Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was becoming harder and harder to keep her eyes open. The final sleep of this lifetime was calling and Vara fought hard against it to deliver a final message to her son. "Haya, it's..." She paused to recover her strength. "It's not your fault." Her voice grew weaker by the moment. "I know you tried your best with her." Once upon a time Samsara had been an innocent little filly, back when Haya was young. So young...

"I forgive you." His image wavered before her eyes until he was nothing more than a golden blur. "I love you." These were the last words she directed at Haya. For her final breaths, she turned her heart to the one she had given it to years before.

"Scythe, in the next life..." That next life was already calling for her and pulling her away bit by bit from this one. "I'll find you... still love you..." She leaned her head against his and their tears mingled into one. "We'll be... together again... always." Through the pain and the sorrow a smile bloomed across her face like sunshine through rainclouds. She could feel her soul intertwined with Scythe's. They would never be alone. They would always have each other, in this life and the next. There was nothing ahead of her to fear with that certainty.

With a look of peace on her face, Vara passed away.

His eyes opened one last time to take in the now silent mare that his head rested on. She had spoken her last words, and her heart was now still. She had been his reason for living in the decades that had passed since his escape from the war nation. She had been his sun, his moon, and all the time between... and now, she was gone, but only from this life. With the last breath that escaped her lips, what will he had been holding onto for his own life vanished with her.

His eyes moved slowly from Vara to his son, his last words....

"We...." he gasped, "...we love you... Son."

It was time, slowly his eyes closed and his labored breathing finally stopped. He was where he needed to be, and it was not in this realm of being anymore. All that knew Scythe and Vara knew that their bonds would surpass this life, and that one would not be able to go on without the other. In the moment that Vara's life slipped away, Scythe's followed suit. No longer with their herd, they would always be among the stars above watching their loved ones.