Wheeling Gull Isle Icarus Drowning

Wraen had experienced difficulties remembering all of the details from her life, but sticking to places, where important events had taken place, helped her with that. Sun Mote Copse and Firebirds - for example - had felt as if it had happened centuries ago and to an entirely different person. Yet, the longer she wandered around the area, the more landmarks she recognized. And with them small snippets of memories. Most of them positive, but even the sad ones had lost the painful edge they had had. Now they had become facts, neither good, nor bad. 

She had to conclude that the year spent here had been one of the best. Before that Wraen had set out in the world, unsure of her place and role in it. Here she had risen to the ranks of the leader. She had become friends with Towhee - a very unlikely friendship, complicated relationship, that would stand the test of time and them going their separate ways, but remaining close. Who would have guessed that this would continue even in the afterlife? The old hag had challenged Wraen in so many ways and helped her grow.

She thought of Arcturus - a beautiful, bittersweet and deep relationship that was still a mystery to her even now and that had also changed her. This had happened here too. And Niamh. The firey-tempered blond, who would take the life by a storm. Headstrong and fiercely independent. A Firebird by definition. And as Wraen followed the thread of her friend's life she suddenly felt a pull. There was a moment of darkness and then she found herself no longer in the copse, but somewhere different. By the seaside.

There in the darkness she caught sight of Niamh's golden pelt. Shining brightly, because her presence was strong, fierce, like the sun itself. Not like Wraen, whose ghostly self was more like a wind. Here she was and then she was not. "You've not changed at all," she told the apparition, approaching her. "Just as dazzling in death as you were in life."