Their souls had flown high and bodies been laid to rest and now I was alone. I had Feather and I would always watch over my sisters, even if they had begun to split off. It worried me; Tiamat was a brilliant mind and brazen but I wondered if her independence was natural. It wasn't in me. It was a careful cultivated thing. I think that my sisters had been a driving force at helping me overcome my nervous energy. As the months flew by I became more solid, as if my skin fit more around me. I didn't feel like I was a stranger in my own body. I felt whole. Even now as I sit on a rocky outlook watching the gray ocean roil upon itself, a different kind of tempest, I find that I am not weakened by my parents deaths. I was secure in the knowledge that they had loved me with everything they had. From this day forward I would remember the social cues of my parents and I would learn from them but I would also be myself.

Settling into the den without them was a hard adjustment, especially in the thick of winter. Without their added body warmth it grew terribly cold at times and I would huddle close with Feather. I was the big sister and I would make sure she was fed and warm and grew up knowing she was loved. Somewhere else Tiamat and Medea were hopefully finding their new lives fortuitous. That is all I could hope. I remember my eldest sister's reaction, the way she had screamed at them all, growled at them, the way she had run. I didn't hate her for it, I felt scared for her. She seemed lost and afraid and I wished that I could help but she would never accept it right now.

A scream breaks the air and my ears prick, my right hanging curled as usual, and pale green eyes with brilliant blue starbursts catch a glimpse of a circling crow. It's beady eyes look down on me, I know, and I wonder what it thinks. Behind me is snow, before me is water, but I am a rock in between it all. There is peace here, I think, I just have to find it somehow.