(Author's Note: Whoo, I cannot tell you guys how long I have been working on this story itself. In the original file, the scroller at the side is half an inch long. HALF. AN. INCH.

Soul is a character of my own imagination, and so are Blaze and Renier. (I have no idea why Chrome thinks Renier is spelled wrong, but oh well.))

Chapter 1

Goodbyes

"It's today, isn't it?"

Soul turned her face to the voice.

The voice belonged to a boy with platinum hair and golden yellow eyes.

She nodded slightly and turned away again to study the clouds that she could see from her favorite perch in her mother's forest. The shapes of the wispy mares' tails reflected in her large dark gray eyes.

Often she was this quiet.

Today she'd managed to leave the house without a sound; therefore if her mother was awake she would be greatly worried.

Enough to freak out, maybe.

The whirring of wings reached her ears, and a white hummingbird perched on her shoulder. She stayed quiet, and the hummingbird flew away, only to perch on the branch directly across from her on the next tree.

She was kind of worried for the hummingbird, because if it tried to take off from there it was probably going to get tangled in her thick ebony hair.

Funny.

Often with her greatest friend she was so talkative, but now, with her Sent-Mission so very close, she couldn't say a word.

Maybe because she felt like if she opened her mouth she would start crying.

She turned into a fledgling Sooty Owl and drifted down to the ground.

The leucistic hummingbird followed her and they both turned into humans at the ground's touch.

Soul looked at the face of the best friend she had known since she was young and broke down.

She clasped her arms around Renier and tears streamed from her eyes as she choked out a sob.

After a minute she let go of him, looking again at him.

Soul coughed and said, "God, I hate being like that. I'm sorry, Ren," she apologized.

Renier returned her hug in reply and said, "It's okay, Candle."

"I hate being called that," she said.

"And?" Ren was grinning.

"And my talons are sharper than yours." That was a definite yet joking threat. In the wild an owl like her would eat up a hummingbird like him in seconds.

That made him quiet.

For a moment, at least.

Then he grinned, only having one small canine showing. The look it gave his face unnerved her.

At least I know that's his only canine-for now, she thought.

Soul heard a loud calling in the distance.

"That'll be Mum," she said with a laugh.

"She'll be worried to death," Ren replied. That only made her laugh once more.

"See you when I get back," she said, and turned into her owl and took off into the forest canopy.

Yet when she was flying, there was an odd heaviness in her heart that seemed to say, If ever, if ever...

"So, change of plans," Blaze said to Soul when she arrived back home.

Blaze was a beautiful woman with brown hair and sparkling blue eyes and a pale, thin heart-shaped face like a Barn Owl's. For indeed that was her bird that she herself had chosen when she had come of age.

There was something about Blaze that was kind of gawky, though, and no offense to her mother, but she was a klutz.

And a nerd.

And 50 percent everything that Soul was, including intelligent.

Ramp it up to 80 on the intelligence, the nerdiness, and the gawkiness.

Maybe 40 on the klutziness, she wasn't that much of one.

Neither of them were.

Indeed, there were many things alike about the two, other than one of the less obvious facts-Blaze was a hopeless romantic.

If she were explaining it to someone, she would say, "'Nuff said."

And that is how she would end this conversation now about her mother. For one of her mother's favorite topics was the last Bringer she had been Sent to, whose successors Soul was going to be sent after, but after the "change of plans," she might not even be going at all.

"You're not going after the present successors."

Soul felt ready to scream.

"You're going into the past to meet them and the Bringer four years ago."

Soul's eyes were very wide.

The past?

There were several Sendings-and even some Bringers who could send someone into a previous time, but it was never really tested.

If it was, four years was definitely not a time they had tested yet.

Soul had a very bad feeling about this, especially if by the time she arrived she would be twelve.