Title: Snake Singer

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, but the plot belongs to me.

By the end of the next day we were well on our way to the Mistari lands. Rei and Zane had constructed a make shift litter for me and I rode as comfortably as possible inside its safe confines. I lay mostly on my back but occasionally I turned myself to the side so that I might watch the beauty of the passing scenery. I had never seen these lands from the ground, I was more accustomed to flying over head and seeing an aerial view, and I had never imaged the sear beauty of the wild countryside.

The Mistari lands were unique to Zane and mines people because it was clean and pure; its tree-lined borders had never been tainted by the wicked sin of bloodshed that the war afforded our lands with. Its misty meadows and high cliffs were never blurred with the overpowering sight of death and decay.

I felt alive again, and though I knew full well that the life I would now go on and lead would be completely foreign from the one that I had known all of my life I was confident that I would be at peace with it.

On the road to the palace we found a group of travelers traveling from my now taken over city of Haente; my presses Haente that was supposed to be a symbol of Zane and mines everlasting love, and the everlasting peace that that would bring to our two nations. Discreetly, and not giving away how we were we inquired about the battle and what had happened to the city after it had fallen.

"Destroyed!" An elder man cried, the wrinkles on his face firming slightly as his face changed bitterly. "The rebels came in and destroyed our house... the houses of so many others." The elder man bowed his head and wrapped his arms around the shoulders of a woman how I guessed was his wife. At the litter I watched as three young children fumbled behind them. The oldest child, a boy, who to me looked no older then fourteen held within his long thin arms the limp body of another child; a forth child. I watched the boy hand the sick child over to the mother gently, she took the young one in her arms and I could see that one of the child's arms was missing and a blood-ridden tourniquet was wrapped around the severed limb. "My child!" The father cried out to Zane, their fiery eyes meeting head on. "Look what they did to my child!" The man pointed to the wounded one within the mothers arms, she bent her head down and kissed the dusty child's face, and though I was not a mother myself I knew all two well her pain, her anger, her suffering.

We continued on our way soon after that, though the sight of the family and the wounded child stayed in my mind. How could it happen, how could the war that had taken so much from everyone is starting again.

Twilight approached the land quickly and before I knew it, and as the first hint of stars formed in the sky we encountered our first Mistari guard. The large orange and black Bangle Tiger casually watched us from the end of the road. Its gigantic paws striking the ground hard as it paced back and forth across the road. I heard Rei approach it, his feet making an uneven sound against the ground. He called out to the animal, first in the ancient Mistari tongue and then in ancient avian that I understood perfectly. "We come baring no harm, peace is our only wish, let us pace!" I watched, half turned on my side as the tiger looked him over, his long yellowish teeth protruding from underneath its furry mouth. I heard a slight growl escape its lips but soon the tiger slacked, his hind feet resting against the ground as if he were comfortable with out presence, and within a matter of seconds the tiger had morphed into a young woman with dark black hair, her height barely five feet tall which was amazing sense in her tiger form she was at least six feet long. The woman was slender and she wore a simple uniform of slacks, a white shirt, and tanned vest with Mistari symbol's embroidered in them.

The woman hastily introduced herself as Chiyo and apologized for not recognizing whom we were when we first arrived. As we talked by the litter another tiger emerged from the trees on the side of the road and stood alert as he searched Chiyo out. "It is all right Paulo." She called out to him and he bowed his head as if he understood and moved back into the shadows of the trees. "Come." Chiyo instructed us, "I will take you to the city, and the Disa and Dio will be most pleased to see that you are safe."

Chiyo lead us down the road further, she returned to her tiger form and we followed her at a brisk pace, a tigers speed was incredible, even when it was just walking. Chiyo lead us past the high walls of stone that I had seen and recognized from my last trip her as being where the tigers slept on warm days.

Several minutes latter we were lead into the heart of the Mistari city. The high stone walls giving way to a full city of streets that were lined with small, or large houses and in the center of it all stood the Mistari palace, which was far more luxurious then the Keeps that Zane and I had both grown up in. The Mistari were an art loving people with a desire for love and beauty rather then war. Its society was practically a painting in progress, a great work of art that was forever changing and evolving but always becoming more beautiful.

When the palace gate opened I was surprised to see the Disa and Dio themselves waiting for us there. The Dio embraced Zane firmly as though they were old friends, which if I recall correctly they were once when they were children. I heard him say loudly "We all thought that you were dead!"

The Disa, with her long robes of draped fabric hanging from her skirts and sleeves approached me and with her thick main of black hair that nearly went down to her ankles she kneeled beside the litter and placed her warm hand on my cheek and whispered lightly. "It is good to see you and Zane safe Danica!"

