The wait until sunset is a long one, even for me. Seeing the sun rise and fall in itself is entertaining for someone who's spent their whole life in darkness in a cell, even if my whole life has only been about a year and maybe four months. I was born at about 12 to 13 years old maturity and development wise, which is about old enough for Canira to start making families, growing up and moving out of home, according to what I've learned over the last month or so.

Meditating is much easier without an ambience of screaming and foreboding footsteps, but whenever I meditate it brings some of that feeling back, so I give up on it. I steal Torch's PowerPet and play on that for a while. It's a silly, complicated but addicting game- you raise a tiny animal, take it on quests, hook it up to others and have playdates and fights- that type of stuff.

Torch apparently never bothered to go past giving his PowerPet a name, but it's a little fire mouse whose name reads: "BRONZE 2". I don't get what the 2 is for. Maybe he had another one, once.

Besides that, I oblige to let Avery mess around with my fur more, telling me her myths while she decides if the biggest flower should go at the top or the braid or the bottom. Either way, it gets in my face, but it still feels kind of good to be 'pretty', even if it's kind of silly and stupid.

"See, after the war, PPS was the Queen of Dreamland all the way from then to today. Can you imagine that? She's still the queen!" Avery says, and begins humming.

"Sounds awful. Everyone would die and you would still be there, derping on your throne and eating muffins and whatever else a queen does, surrounded by a bunch of servants and nagging peasants and people you don't even know who are apparently your friends in another dimension." I growl, annoyed as Avery pricks a bit of my fur, yanking it.

"Well, you would always see your friends again in the long run as reincarnates or something or in the stars. Do you think PPS can travel to the stars? Do you believe in reincarnates?"

The word strikes up a memory.

"No, others of our old kind still live, but I like the term for us. Reincarnates. I'm just going to warn you now, although you'll still be able to think after the mindwipe, you're going to forget about your past life again. You're also going to forget me, because now I'm associated with it. I promise though, whatever it takes, I will come back to you. Stay strong. Blame it all on me. Okay?"

"I don't want to lose you."

Storm Runner.

My friend.

My packmate.

My mate.

Dead.

Gone from the stars.

Dead again.

Avery screams. "Dark Rainbow? What was that?!"

I've bolted forwards and I'm gripping the grass like it's the last thread of my sanity. I'm panting like I've run all the way to Natrina's Palace and back and my heart is beating so fast I'm sure that at any moment it will stop and I'll die.

"I... don't know."

She throws her paws up in the air. "How am I going to fix your fur again in time? And my paws are soooo sore now!"

"You don't have to if you don't want to, Avery. I guess the subject just brought back some nightmares from the Factory and..."

"Get back over here. I'm doing your fur again."

She's finally done at sunset, and all four of us take off to the forest. Our first stop is Riana's river, where she rows us down the toughest rapids and pins Avery and I's wings down so we can't fly for it.

"It'll be more fun!" she insisted.

Well, if you call catapulting down a much too fast stream in shallow rocky waters at speeds magically enhanced by Riana's powers, it was fun. It was completely and totally awesome, up to the point where we went flying off the waterfall and I ended up catching Torch before he fell into the water.

Next, we got some sweetbark from Toni's gang. Toni and his friends had everything in their stores for us- sweetbark dusted with peppermint (from the city, who knows how they got their hands on it), every syrup in existence, and a few pints of expired cider, which we gladly took off their paws. Honestly, where were their parents?

The last part of the day was just playing catch me in the forest. It's a ridiculously pupworthy game, but it's so much fun. I laugh and hide up in a tree, but I have to come down when Spritz makes an 'as of now' rule that it's cheating and I'm not allowed to do it anymore.

We return to the tree around midnight, laughing and completely tired. I'm about to go to sleep when Torch takes my paw and drags me into my room.

Avery begins to walk after us, but Spritz holds her back. "Let the lovebirds have their time." he murmurs drowsily.

He spends a while in the room that will soon be mine, the one I'm not allowed to go in yet so it can be 'a surprise'. At night, Torch covers my eyes with the brown part of his tail (luckily for me his tail isn't lit) and I walk into my room. He takes his tail away, and there is a rainbow of berry juice covering the walls. Above us is pure black- and shards of glass woven into the willow. They amplify the starlight, lighting up the rainbow.

