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5. At first it seems as though nothing has changed. And then you realize: the phantom wind is a real wind, stirring your fur. It blows harder and harder until you are pushed inexorably back towards the stone, and then into it. If you are not a Legendary, there is no pain this time, but there is definite and sudden blackness, and a lingering moment of consciousness before you sleep, heavily. If you are a Legendary, you are swallowed up in the memory of a foal in the sac or the egg or the womb, until you forget who you are.
When the wind began to moan, louder, and again, louder than it had before, ceaseless ghost cries of long forgotten spirits, she had paid no heed. Never had she felt a lick of breeze in a place such as this, where the air was perfectly still, cool like loss, lifeless. But then, there was a breeze, and it did lick her dark fur, rustling the feathers that still hung from her head. She looked up into the empty sky, but if she had expected something new, there was none; the only change was the wind, now real – or as real as a thing in this place could feel. And where it was a breeze, it was now steadily working up into a gale. She resisted its force, if for no reason but to resist – it was in her nature, after all, to push back – taking one step, then another, into the wind, even as she had to narrow her gleaming eyes, then finally squeeze them shut.But there was no use resisting (and that, too, she had always known, even as she had resisted). It was properly a gale now, whipping about her, the rush in her ears drowning out even the fighting beat of her heart. To raise a hoof was to only offer more for it to push, and each inch purchased was a stagger backwards. Back, towards the tower. She could not see it, eyes closed against the onslaught, but she knew it was there: she could sense the wholeness of it, the certainty of its immobility, the eye of the storm...and she could still remember the feel of each life she had lived, those split seconds, when last she had laid a hoof upon its ageless side.
She raised a hoof, eyes closed, and knew it coming.
This time, she is asleep, and she has never been so deeply asleep. She has never felt so warm, and she has never felt so safe. She is new, still so new, but she is already well-formed. She is not yet ready, but she will be. She moves a hoof, unknowing, and somewhere, beyond, there is a voice, except she does not know yet it is a voice – she does not know yet what voices are. She hears without hearing, her own heartbeat a steady thudding in her folded ears, her own heartbeat...and another heart beating in time...
When she opened her eyes, she was lost, and filled with the strange desire to cry for her mother. But who was she, and who was her mother? Guesses flitted through her head, and it was strange, difficult, to seize upon one, but eventually a thought surfaced, and she clung to it like a rock in a storm.
I am Cue Queue, born of Dark is a Way and Xenophobe.
And for a moment, she realised this was the most she had felt only Cue Queue, born of Dark is a Way and Xenophobe, in a very long time. But that was no longer only who she was. There was a storm, she pondered, as she slowly rose to her hooves, feeling strange and sore, as if she had hunted for days without rest, but...no, it was not a storm. There was a wind... She stood, looking around the clearing thoughtfully. Once Forgotten still slept, a large, dark mass, glowing softly, by her side. She could hear the fluttering buzz of Twice Removed, a little way away, resting between the trees. Everything was just as she remembered...a thousand lifetimes ago. Reflexively, she blinked – and she was an owlcat, and everything was just as she remembered this way as well. Shedding cat-skin for doe, she sat back down, and thought.
It was easy to forget, then the harder she thought, it was harder to forget. There were details she couldn't quite remember – but then, she also remembered there weren't many details to remember...save for the lifetimes...and so many lifetimes...
And still, she didn't know if it had been a dream, but as she watched the steady rise and fall of the softly glowing lines, she contemplated the faint image of a buck, faded and blurred, a thousand lifetimes away, whom, with such colours, he glowed...