Ranuk was grateful that Ursalo remained quiet as they picked their way through the suspiciously empty halls. Ursalo had grown hearing stories of the formidable Dark Elves, the Shadow People, Stone Skin, the boogeymen of his childish fantasies. They had delighted and entranced him ever since he was a hatchling, but he managed to keep from battering Ranuk with questions.<br/><br/>They would come later, for sure, but the gorgon knew better than to pester Ranuk when he was in such a strange mood. The white demon did not know what he felt. Rage, perhaps, but it was a tattered, faded thing, like a flag held aloft for years and years, proudly erected in remembrance but not exempt from the wear of time.<br/><br/>Yes, he was angry, but more so he was homesick for a place that no longer existed. The Dark Elves were an industrious lot, Ranuk had seen their influence everywhere upon their journey through the foothills. Their settlements had dotted the land like ant hills, their square and uniformed fields stamped into what once had been endless seas of grass. Rivers flowed differently, lakes dried up and placed elsewhere, and there were so many roads, etched into the earth like scars.<br/><br/>How long did one have to be gone to truly lose a home? Could he still call it his when he no longer recognized it? When all evidence of his presence was erased?<br/><br/>Nothing smelled right.<br/><br/>He hated it, just as he hated the castle with its enclosed rooms and narrow halls and everything stinking of cold stone. It reminded him too much of the catacombs of the nest, a place he loathed because it was not his home. What injustice was this that he found similarities between the place he wanted to leave and the place he wanted to return to?<br/><br/>Mercifully, just as the walls began to close in, he found a doorway out into what seemed to be a garden. There were still walls, yes, but Ranuk could see the open sky above him and feel grass beneath his feet and it was enough to ease the despairing panic in his chest. He wandered into the garden quietly. Ranuk was too distracted in his relief to notice that the place was occupied.<br/><br/>It was nothing like the gardens of Terranula, too tame by far and severely trimmed and groomed. There were many plants Ranuk did not know but there were some that he did. He stopped in his tracks as, finally, something familiar caressed his nose.<br/><br/>In front of him was a small bushel of sweet smelling honeysuckle, the red petals bright and their curling tongues waving in the air. A powerful memory struck him and he had to sit on his haunches as the centuries reversed until he was little more than a child. He remembered how his sire's massive hands plucked the delicate things and he'd hold them so carefully between his lips.<br/><br/>'Look son, a tiny flute!' He would say and Ranuk would laugh and laugh until he fell over in the grass as the massive goat tooted his little flute and danced across the meadow as gaily as a kid. It was such a silly game, such a silly memory of a childhood long over, all but forgotten as the flower did not grow in the swamps. Ranuk's heart ached to remember it again.<br/><br/>Ranuk reached out and plucked a flower between his massive fingers, the blossom as tiny in his grip as it had been in Unak's. He placed it delicately between his lips and then turned to Ursalo, standing close by.<br/><br/>"Look son," Ranuk said behind closed lips, "a tiny flute."<br/><br/>Ursalo blinked, stunned by the bizarre action, and then began to laugh and laugh.