and walk away, without looking back.

That is all for the moment. As I remember more I will add to this page.