(This thread is for Irene and Kavaren only. Thanks.)

The top of Apocolif Peak was absolutely amazing today. For once in a long time the winds that were usually howling to hard for one to stand still in were tame and blew only as a light breeze. The sky was filled with large puffy clouds that the heat of the earth had created. They seemed to just hover as if time was holding them still. In fact that was what it seemed like to Irene who had been here since the morning. The winds then were at their normal fury, but with the absence of the roar time seemed still, like it knew what Irene was here for.

Irene had flow up here in the darkness of the dawn for one purpose today. She had only learned the other day the Ryuu was dead. She didn’t know how or where he died all she knew that he did. She came here to remember him, because this is where she first met him, befriended him, and left here with him to find a home. She had found the very pile brush she hid under when he managed to sneak up here without her knowing.

Irene was standing in the clearing where she first came face to face with Ryuu. He had perched himself on the very tip of peak and she was standing in the small flat clearing that was 50 feet below that point. She looked up to that peak hoping somehow he would be there looking down at her with his large eyes. Only her mind could put him there now. She was losing everyone she knew lately. Her true love, Cringe, had not been seen for months now and she feared he would not come back. Thir, the leader of the Resistance has been absent for longer than usual, and now Ryuu was on the list except he was gone forever. Her friends were beginning to thin down to just her.

Irene sat down, lowered her head, and shut her silver eyes. The harsh world was beginning to affect her directly. Maybe Firz was right about the end to this war was coming and in the favor of the gryphons. She knew Firz knew well enough to know that he would kill every last one dragon knowing that they would try to destroy him. Then he would go after all of those who dared oppose him, including her. She no longer knew what to. She was a leader that didn’t know how to cope with her own problems. How would her resistance members think of her if they saw her like this?

The sun shone down on her with its warm, comforting light and warmed her body. The breeze picked up enough to ruffle her feathers and fur countering the affect of the sun’s heat. Good countering evil, the constant battle that was never ending in every aspect of life: light against dark, fire against water, nature against the unnatural, and dragon against gryphon. It looked like now in Irene’s world that evil was beginning to prevail now that Firz’ enemy was down a leader and he was more confident in his chances of winning. Her light that she cast into the black heart of the war was beginning to fade. She was feeling hopeless and helpless about having the two sides come to a mutual agreement to end the war about a conflict that had been fought over before with the same result time it occurred.

Where was the hope to even the scales? Who was the one that would end this war or at least help bring it so a happy close? Irene was now laying the clearing hear head in her paws deep in thought asking herself over and over, who was going to bring light back into the bleeding stone heart of the war?