and still it moves

When she hears the announcement, Yivati considers refusing. She considers abandoning the Shadar, considers packing up her belongings with practiced ease and she considers walking away without looking back. She is not one to turn away the prospect of travel, of adventure, but this is -- she does not remember the last time she has traveled so far without Gyriakel. Does she even remember how to ride a horse?

No dragons are to come with us.

Logically, Yivati knows why Javelin gave that order. Logically, she knows that Gyriakel is a stranger to sickness affecting her own body, and the dragonelle is dealing poorly with bouts of weakness and a chill that never seems to leave her bones. Even Gyriakel herself does not grumble when the Shadar overlord speaks those condemning words -- so Yivati doesn’t know why she rages for hours after hearing them.

...That’s a lie. Yivati knows precisely why. It’s only -- it’s only that it’s childish to admit, her pride closing off the thought every time it tries to form.

(Crushing loneliness. Bitter bile rises in the back of her throat, thin arms wrap around curled up knees, blanket pulled up over her head. Mother had come and gone an hour ago. She has counted the amount of whorls in the wood of her walls twice. Her breath wheezes every time her chest rises. Concentrating on the rhythm tunes out the noises from outside; high-pitched laughter, bare feet padding on the forest floor. She doesn’t want to join them. She doesn’t.)

(...A soft snout presses against her red nose. )

No one knows if anyone who goes to the volcano is going to come back alive. Trying to combat the ash could be impossible to do for a ragtag group of mortals, especially one that lacks the support of dragons. This could be punishment from the gods -- and if Yivati is going to die on a fire-spewing volcano, Gyriakel is going to be there with her. And if Gyriakel -- if Gyriakel gets sicker, Yivati is going to comb her fingers through the feathers on her neck, on her wings; Yivati is going to smooth the hide on her head and stroke the ride of her brow.

The volcano looms in the distance, and Yivati tugs her furs closer around her shoulders.

(If there was something that would help you, Gyriakel tells her, long body looped around and around her kneeling rider, I would have left before the Shadar leader had even finished their sentence.

...Okay.)

Gyriakel presses close to her senses, and for once in a very long while it’s hard to tell where the feeling of a tight chest originates. They don’t say much as the wood elf continues the trek toward the fire-spewing mountain, but that part is familiar. What use is conversation when they share sensations? Gyriakel knows that there is helpless fury buried in the core of Yivati’s heart. She knows that Yivati has donned her flight goggles not because the ash stings her face, but because the tinted lenses hide the red rimming her eyes. She is not cold (or, rather, the temperature is not beyond Yivati’s considerable ability to ignore it), but the wood elf wears her rather heavy flight furs because they still smell like the dust from Gyriakel’s furs.

Yivati breathes out, disturbs the ever-present ash in the air.

(They do not talk, but Yivati tells Gyriakel, “I love you,” anyway.)