The sun looks blooded when the mist gathers. Then there is nowhere to look.

An already skittish dragon veers sharply in her attempt to circumvent the inevitable, locked in redness and strengthening winds. The fine grit of dust pervades everything: above and below, at the fore and back.

Suddenly, recognition.

Opal need not see to know that one of her brethren is close, and unnerved just the same. Her rider prepares to pitch them lower, pulse pounding in her ears. The mist recedes just long enough to give her a glimpse —

"There is room for us both," Emilia declares.

It will be a snug fit, two dragons and two riders, but the alternative is worse. The fog has grown denser, and the cold biting. It is not the unforgiving ice of the Seven Circles, but it is vicious and will spare no one.

If not the cold, then surely the hawks.

And so cave it is.

She ignores her exhaustion, the kind that wants to sink to bone.

They're too close to turn back now, to stop and rest now, to suffer misgivings. Far from Serthica, it's as though she can still hear the heartbeat of Vassarizhia, the tick of its clock growing louder. They race against it, time.

From this vantage point, the plane looks small, though she knows little of planes.

"It could fall any moment," she finds herself saying.

It's never, or now.

[ anything else goes here! feel free to surprise me. brackets and prose both equally welcome. ]