I posted a couple of these on ao3 the other day and forgot to post them here! I need to see if I can get more characters added for this fandom

Shiloh had spent a lot of time alone. Most of her life, in fact. Of course, it was not by her own choice, and that only made it all the worse.

The ghost town in the sixth circle wasn't the ideal place to be alone, either. For one thing, there were the almost-ghosts of the dragons in Dragon's Rest, giving the illusion of company but never providing any real, tangible companionship.

And for another- there just wasn't much of anything to do there.

Now, looking around the caverns that used to be underground mines, Shiloh had to reconsider her idea of 'nothing to do.'

In the ghost town, there had been buildings to go in, to look around. It was obviously not the place she had wanted to spend her time, but there were at least things she could find to pass the time.

The mines were bleak. They were empty caverns. No buildings, no people, other than those who were trapped here. This was not an echo of a lived-in town; this was a hole carved into the ground.

All that to say that underground caverns were not suitable living situations for humans.

"How long have you lived here again?" Shiloh asked Sapphira, wiggling her feet in the water of the hot springs.

"Something like five thousand years," Sapphira answered from where she sat to Shiloh's right.

"I can't imagine," said Bonnie, voicing what Shiloh was thinking. She'd known Sapphira had been here a long time, but that long-

"When I lived in the sixth circle, it was almost like this," Shiloh began. "But it wasn't nearly that long."

"And I'm glad it wasn't," Sapphira answered with a soft and sad smile.

Shiloh just smiled back, thinking better of saying "me too" out loud because it would've felt rude in that situation.

It was quiet again for a few moments, except for the rushing of the springs. "How did you do it?" Bonnie asked.

"How…?" Sapphira blinked at her, considering her answer. "What else could I have done? That was it, I think. There was nothing else I could've done." She looked back at the water.

Shiloh and Bonnie just nodded. It was hard to come up with a response to that. Shiloh could barely wrap her mind around the timespan- she thought she probably had a better chance than most normal people, what with being stuck at the same age for forty years or so, but that was less than a tenth of one thousand, which was only a fifth of the time Sapphira had been alive. She thought it must be difficult to completely comprehend that long of a time for anyone, unless you'd been alive to witness it.

"What about you, Shiloh?" Bonnie asked, turning to her.

"Me?" Shiloh paused for a minute. She'd forgotten that Bonnie's question could apply to both of the other girls. "Well, honestly, I didn't handle it very well for a while," she said with a laugh. "It was worst before I got used to it, but even then it almost felt like a nightmare rather than real life a lot of the time." She saw Sapphira nodding in agreement.

"At least we're not alone this time." Sapphira spoke up again, now just staring into the darkness in front of her. "This is what I'm here for. To help other people go through what I did, but to make it better for you than it was for me. If that means I have to stay here longer, I think it's worth it."

Shiloh thanked her out loud, while Bonnie looked like she would've just hugged Sapphira if she'd been sitting close enough. That was a big deal, to be worth going back exactly where you didn't want to go.

"Like you said, at least we're not alone this time," Bonnie said finally when she'd gotten it together, wiping at her eye a little like she'd almost cried. "It'll be better since we have each other."

Shiloh had to agree. She could go through the whole thing again, but at least this time she had these amazing girls with her to support each other through it.

we're not meant to live this life alone