"I went to the city to get the glass for you. I know you like stars, so..." Torch says, smiling.

"I love it." Tears, for the first time, not tears of terror or regret, but tears of pure joy, run down my cheeks and onto the grass.

"Thanks. Hey, come with me." We slip through the walls of willow and run together, his torch burning bright and my wings outspread. Eventually, we reach a cliff overlooking- paradise. It's the best view ever, and forests that go on forever.

He looks at me, and in that moment, there is nothing in the world between us. He pushes his muzzle closer to mine, and without a word I pull mine up to his and we kiss, the whole world spinning and my wings straight out, his fire burning bright. He doesn't smell like burning things to me, he smells like pine on a warm fire, the freshness combined with the warm flame. He is perfect. We sit there for a moment, enjoying the view, but I notice something off.

Torch isn't looking out, just down.

"What's wrong, Torch?" I ask finally, ecstatic with joy, but worried.

"I- I have something to tell you." he says gloomily, "Something I should've told you a long time ago. I've been so manipulative not to, to take advantage of the fact you didn't remember, but..."

"What?" The heartbeat comes back, pulsing like in my dream.

He lifts the long, bristly, overgrown fur off of his right foreleg, and in that split second, I feel myself yearning to scream, "DON'T!"

The three circling scars shine in the moonlight.

I back up. "You..."

It all comes back. Memories scream through my head. Past and present, each more painful then the next.

"I'm sorry, okay?! I wanted you to stay. I didn't want you to suffer."

"Why didn't you tell me? I... I deserved to know. You knew about Storm, too. I forgot about him and you kept it that way?"

"I'm freaking sorry, get it?! What else do you want me to say?!" His breathing is tense.

"I'm sorry too, for being here. I don't belong. I never belonged here."

"What?! You're free from their mindwipe! You could stay here forever!"

"No, I'm an Obsidian weapon. I have one purpose in life. I'm supposed to kill you, Torch. All three of you. That's my destiny."

"No, it's not! We can change destiny! I promise... I..."

"Go away, Torch! Get away before someone gets hurt. Like Cherry, lost somewhere after burning in hell. Like Snow Hare. Like..."

"NONE OF THAT WAS YOUR FAULT! WHAT THE HECK HAS GOTTEN INTO YOU?!"

"None of that is my fault, Torch. Yet."

My heart starts beating, and this time, instead of white, all I can see is those amber eyes. The eyes that I kept in mind when they tried to mindwipe me again. The eyes that now plead with my soul.

The stars are glowing, but so is my claw. It's glowing red. The fractured image of an Obsidian appears on the screen, a broken hologram of an Obsidian with a twisted smile, saying, "yOu'rE nexT, TORCH. We knOw yoU escAPEd and nOW oUR PAWn hAS leAD uS tO yoU!!!" Laughing cuts him off. Torch stares at me in horror. "It triggered it. The emotion must've triggered it. They knew, somehow. About the prophecy. About you."

Torch blinks, shaking his head in disbelief.

"You have three days tops. Get out of here. Get your friends, too. Tell them I'm leaving."

"You could come with us." he pleads. "The two of us, refugees of all the pain. We belong together. Come with me. Please."

"And send you back to hell?" I ask, staring intently into his eyes.

Torch saved me. Twice. And now it's time to return the favor. Lifting my body, my aching paw, and my heavy heart, I fly into the night, wishing it to take me somewhere. Somewhere away from my family. My home. And those eyes. I rip out the tracking claw and throw it in the river somewhere over twenty miles away, the bloody stump making a trail of blood I try to conceal.

I can hear the Obsidians talk in my dream tonight, confirming my deepest fears. Suppressed memories flash and burst through the dam of the mindwipe as I sleep, my bloody stump where that claw used to be still burning. An Obsidian writes something down a small chalk board in front of me in the middle of the room. The noise screeching my ears hurts just as much as any other form of torture. I see three Canira's faces drawn up in the powdery chalk. Torch is one of them. "These are the destined Imperial Three." says the Obsidian. "You are to kill them, no matter what. It's your destiny."

I wake up in another cold sweat, like that one a month ago. I can escape the dream, but not the pain.My only family is gone.