[center][color=613c3c][i]Recall the day of childhood's end
Or loss of first and only friend
When words alone sufficed to hurt

Do not forget where we found bliss
In times and places that we miss
For growing up is full of pain
And choices we won't make again

So let me tell you what I know
Of mother's love and true words told:
It made me cry, and left me cold.[/i][/color]

* * *[/center]

Whisper crept through the misted valley, thinking of lost days. The vivid fog hurt less when she did that. The future was agony, and thoughts thereof pain, and though most of her memories hurt, some were still worth seeing one last time.

[center]* * *[/center]

[i]Whisper hovered above the ring, that oh so thin river of glittering rock upon which the vast factory floated. Tilted on its side, she could see only one listening-horn, and one many-eyed antenna. Even as she watched, Ovaedis revolved slowly on its axis.

She was bright, and full of colour. Every shade and hue of her was pure. Elsewhere her firstborn daughters played. Whisper realised something.

[colour=BlanchedAlmond]"You're a coward,"[/colour] she said. [colour=BlanchedAlmond]"Afraid of your own actions."[/colour][/i]

[colour=9e0b0f]Maybe. If I am, so be it.[/colour]

[i]Jvan didn't care. Whisper narrowed her gaze and fumed. She was younger, then. Not so resigned.

[colour=LightCyan]"Have you ever done anything out of love? Anything?"[/colour][/i]

[color=9e0b0f]In the way that you feel it? No,[/color] [i]she replied.[/i] [color=9e0b0f]No, I have not. And, maybe that's a lie,[/color] [i]said Jvan,[/i] [color=9e0b0f]but it's easier than the truth.[/color]

[i][colour=MistyRose]"You don't even understand why you're doing this."[/colour][/i]

[colour=9e0b0f]What I don't understand are my own memories.[/colour] [i]Jvan's voice carried on, nowhere to be seen in the rocks and the imagen but clear in Whisper's head.[/i] [colour=9e0b0f]I created a something much like you, once. Much like the Sorority. And I executed a plan much like the one I had for you. And it caused me great pain.[/colour] 

[color=9e0b0f]The light doesn't shine everywhere, Diaphane Whisper. I only know so much. I do this to avoid the mistakes of another me.[/color]

[color=9e0b0f]Do you understand your role in this?[/color]

[i]Whisper hardened. [colour=Lavender]"When I first fell to earth, it was in a place of hiding,"
[/colour] she repeated. [colour=Lavender]"The place you call the Darkened Spires. There was life there, and Flickers. But nobody came there from beyond. And nothing left."[/colour]

[colour=Honeydew]"Wander fell in a place on the outside of those spires. She hatched in a world where no matter how much she consumed, she would never be able to taste it all. And she would never be great enough to draw the ire of all the Flickers therein. So it has been for all the sisters who've gone into the sea."[/colour]

[colour=Lavender]"They only saw the beginning of your plan. I saw its end."[/colour]

[colour=LightYellow]"The inside of that valley was a microcosm. I was change-eater, its elemental residents were Djinni. I fought them alone, and ate, and won, and lost, and they beat me back to grow again. I wondered why it felt so natural. Now I know."[/colour]

[colour=LightBlue]"We found a balance, there, in the Spires. The stable ecosystem you built into us. Perpetual war."[/colour]

[colour=BlanchedAlmond]"And maybe I was always weird. Maybe I was always different to my sisters. Because they would never have seen the truth of it, but I did. It was horrible."[/colour]

Whisper opened her many eyes and stared again at the great pale slope towering away far ahead of her. [color=MistyRose]"I will fight to change our future. I don't want to kill or starve. I don't..."[/color] She choked. [colour=MistyRose]"...want to see my sisters die."[/colour][/i]

[color=9e0b0f]Good,[/color] [i]said Jvan.

The sound rose first as a distant whine, and Whisper didn't know what pained her. She raised her feathered tendrils and gazed at them, watching sepia stains flow through the blood.

She yelled Jvan's name. Jvan stared at her from inside the factory. She felt that gaze upon her, and screamed.

The sound collided with her and Whisper was destroyed in the force of a thousand hallucinations, perception without self. Whisper's body screamed and Whisper's senses heard that scream, but Whisper herself was gone.

Drop by drop Whisper's ego returned to her, the flow of awareness applied to raw senses that we call consciousness. She gripped herself in a ball above the reef, slowly became aware of the fact that something was growing within her. A memory of nightmare flashed scene by scene through her brain.

They floated there, Jvan and Whisper, god and victim. No words were exchanged.[/i]

[color=9e0b0f]Go,[/color] [i]said Jvan.[/i] [color=9e0b0f]There is nothing more we have to say to each other.[/color]

[i]Whisper fled.[/i]