"Her name is Karyan," Ilo murmurs, focusing on the ground. "I knew her from a young age, before my predecessor was even aware he needed an heir.

"When the day came for the Sun and the Moon to choose the next mages of the sky, Karyan and I were both adolescents, free and reckless, caring only to explore the savannah with open hearts and to embrace the wind in our faces. Neither of us had any inkling that we'd be chosen. You're not old enough, that's what the village elders would tell us. The Sun and the Moon must be fiercer than the rivers, stronger than the baobab, and wiser than the longest-lived tortoise. To them, we had no chance.

"The Sun and Moon themselves thought otherwise. They took joy in our passion, our wild abandon, and decided that the benefits of youthful mages outweighed those of older mages. So, when it came time for the heirs to the sky to be picked..." He lowers his head. "Karyan and I were their choice."

If he's checking for a reaction, I give none, keeping my face carefully neutral. "Please, continue."

"When we arrived in the Anderlands... that world was in disarray. Utter, complete disarray. All the beings of the sky - the realms of Day and Night - were shattered by the transition of power. So Karyan and I set to work cleaning it up.

"With a few years, and diligent labor, the Anderlands began to thrive. Karyan held full moon festivals every thirty days, and I still remember... they were so full of music and laughter and dancing and harmony, with baubles that shone silver as she did..."

He pauses and blinks, a glassy sheen to his eyes. "And I would hold feasts swathed in gold and copper, at the beginning of each month, and the drumbeats would send shivers right up to your heart, and I don't know how all that went wrong."

I force myself to say nothing. He looks so crushed, so heartbroken, that I can't help but wonder how benevolent the Moon must once have been - or what connection they must once have shared.

He gathers himself, then glances at me. "Are you ready, chiriku?"

"I don't have a choice," I reply, then soften my tone as if to sooth Masega. "Thank you, Ilo. I didn't realize how good she was... before."

A pained breath leaves him. "I was so proud to rule the sky with her."  Worry creases his face as he glances outside, to the onyx sky and the Moon. "We must leave now. Enough time has already been wasted here."

He re-rolls the scroll and stashes it inside of a dusty brown satchel, then adjusts the rungu on my waist. "Keep these safe," he says. "You will need them."

"You are going with me until we reach the entrance, right?" I ask, uncertain now that our departure looms so near. "You'll teach me how to survive?"

"I gave you my word and I'll keep it," he promises. "But you must carry the weapon and the map."

He opens the door and Sama sticks one paw out, as if testing bathwater. I edge outside around her. The Moon has my family. I narrow my eyes and peer over the jet grasses. I will not let her keep them.

Sama keeps close to Ilo as he emerges from his home, looking determined yet resigned. He tightens a strap on the bag. "We can't have the map getting away from you," he tells me with the faintest wisp of amusement.

The savannah is eerily quiet. As we amble through the grains, Ilo leans on his walking stick, and tells me more about the wonders of the Anderlands.

"Ilo," I cut in as he pauses. "Can you tell me...more about Karyan?" He flinches and immediately I wish I could snatch the words back. "I just - I want to know about how she was so it's not, um, quite as bad when I meet her."

    "Stars help you if your paths cross," Ilo says. His voice has regained its steadiness. "But yes, I will tell you.

    "In our early years, Karyan and I were close. As the only two children of our age in the village, we didn't have much of a choice except to like each other." A sad sort of laugh escapes him. "For her, it ran deeper than friendship. Had nothing interfered - had the Mages of the Sky not chosen us to succeed them - I may have reciprocated her feelings. But as soon as I began to consider that idea, we were whisked away into our new lives. Our new duties separated us despite our proximity."

"Proximity?" I interject, keeping my eyes level on the horizon. The ache in my feet grows with each passing minute, and I consider wrapping them in leaves to stop the stones from digging into my toes. "I thought you were on opposite sides of the Anderlands."

"Not at first," he says. "We shared the Observatory, and spun forever up and over the Anderlands and the savannah alike. Day and Night lived in harmony there; dawn followed by dusk followed by dawn again, never clashing like we do now. And with our happiness, the brilliance of the Sky grew, until each sunrise wasn't just blue but a canvas of purple and red and rose and orange, and each moonrise crowned with tendrils of stars against the liquid night."

"I wish I could see it," I breathe.

Ilo considers this, his glittering gaze fixed on my face. There's a question hidden in those eyes, and a hollow sadness that I don't understand. "I think you will," he says, "someday."

Then he freezes. "Get down," he hisses. "Get down now!"

My blood runs cold as I crouch, pulling the rungu out of its sheathe. "What is it?" I hiss back. The fear on his face terrifies me. What could possibly strike this kind of panic into the heart of the Sun itself?

Before he replies, a low sound registers to my right. It's different than the hum of an insect's wings, deeper and darker and more ominous, and modulates from loud to soft and seems to come in waves. "Kongamato!" he yells as it rises to a high screeching. "She's found us!" His walking stick illuminates, changing from a gnarled tree branch to a handsome, well-polished staff beset with topaz and fire ruby. He slashes it through the air over the ground with a shout. A huge boulder erupts from the earth, and he pushes me into its shadow. I stumble against it and fall, shocked. I thought kongamato only existed in stories!

