The Sentinels all hope in eclipse

the end was nigh.

as she aided her father, she felt this. as he spoke to them disjointedly, she knew this. but deirdre was inexhaustable! as others came to aid, she nodded to them, permitted them near to assist. dante had drawn back, and the cover of the trees would cool her father in these moments left of his life.

you could know these things and still not believe in them. for deirdre labored over him, would not remove himself from o'er his figure where lucani was not, her tongue pressing neatly against his furs to cleanse him, cool him--when eilidh came, she rose to speak, to instruct. though she was young, deirdre was calm and resolute that they could each do something--that they could defy these odds, as they had defied the plague.

there was a moment when this changed.

she parted her lips and then her own eyes saw black. black and black and black and then with a blurry clarity, foreign yet familiar, she saw his face, untethered, giant--twas the face she had seen second in life, a face that looked as boundless as his body had in her first days of The Seeing. she remembered that, now. and she was not here, with these wolves, but faraway. going through life with him, until she arrived here again, at the end, at death, and she was boundless, too, and she let herself shatter as she heard The End come from him in his final breath, and she expelled that breath with him, thrusting her head upward and letting out a wild cry to the spirits of her great sadness!

the heat had been great, and there had been hardly a cloud before, but clouds had gathered, and a storm approached as deirdre released her misery into the skies! that tachyon had come was missed, for there was grief, only grief, and she was struck by it--she fought back with her own howls, she did not see the sun be smothered, its light as extinguished as her own this day.

one drop came as the winds howled. she howled with them, would continue to howl until her voice was gone. father!!!!!! she cried to the high heavens; over, and over, and over, and over! even when she was short of breath--even when she was dizzied by this--even when the rain came in a sudden, inexplicable deluge. her cries would not be silenced, and she demanded that she be heard by all. father!!!!!!

she mourned, and the world around her mourned with her in its darkness, as the rain fell, and she listened for the wolves of donnelaith to join her in this. she yearned to celebrate his life, but his finale exhale had been a knife to the sternum that she sought to expell with her heartsong for him. those along the coast would surely hear it, even above the swell before the rains had begun--the sea would carry it, for it, too, had stilled in her fathers final moment, as though it wished for all the world to know for certain what had transpired.