ADARA

—In the heart of sea and sand, we called him the first flame — the Wolf of Dawn. He, who pierced the skies of the Great Crimson Dusk and set the Derelicts aflame with his righteous fury, a vestige of light. Left in the protective grasp of the desert, the giants built a statue to honour the king who became the first pillar of Haneka, embodying our strength, our fiery pyre of a soul. Awaken the blade of dawn, and send its light into the clouds to raise the sun.

Raise the sun... Adara ruffled through the book to piece together the stories from whence her Guardian came. On a stray box inside the lift's area, she waited out of sight while Wardens sent magick into the pulley system with Yuven observing and conversing with Warden Katau. Runic circuits lit up and tugged the chains upwards with strong ripples of metallic music. It rattled with the upwards motion of dragging the heavy weight up the edge. Her knees quivered at the idea of descending down the cliff, so she stole herself deeper into the Hanekan fairytale in her lap and proceeded to the next passage.

—In the soul of ground and sky, we called him the second flame — the Dragon born of lightning—

"May I sit here?"

Fenrer's voice dragged her out of the seaborn tales he suggested to her before their endless journey of Yuven not knowing the definition of rest. He stood off to the side, a smile on his face. Adara searched for the night's previous shadows, but the dawn graced his cheeks when he bowed his head to her. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Oh!" Adara slapped the book closed. "You weren't." Scooting to make more room for him on the box, she held her breath when he shuffled and sat beside her. Lost in her own words, she rubbed her tongue on the ridge of her teeth as he paid her no heed and tugged out his food container. Parchment drifted against the edge of her finger, threatening to dog-ear the page. Sunlight glittered the swirling greens and through his dark brown hair, glinting off the wolven pin hanging off the end of his small braid. It weighed down her tongue, and she jolted when he turned to her with a curious frown. "How are you feeling?" she blurted out, but longed to rip out her own tongue and stomp on its embarrassing usage. From the way his gaze flicked around her, it wasn't only her tongue betraying her embarrassment. "It's just—" Rescue it, Adara. "—after what happened last night I was just... concerned." She brushed her nose.

"I am much better for my rest," he said, not drawing attention to her flimsy words. He dropped his attention to the book in her lap, then tipped his head. "Are you enjoying the book? I know there was a bit of a rush to leave Fallholt."

Glad for a shift in topic away from her flubbing, she nodded and laid it flat against her hands. "You know, I was a little hesitant considering the sorts of stories Garren told me," she admitted at his attentive expression. "He gave me the blood, death, hopelessness, the whole thing. It got exhausting..." It fluttered out of her throat at the last taste of old despair layered with a Derelict feast. "I didn't need more of that in my life. Just trying to get by, unable to control what I was." Her fingers tucked underneath the next page, and turned it to run once more from Prunal. "I wish Garren told me half the stories in here. Tales of the high seas. Sirens. Merfolk. There's even sea shanties in here, then I started imagining the old man singing and..." A laugh bubbled out of her lips. "Unrelenting passion in the face of adversity. Those stories I love... and made me homesick for a place I've never been..." The story of the dragon, the last of his kind... and I lost my belief. His memory swelled her heart, and she turned to him for an answer. "I should've listened to you back then, when you told me to believe."

He blinked and swayed in place. "It's hard, I know," he said and tapped his food container. His breath lifted his chest, and he exhaled it in one soft sigh of the wind. "Surrounded by people who cannot believe in the light, we hold to our oath." He tucked his food container away, never having opened it to chew on the contents, and she winced at the clear drop of appetite when he closed his eyes. "Shadows will fall; the dusk will reign, but the dawn must always come." He opened them and turned back to her with a softer smile. "Someone told me that a long time ago, and I've lived to those words since I could comprehend their weight."

Split the sky... and raise the sun. Adara flipped back to the page. "Just like this passage..."

Fenrer examined it, then grinned. "Ah, that is the Common translation of it. In Hanekan, it is 'Split the heavens, rise as the sun.'" He tucked his hands in his lap and leaned forward. His braid bounced with the motion. "It is a lost time of our history... where we knew nothing but the dark, and still, they hoped for the dawn's arrival." He tapped the passage and leaned further against the small wall behind them. "I still want to hear some tales you've heard in Tebora."

Her heart fluttered at his curiosity. "And I want to hear that love story about the sun and the moon. Garren never told me love stories, I started to believe he didn't know any." Adara closed the book and shoved it in her pack to twist her attention to the oral type. "So, I want to hear it. I'll tell you one of my favourite Teboran tales if you tell me that one. Deal?" Hand out to settle the score, a shock-wave went through her arm when he grasped onto her forearm instead.

"I remember saying it might not be the 'ideal' love story, I fear it... it is built on tragedy," he said and let her go too soon. Flames danced beneath the skin of her palm from his warm touch, but Adara shook out the swallowing agony squeezing her heart as he said, "Where to start, though..."

"Ai!" Yuven snapped with a sharp chirp and a clap of his hands, already on the lift she hadn't noticed breached the opening when the two heavy metal doors swung open for it. "It is time to descend into Haneka!"

Adara gazed into Fenrer's eyes. "What a taskmaster."

Fenrer tipped his head with a wry smile and hauled himself off the box. "We can continue some other time."

Her fingers drifted on his sleeve, but he never noticed, though her heart screamed for control; for it all to make sense. Nails tucked into her palm, she bit down on her foolish tongue. Get a grip, Adara... Just focus on what lays ahead... For all those people you've left behind. Don't forget them. Push forward for them... carry their hopes into the light... Jisa... if only you were here to experience this instead. You deserved this and more. To be free.

Tara, if only I believed in the way you had faith in me. Her nails dug past her fabrics to pierce the skin of her heart. If only I could go back... and tell you how sorry I am.