Ilo's aura bursts into life around him, redder than an inferno and flickering with fury. Through the garnet haze his mouth is open, chanting, but I can't hear the words. Then the wind comes - whipping through the grains like knives, razor-thin and just as sharp, with the precision of a seasoned hunter. It gathers around Ilo in a dusty sphere, blurring his outline.

There's a wild cry from above and the kongamato descends.

Its skin is leathery, more so than a bat's, and a nondescript blackish-purple that blends with the night sky. The talons are each as long as my body; they dig into the dirt as it lands. Its wingspan encompasses the boulder with space to spare, and I'm thrown into its shadow. It gives the boulder a suspicious glance. Cringing, I clutch the map closer to my chest. The kongamato refocuses on Ilo. It hasn't noticed me yet.

"Duiwel!" Ilo calls, holding his staff up to the wind. "Leave me! Begone!" Jets of air blast away from the sphere and hurtle into the kongamato's hide. It lets out an echoing shriek and advances toward Ilo with its beak open.

"I am no mere pest to be shooed away with feats of magic," the kongamato snarls, a horrible grating quality to its voice. I feel my heart leap into my throat. "You have fallen, Sun Mage. It is the time of the Moon now."

"I WILL NOT BOW TO YOU!" Ilo screams, and a bone-rattling BOOM erupts from the staff, sending the wind bursting up and out. It hits me like a shockwave, pinning me against the rock face, and sends the kongamato lurching backwards. With one hand, Ilo commands the wind, and with the other, he holds the staff, reciting some sort of spell, his eyes burning blue. A snake made of flame erupts from the rubies, and then its head splits into two, and they curl around each other towards the sky. As the wind dies down, he bellows, "MOVE, AKIA!"

The second I surge out of the shelter of the rock, I realize I've forgotten the map. I dive back down to grab it, hearing Mama and Masega howling at a fever pitch in my head, and the snake roaring defiance at the kongamato flashing spots of blinding scarlet across my vision.

I wrap myself around the bag. The snakes dance in the air, but Ilo's attention has left them, and instead he sprints toward me. I can see bright cyan power crackling through his veins, giving him the appearance of a young man, restored to the height of his prowess. I reach out for him; he does the same, and his fingers tighten around my wrist. He yanks away from the rock, and my grip on the bag loosens, and in slow motion I watch as it tumbles to the broken ground and bounces in the wrong direction, back towards the boulder that is no longer my safety, back towards the snake made of hatred and inferno, back towards the raging kongamato, assaulted by Ilo's magicked winds, with a murderous glint in the one eye I can see.

Ilo's frantic gaze meets mine, and he shoves me to the ground. My jaw cracks on a rock half-concealed in the dirt and a white-hot starburst blazes up the side of my face. I grip the rungu tighter, trying to pull myself out of the kongamato's line of sight, but my injured leg catches on a root and reopens the gash the hyenas gave me. The pain is bearable, nothing compared to the agony in my jaw, but the root stays firmly buried in my leg, immobilizing me. Blood trickles out in uneven waves. The kongamato appears to smell it; in moments its beak turns toward me, and I'm caught in its malevolent glare. I hoist the rungu up, a last hurrah of any bravery I have left, and keep it trained on the creature as it scuttles across the clearing. Ilo has the bag, hasn't yet realized my precarious situation, but rather turns to the snakes made of flame, which have pillared up into the sky, and stills them. My attempts to remove the root from my wound have proved futile, and the kongamato stands near me now, with a single talon hovering above my torso. It stabs down, but I parry it with the rungu. The impact sends a spasm up my arm, and for a half second everything after my elbow goes numb.

I don't see the broken shaft of the rungu until I hold it up again, ready to counterstrike with a weapon of my own. The kongamato sees it before I do and knocks it away. "No shield anymore," it hisses, and an involuntary shudder runs down my spine. Its voice has the likeness of a thousand bones grating together at once, and the horrible, scratching quality of metal on metal. "Nothing to save you from the servants of Karyan."

"I'm surviving so far," I try to spit back, but I can't move my jaw too well and the words are distorted by the metallic blood that fills my mouth.

The kongamato laughs.

I reach for the other half of the rungu, ignoring the root ripping away from my leg and sending another volley of red spraying out, and hurl it at the kongamato's eye.

The laugh turns to a gurgling screech, and the kongamato lifts off, flattening me in its downdraft. Ilo too is thrown down, and the snakes resume their spirals. At their tails, they begin to turn a fierce blue, and it continues up their scales, unaffected by the overwhelming force of the downdrafts.

The tips of their forked tongues glow icy pale...

The snakes explode and everything goes black.

"Akia."   

What am I doing here?

"Akia, you're okay. You're alive."

Where am I?

