My attempt at a poetic post I do not own "A Song of Storm and Fire" by Yuki Kajiura, and this particular version that Ralla sings is the slower, softer version. ALSO: Where is says 'The white ash of snow has fallen' is the interlude where Ralla goes off into Serena Reserve to go wood chopping in a thread occuring on the same day :3

The day before she was supposed to leave... Everything seems so...surreal... Like a dream. From the moment she had woken up, Ralla had felt listless. The world around was silent, the few intruding sounds fading elsewhere but a moment after their appearance. Her and Kemo's adoptive children, Ayasha and Saphrina, were safe in the Town Hall (at least she believed so) and thus she allowed herself to drift in and out between the reality that everyone saw and the reality she believed.

By the Great Fire she reminisced her rekindling of it, moving some of the outlying logs further towards the center with a gentle toss or nudge. How often did she pray to its power? How often did she feed its hungry tongues? How often did she travel between its answers and the moon's? She realized, she had begun to turn to the Great Fire and Spirits more often than the moon, even though it continued to send her premonitions. Are they one in the same? Had she been orthodox and strictly devot to the moon, she would've reasoned with herself that the moon had power over the fire, ergo it called to Ralla. But life had taught Ralla otherwise. There were thousands of religions, beliefs, traditions, and cultures. What one chose to believe in became their magic--their power--and it was then undisputed from that person's heart and soul. For Ralla, that had once been the moon. But now, in AniWaya, she saw the magic in all the surrounded her, and not just in the sky. If she looked to the earth, the trees and flowers were the stars; the worlds within worlds. The lands that dotted the world were the planets; the unknown and unexplored. The moon was her heart; no matter that it didn't show, it was inconstant and fickle, yet it shined bright when it could. And the Great Fire the sun; the center, the light, the life.

She lifted herself from her temporary reflection, still drifting in and out on the sea of the unconscious, to attend to her duties on the day before her leave. J'adore would care for the fire in her stead as Chief Dawali could not, for the time. She would not have it go out again in such a manner, especially one such as ignorance. Ralla went to the Town Hall and found her daughters sleeping; serene expressions on their faces early in the morning. In silence she prepared the tools for J'adore use out of courtesy and care, an old woman-like quality coming about her as she thought on the world. She was far too young to trouble herself with such worries, many would say. But perhaps it was because her soul seemed older than her body, which was something she could hardly help. Taking a cloth and some of the tallow soap, Ralla began to clean the blades of the three axes kept in the Town Hall storage. Her own axe she kept apart--the one Ember had gifted her--and tended to in her spare time. The axes were of varying sizes--made for different sizes of wood--and she hefted them with minor ease now. Her once lanky arms had grown lean muscle (bulk seemingly impossible to grow on the wolfess) long before, although that was partially because of her earlier journeying and running. Before she knew it, she was humming a song that the gypsies had sung. She let out an un-ladylike snort, finding that their songs plagued her mind more than the songs she had grown up with. But theirs are so...mystical. They don't just speak of one thing, but many. It fascinated her, she supposed, that the similarities between different tribes and packs and wolves were so strong, even if they differed as vehemently as the worlds that were scattered across the universe.

She sang the words softly, slowly, so that perhaps they only echoed in her own ears like a forgotten memory and that they may become a lullaby to Saphrina's and Ayasha's ears. They were nonsense words, they seemed at first, but the gypsies had danced around their own dispersed fires while singing the song in its entirety, shadows playing on their pelts in harmony to the shadows of the woods and plains. Fire--such a capricious creature--could live forever, if one fed it enough. But more often they were doused, their souls destroyed by the whims of finite creatures. "A beautiful cup, gilded, stands before you, she recited to herself, placing one axe down and taking up another. "Use it and it will tarnish, wear, and eventually shatter. Let it stand, and it will last for a thousand years." The Long-Gones had not been so wise. Look where their arrogance had gotten them. But wolves were the same, if not more favored and fit. They were, essentially, mortal. Gone in a turn of the seasons, the blink of star, the sigh of the ocean tides.

Ralla turned an axe handle in her palm, marvelling at its structure, its grip, its weight, its potential. She placed it down and meandered to where Sugar was, taking him from the others and strapping to him two baskets that could easily carry wood. The snow had buried the cart she normally used, and she did not know whether it would be fit for use after her return or not. For the last time for a long while, Ralla and Sugar set off in the deep forest to replenish the firewood.

The white ash of snow had fallen.

She did it with cheer because she knew she was being of use, but her mind wandered elsewhere as she searched for suitable wood. Not all of the wood could be used immediatly, so she put those into the left basket, reminding herself that those would have to be dried. In the right she placed the dry logs fit for immediate burning. She had, at the very least, begun to learn the different tree and wood types, since she had no memory for herbs. Pine was littered all around their lands, but there was also red oak, birch, spruce (of all sorts), maple, and ash. Each had its own scent, grain, sap, and moisture content that affected its burning. Personally, Ralla used the maple for her personal fire because she enjoyed the scent it gave off when burned. But the Great Fire she did not often feed it to because it was also high in moisture. Instead it was fueled with a majority of birch and oak, which had been the first scent she had ingrained into her memory when she had arrived.

Sugar trudged back up the hills of the quiet world to the village center where Ralla took some logs and placed them directly into the Great Fire. The warmth was welcome and familiar, the gentle sting of an ember a greeting, the billowing smoke a caress. She did not mind its power--even if her eyes watered in protest--because she had learned the tricks to avoid such unpleasantries (moving upwind, callousing her hands, etc.). The feathers and salts she had thrown in earlier in the month had long been burned along with those logs and the ash of the fire before the one blazing then. It was such a hungry, hungry thing.

She was bereft of much else to do--the snow covered the ceremonial stone ground, the firewood was chopped, the Gata Hineyus dutifully delivered their stock to the rest of the tribe--and so she was also thankful that it had become so late in the day. She was tired, and she walked with half-lidded eyes to drop the dry logs off in the Town Hall. Throughout the day Ayasha and Saphrina may or may not've moved about, although she found them almost exactly where she remembered leaving them that morning. Somewhere in the woods of AniWaya there was a bare spot where Ralla had taken wood, and perhaps she should've thought to teach the Gata Hineyus about not over-harvesting the forest, if they did not know such knowledge already. Effectively, she had dedicated most of her consciousness to her path and new life; what other validation of assimilation to AniWaya did she need anymore?

Welcoming blankets enfolded Ralla into warmth, the netting of her hammock strong, her weight barely bending the two supporting poles. Kemo would be in, soon, from whatever diversion he had found himself in that day. Although the village was still undergoing repairs, everyone that day had almost seemed to disappear into the winds, as if there had been a moment of silence before her leave. The silence would be gone when she opened her eyes again, of that much she was sure. She felt it deep within her bones. She felt it in her dreams; a restless fire flickering behind heavy eyes.

Moon walks. "Moon talks." Moon thinks.