He remembered talking with Freya before he had set out to explore the volcano. He had found what he thought was just a small little nook, a fissure that he could just squeeze himself into. He wanted to see if the volcano was dormant - it had felt cool even in the cave, but then he'd been distracted by something else. He'd almost thought he saw something move. It was not the heat he expected from lava or thermal vents, he would have known that far ahead of time. He didn't even have enough space to properly shake his fur out, and it was a process every time he had to wiggle his bulk through another tight space.

At some point, Aidon was relieved to find that he had a bit more breathing room. Slowly but surely the passage was opening up to him, and he felt an almost compulsion to continue on. It felt like forever, where each step was a struggle. He had to push himself, paws moving so slowly it felt like he was struggling to cross the River Styx, like he was drowning in the miasma. Was it years? Decades? Centuries? Millennia? He did not know. Time ceased to be, Aidon felt that he even ceased to be.

Then finally there was a change. A light, soft and barely there, was visible in the distance. Somehow, the instinctive response to turn towards the light was what carried him along, and he finally emerged from beneath the world. It felt like the first time he had escaped from Father - had this all been some cruel trick of the Mad Titan? A chill ran down his spine as the thoughts came together, forming his worst fears. What if it had all been a trick? It was something that cruel Cronos would do. He struggled to adjust his eyes to the light of day again after so long. His muscles trembled as he lifted himself to his full height, trying to see something that might help him ground himself. Where was he? The terrain was completely unfamiliar to him. He found he was almost gasping for air, throat constricted and stuffed it felt like. The panic had begun to consume him, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight and tried to calm himself down.

Do you remember who you are?

There was something to be said about the nature of darkness. It nipped at her heels, like the none-too gentle guidance of a hound. It was quiet, a soft blanket. It was everything and nothing all at once, everywhere and anywhere and always and forever. It made up the spaces between, where few ventured and little gained.

It stole the little pieces of herself first. Those things she barely remembered even before. Favorite colors and flowers, her preferred routes, the times she had spent beneath Iris’s rainbows, breathless with laughter. The birdsongs outside her favorite window. Carved from her psyche with the precision of a knife. It took more and more the (seconds? Minutes? Years? How long was she here?) more she spent within its grip. Her mother’s fingers through her hair, the weight of wings on her shoulders. It wrapped its hands around her throat and whispered to her.

Do you remember who you are?

She didn’t remember who put her in here. The grievances they had with her master. Why had she come here? Why had no one found her? Where was this? This timeless darkness, this place so far away from what she had once known. What had she known?

Light. It spilled around the corners of her closed eyelashes. When had she closed them? There wasn’t much to see in that deep darkness, but this was new. She could see it, a striding figure, crossing through the void of time. The darkness loosened its grip on her, retreating as the light crossed beside her. She pressed her palms to the void beneath her, solid with only a thought, and rose to feet that had not walked the earth in eons. She stumbled, unused to movement, every motion jerky like a marionette. She couldn’t stay upright.

But she didn’t hit the ground when she fell.

Warmth trickled gently onto her form. Her eyelashes brushed her cheek when she moved them, mouth crossing into a thin line as a sleep she didn’t remember taking was interrupted by the sound of distant breathing. Things around her moved, but she didn’t recognize they were hers. Her limbs twitched, like a fawn trying to hide further in a thicket. Around her, a patch of star flowers, gently brushing her brow. A single silverite eye, one that hadn’t opened in years, finally caught the light. And the first thing she saw, in this world that could have been her mind finally giving way, was the flower.

The second was the man beyond it. The breathing she had heard. Mystral, the only part of who she was that she actually knew, raised her head, watching him, waiting. Waiting for those hands to find her neck, to whisper to her all over again.

Do you remember who you are?
Because it was a question she could never answer.