Wings fluttered along her spine and she stood up to follow Fenrer, descending into destiny's cage. It creaked and croaked against its own hinges and the wind burst through in a steady decline. Beams of light pierced through the grate protecting them from the descent as the trees became defined the closer they came. Paths tore through the cliff and deeper into the mines, though abandoned rail carts sat outside, rusted from disuse. Other sections had smelters, long doused to their coals. Adara came closer to the grate, to the horizon. Touched by the warmth of the dawn, she sighed and turned to them. "Halfway there?"

"We could be there already if we didn't take so many detours," Yuven grumbled.

Adara sank into the silence of her flimsy freedom and grasped her crimson shawl, burrowing her nose into the loving comfort of her mother, whose face she barely recalled in the small moments of her memetic clarity. Wind whispered around the lowering lift carrying them to the land of Haneka, the last hurdle on the adventure she dreamed and read about in stories and fairytales.

"Would you like to hear a joke?"

Once again, his voice dragged her out of the sun's stupor.

Yuven eyed Fenrer with a twist to his lips. "What prompted this?"

Fenrer returned his stare. "Is there a problem?"

"Is there going to be?" Yuven bit.

Adara hid her smile behind her shawl and turned her back on the horizon for the two in front of her. "Sure," she said and escaped its shell. "I'd love to hear a joke."

Yuven gave a sudden start when Fenrer grinned. "Fenrer, do not!"

"Well, once upon a time an Avaerilian and a giant journeyed together—and after hearing a strange sound on the wind, the Avaerilian declared the need to investigate—" Fenrer raised a hand. "It took them hours and hours to reach the top of the mountain where the strange sound came from, but—"

"No!" Yuven grappled him, but Fenrer held him at arm's reach, unperturbed by his puffed out friend, which was hilarious by itself and she found herself laughing. "That isn't joke, Fenrer, that is torture instrument!"

"—They pounded on the oak door of gilded gold, and the Cardinal Auro answered and allowed them inside to rest. However, the Avaerilian asked, 'Auro, what is that lovely song I hear in this chapel?" Fenrer sucked in a breath when Yuven tried to keep his mouth closed with his hands, but he continued to tug Yuven off of him. "The Cardinal Auro replied, 'I'm sorry, I cannot tell you, for you are not an sanctified Auro.'"

Yuven groaned and let Fenrer go, dragging his fingers down his cheeks.

"It was the giant, an aurus himself, who asked, 'Can I, in the eyes of the Ancients, become an Auro so we can discover this wondrous melody and bathe in its tune?'"

"Ra'ik, Ra'ik."

Yuven interrupted the sucking tale, causing Fenrer to frown.

"Huh?" Adara mused.

He folded his arms with a scoff. "I believe the common term is knock knock."

Adara couldn't resist the bubble of a cackle in her chest. "You, telling a knock knock joke? I think Fenrer was just getting to the good part. You can't just interrupt a story, Yuven."

"Ra'ik, Ra'ik."

Adara eyed Fenrer, who shook his head but never continued his long joke. "Okay, who's there?"

"Dirt."

... dirt, where's he going with this? "Dirt who?"

"You open the door, and mounds of dirt swallow you whole. You are then buried alive."

"That's not a knock knock joke."

Yuven folded his arms. "Better than Fenrer's torture instrument."

"It isn't that bad," Fenrer said with a gentle chuckle. "If you'd let me finish it for once—"

"You? Finish it?" Yuven asked, shrill. "Adara, you must never let him start it! Don't ask him for jokes."

He said my name. He didn't call me Anima or Sazaka. It warmed her heart at their clashing but comfortable energy as Yuven snubbed them with a disappointed huff.

"I think Navei knock knock jokes are far superior than whatever you have," he barked.

"Really?" Adara folded her arms. "Knock, knock."

"Who's there?" Yuven mused, falling for the trap.

"Chickens." Classic.

"Chickens... who?" Yuven tipped his head and pursed his lips.

"No, silly. Owls hoot." Adara pointed at Yuven. "Chickens cluck, cluck, cluck."

It never failed to get an immediate reaction at the tavern where she worked, whether a groan or a pity chuckle, as long as it made someone smile. Adara beamed when Fenrer raised his hand to his lips and hid a sniff behind them before tilting away.

"Fenrer, don't laugh at that," Yuven said, incredulous. "That wasn't even good Ra'ik, Ra'ik. I have much better ones. It is not my fault they do not translate well into Common."

"Hah!" Adara smiled and bathed in the rise of the sun in her soul. "Better than 'Knock knock, oh there's dirt, you die'. Where'd you learn that one, Traye?"

Warmth. A life full of happiness and hope.

"I'll have you know—Fenrer, I said don't laugh." Yuven slapped him on the shoulder when they quaked. "That it takes a special sense of humour to understand Navei jokes. I suppose it cannot be helped if one such as you cannot understand the fundamentals to them. You cannot speak Navei."

"I didn't realise you were a connoisseur of humour."

Yuven threw his hands into the air with a hiss. "This conversation is pointless." He folded his arms and stomped to the grate to lunge into the embrace of the sun. "We don't have time for jokes, Sazaka." A last name among his words, he refused to look at her anymore. "We must focus on our path." His feathers thinned then drooped when his hands drew to his elbows. "We don't want to open doors and find ourselves dead."

Her laughter died in her chest, and Fenrer released his mouth.

Lost in the world of magick waves, there was no better company than one with smiles and laughter.

"In the darkness," Tara told her the story of the Dragon Knight, reciting its powerful passages, to which she then passed on to Jisa. "I must laugh to feel my grief. I must smile to process my pain. For there is no truth to life but the one I make—"

For I must tread ever forward, for those that I have lost, and those that I can deliver the message of hope on my weary wings so peace can yet reign.