Several of the Mistari guards showed Zane and I to our room, which was thankfully much better and much more desired then the caves that overall we had all spent a week in. Zane and Rei both walked on either side of me as if an attacker would jump out from the very walls of the palace and attack.

We were lead to a large room with white walls and a large bed with silk beadings and large painting hanging from the wall. Beautiful designs and symbols splashed with color against the thick canvas and hung with gold colored designs that made up frames. I was in awhh of it beauty, the room that I stayed in before when I was hear seemed nothing like this and I gasped at the uniuqeness of it. The Mistari guards took me from the litter and placed me on the bed and before I knew it they had all disappeared behind the open doorway that lead out into the hallway.

"Are you all right?" Zane asked, placing his hand on my cheek and kissing me sweetly, his lips brushing ever so softly against mine.

"I feel better now that I am here." I whispered back, his face still so close to mine that I could feel his soft breath against my skin.

"I hope we are not interrupting!" Said the voice of the Dio as he entered the room through the same open doorway. Zane lifted himself up quickly, but he was not ashamed of the affection that he was showing. "Zane, will take an audience with me, their are some pressing matters that I think you should hear of." I lifted my hand up and wrapped my fingers around his wrist as if to stop him and he turned to me with questioning eyes, I knew that he wanted to go but still...

"It is all right Danica, it is not dangerous." The Dio confirmed, his eyebrows raising as if giving Zane a secret code.

Zane smiled at me, but I could see a slight nod of his head as he turned back towards me and said: "I'm sure that it will only take a moment, I will return soon." I bowed my head, I knew he would go even if I did protest, but my objection would only make it harder for him. I released my firm grip form his hand. Within a moment he was gone, following the Dio out the door to discuses what I could only dread as more bad news.

"Do not fret Danica, I'm sure that it is something trivial and unimportant!" The Disa, with her tall slim said to me. She moved from the doorway toward me, the lose fabric of her gown flowing gently with her movement. She sat on the bed beside me, her thin and beautiful face looked chiseled within thousands of Disa's before her and I could recognize a peace within her that I myself longed to have. She pushed aside the long black hair from the sides of her face and her high cheekbones stood out against her milky skin. "I have sent from the doctor, and he will be here in the morning to tend your wounds, though I'm sure that Zane did a good enough job at that." I smiled, and couldn't stop a slight laugh that past through my lips, and she too laughed.

"Tell me, for I must know, what has happened to it all?" I asked, my voice cracking with the pain that I was now realizing that I felt for the destruction of so much, and that little child in the mothers arms, a mothers arms who will never be able to give her child back its innocence.

"Danica, you have no place their now. The rebels will never allow you back there; they are angry and do not understand now that anger only spurs on more anger. The people are suffering yes, but it is no longer your duty to help them, you have done all that you can do for them." Her words were wise, and I found myself comforted, and hanging on every word that she said. She rose up, her long gown again swaying with the gentle movements that her body gave. She approached the window and with only a slight swipe of her finger she pulled back the long curtain and looked out at the blackened night and the small gaps of light coming from the houses below, and then off in the distance, for miles was the darkness of the forest that seemed so deadly know. I looked out at it, the sky that went on for miles as though it were a hand outstretched and searching for something, but for what I knew not.

"That is all that it is Danica!" She said, looking back at me. "It is just land and sky, and we as leaders, we lead our people we do not own them, we cannot control them as easily as we would like." I understood her, her words striking me like a knife against the thick binding of my skin. If nothing else in my life I understood her words. I felt like a child just being awakened to the world; I had never thought of my position in such a way and it seemed to calm my sadness for what had happened.

"Is that how you see yourself?" I asked delicately.

She turned back out to the window, her long hair blowing from a slight breeze: "I can see myself only as one of them." I watched her now, expecting anticipating another word, but the footsteps entering the room sent my head spinning around. It was Zane who had come back and before I knew it the Disa was gone and the door was closed.

"Zane?" I cried, holding out my arms for him and he gladly filled them, his eyes distant though, and I longed to fill them. "What happened, what did the Dio say to you?"

"It was as he said, nothing dangerous!"

I asked him several more times what had gone on in the other room and what was said, but that is all that he would say of it. It was as he said, nothing dangerous! I wanted to know more, but soon he was drifting off to sleep in my arms and I in his and all thought of the mysteries conversation left my mind. I had sweet dreams that night, for the first time in so many nights and I felt calm and relaxed when the next morning I awoke, but if only I had known the true danger that was about to embark on us all...