Like the birds and the flowers that depended on one another for their very survival, we needed each other. As much as we loved our family, I suspected that we might never have survived without each other. I needed her to drag me back to them when I sought my escapes, to bring me back to the things that mattered so that I would not lose myself in nature in an effort to disappear. And she needed to me be a grounding wire for everything that she had absorbed from them.

Even now I can feel the tension begin to drain from her, and beneath my watchful gaze I can see the lightness return to her heart. An echoing smile blossoms on my pale lips as she accepts my suggestion and I turn to follow her down the path with a smile. We hardly make it five steps before we are rocketing down the narrow paths, our shoulders brushing companionably. Naenia's antics sent me dancing to the side and I pirouetted in mimicry of her delight.

I nodded in response to her query and chuckled. "First one there has to lay farthest out tonight," I teased, popping my pastel pink tongue out for a moment. Often times we cuddled up next to our father, or one of our sisters, and took turns trading off who slept on the farthest edge. It was not as if the Ridge was ever truly cold, but there was a sense of security to being sandwiched between two people who loved you.

Without waiting for further confirmation of our game, I charged ahead with an insouciant flick of my tail. I imagined that the two of us had both traced this path so frequently as to not even need to see it anymore. Traveling along familiar trails with my other half at my side made me feel invincible and I relished in the freedom. I felt like a bird that had newly grown it's wings, still learning the tempo for flight.

"Watch!" I squealed in delight before propelling myself from the top of a small, flat rock and into the water just below the falls, where it was deepest for swimming. Surfacing once more, I turned back to my golden sister and beamed. Already the weight that had settled like a yoke of sorrow around her neck had begun to lift and my heart was glad to see it. When Naenia was happy, I was happy. Bouncing into a half rear, I tossed a wave of water in her direction and then trudged out from the cool liquid beaming.

I am not usually one given to many words, but I knew there was a fair chance that whatever was on her mind today might be heavier than normal and I cooled down quickly to saunter to her side. Wordlessly I took my place at her side and cast my gaze upward to where the birds flitted from side to sky in the canopy. "I wonder what it would be like to fly." A thoughtful grin touches my lips that quickly devolves into a smirk as I looked back at her. "If we were birds we could poop on the heads of anyone that got too annoying."