"It's gone. Here, have some of this tea."

Am I...am I home?

"Mama?" I croak. There's a figure standing above me, but it's blurry, and I can't make out any features. A candle is held close to my face, and a bright pain sears through my forehead.

"Here, drink," says the voice, and it isn't Mama but the voice of a man.

A man?

"The kongamato," I cry, bolting upright. Hot tea sloshes down my front, and droplets froth on my blistered skin with a vengeance. "What -"

"Shh, shh, lie back down," Ilo coaxes, pressing on my shoulders. "Give yourself time to heal."

I protest weakly. "And the map?" All I can remember is plunging to save it and the fire snake twining its twin faces ever upwards. "Did the map make it?"

A tight frown creases his face and my chest constricts. "Ilo," I plead. "Tell me."

"I shielded it from the worst of the blast," he says, flat and monotone. There's no starlit glint in his eyes; they're dead, withered, two pits of despair that reverberate with infinite loss. He unrolls it from its binding and looks away. "But I'm afraid that the damage was enough."

The parchment inside is curled and blackened. Hairline cracks zigzag across the charred surface, and the once-smooth edge is now crumbling. The comforting blue glow is weak, sputtering on and off in irregular intervals, each weaker than the last. At least a quarter of it is illegible, and another half is nearly so. The runes that Ilo reads so effortlessly are now lost to his own power.

"Can you fix it?" I whisper, horror crackling through my gut.

I know Ilo's answer before he shakes his head. "I'm sorry, chiriku. I've already tried."

Wrought with guilt, I bring my head back down to rest on whatever soft thing Ilo placed on the ground. We're still at the site of the kongamato's attack, and the sky is still a foreboding blackness, far above the stone that shelters us from sight. I'm nestled in a small dip in the ground, and Ilo's cloak is lain over me. He has only his thin tunic to keep the deep cold away.

"Here, take this back," I say, trying to give it back to him, but as I move, agony lances up my arms. "Ow. Ow. Stars above, that really hurts."

"You sustained some terrible burns," Ilo says. "I didn't think you'd be hit." He pauses. "I healed your jaw and leg, but if I'm honest with you, Akia, you're lucky to be alive. You'll be in pain for a while."

"How long?" I ask, wincing.

"Drink some tea," he replies, instead of answering my question. "It'll help."

"How long?" I insist, and then start to cough. Fear cleaves through me. Am I contracting the winter-cough?

Ilo dabs at my face with a damp cloth, sighing. "Years. Maybe the rest of your life. Burns like these are hard to recover from."

There's not much I can say to that, so I hold my tongue, rather thinking about how much more difficult my quest to save my family has become.

She has Masega...

I force myself to throw the cloak off. "You're the Sun," I snap. The pain irritates me further. "Can't you heal me?"

"I've done what I can," he responds in an equally brusque tone.

My head whips around to stare him straight in the face. Somewhere in my heart I know his words and apology alike are genuine, but the anger is too strong for any sympathy to win out. There are lives at stake. I can't be lounging around while the Moon does whatever she pleases!

"Try harder," I snarl.

Raw hurt flashes in the apothecary's face. His back straightens from its slumped position. "I told you, I've done what I can!"

"It isn't enough!"

He gasps in half a breath and in that moment all of the fight in him drains away. "I know it's not enough." When he meets my gaze again, still impassioned by rage at Karyan, at myself, at the burns that dare to delay my passage, he seems to have aged several lifetimes. "Don't you think I wish it was enough?"

There's a poignant silence as my fury like his falls away. "Why do you care so much?"

"I can't tell you that yet."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't pertain to you," he murmurs, but there's the smallest echo of bitterness in his words, and a chime of regret that suggest that he's not telling the whole truth. "Please don't pursue it. Everything to do with this only leads to more pain."

"I want to trust you," I persist, infusing every ounce of sadness I've ever felt into my voice. "Can't you...?"

"No." He's firmer this time. I decide to let the matter drop.

"Then I guess I'll have to trust you blindly." I glance around. "Where's Sama?"

He turns his attention to the sky. "I sent her back."

"Back?" I don't understand. "Back where? To your hut?" I pause. "Is she fetching supplies? She's still coming with us, isn't she?"

"Sama will return," he replies. "And I've commanded her to bring fresh aloe, to put on your burns. But she will journey with us no longer. Akia, you must go alone once we reach the entrance to the Anderlands."

"What -" I begin. He shushes me by spooning tea into my mouth. I spit it out. "What you mean, go alone? I have no map! There's not a chance I can make it by myself!"

Ilo scrutinizes the burns covering my arms. "You're going to have to."

-----

IT HAS BEEN A WHILE AND I'M SORRY. This chapter was especially difficult to write because I had a lot of small talk and stuff and I wanted to be able to make it interesting while still capturing the essence of the plot. It took forever to write and edit, LET ME TELL YOU. So tell me your honest opinion - is this a little bit boring or is it fine as is? Please answer in the comments below!
It's Snowfall, and peace out!