[colour=AliceBlue][i]"Wander!"[/i][/colour]

[colour=MintCream]"Whisper,"[/colour] wheezed a voice, laughing, from within the shattered heap of bladed stone. Whisper shoved aside boulders as if they were leaves and sticks, though she only acquired more tails of blood as she did so.

The final impact had happened faster and harder than either of them had truly seen, and Wander's armour had not held up to the punishment. Most of the links in the cage-like armour that was her body were broken, solid but warped and only raggedly connected, and her sword had snapped in three. Whisper's spindly arms lifted her from the ruins and cradled her like a child.

[colour=GhostWhite][i]"I could have lost you,"[/i][/colour] she whispered, voice soft in the chaos.

[colour=Honeydew]"You didn't,"[/colour] crowed Wander, melting away as much as she could to return Whisper's embrace. Her own voice, too, was dim, for reasons entirely different. [colour=LavenderBlush]"We didn't lose a damn thing. We won, sister! [i]We won![/i]"[/colour]

[colour=Ivory][i][b]"I could have lost you,"[/b][/i][/colour] repeated the pilot, seized by a sudden urgency.

Wander was not deaf to her sister's pain. The wreck of her body dragged itself further into the embrace, the voice within at odds with the violence this form had been made for, and seen. [colour=AliceBlue]"I'm not lost, Whisper. I'm okay. I'll survive. You saved me. And as long as you're here, I'll never be lost. Ever."[/colour]

Whisper held her tightly, silent, as a pack of her grandaughters and nieces pinned Cathode to the ground somewhere and extinguished his lightning forever, his final roars booming over the shadowed landscape. And she knew, in a sickening revelation that she could not explain, that Wander was wrong.

One more voice rumbled out into the moment.

[color=sandybrown]"So this is how I die,"[/color] observed Lord Feldspar, her voice unbroken even as her body lay crippled and dying. [color=sandybrown]"Torn limb from limb in a war I never started, by creatures who are made of love for their own and hatred for everything else."[/color] One golden grain at a time, her eyes were crumbling away into nothing. Whisper watched with the eyes on her nearest side. 

[color=sandybrown]"I know not whether I should be happy, or disgusted. But I fought. I fought to the end, and thus, while you live your lives in fury, I die in peace."[/color]

Feldspar's lips began to flake and collapse as her Flicker tried to burrow away. Whisper carried Wander as they floated towards the spark of energy. The wounded sister would eat, and she would heal, and they would return to the Mother at full strength once more.

[colour=GhostWhite]"Do you understand what she's saying?"[/colour] wondered Wander dazedly.

[colour=MistyRose][i]"No,"[/i][/colour] she lied, though Whisper had seen and heard more Djinni in her time than any other change-eater, and knew that some words did not need translating.

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[colour=Honeydew][i][/i][/colour]
[colour=MistyRose][i][/i][/colour]
[colour=GhostWhite][i][/i][/colour]
[colour=LavenderBlush][i][/i][/colour]
[colour=MintCream][i][/i][/colour]
[colour=AliceBlue][i][/i][/colour]
[colour=Ivory][i][/i][/colour]