The wind howls.

Oh, does it howl.

It never ceases in its fury nor its strength, determined to keep this lifeless room to itself. It claws at the floor, the wall, screaming its triumph in its solitude to anyone who will listen. It doesn't know of the faint lives hidden, dormant, in its walls and hidden in its stone.

Up at the very top its domain hang powerful monuments of rock, stalactites sharpened to a point by time and wind. One such structure seems ushered towards the wall where warm, sweltering cross currents from vents caress the stone on one side, whilst the other lay open and whipped to the vicious winds. It was there that a flicker of gold and amber twinkled in the low light of the room before the lights vanished without a trace.

Unheeded by others, unheeded by even the winds themselves, the stone surrounding the polished topaz was worn away while at the same time it grew within its stone womb. The life within was completely unaware of the circumstances that lay around it, nor of the deadly amount of open air beneath it, and it slept and dreamt its sweet, peaceful dreams as it huddled closer and closer to the heat and its loving embrace. Warmth was all it knew, all it wanted, its only alternative to the howling winds at its back.

It had no idea that, as time passed, more of its shell was showing than hidden, and its chrysalis was growing too weighty to support, like a dewdrop on an icicle that had gathered enough water to fall. It was ripe for the picking, and the winds were hungry to do so and collect another life. And still, the life slept on. Heat licked at its dreams, giving it sweet kisses of flame, cinder and soot, wrapping fingers around his neck with such slow tenderness that brought him an indescribable feeling of peace. Those fingers reached the back of his skull, and began to burn.

His brow furrowed inside his chrysalis. No, it....it wasn't supposed to feel like this. This hurt. He shivered at the feeling, but it only increased in its intensity. It burned, it burned, and he needed to get away, escape, run till he left this flame behind. He thrashed around, his hoof coming up against the chrysalis wall, and with a clawing desperation, he sent his hoof crashing against the barrier that imprisoned him.

With a will comes a way, and his hoof sent a perfect slate of his chrysalis out into the open air to dive down into the room's maw, greedily consumed by the winds. He was buffeted by too many things at once: his chrysalis splintering under and around him, the stalactite frame that kept him aloft shook and fractured, sending miniscule pebbles and dust down after the slate, and the howling winds he was always shying away from screamed and reached into his shell. The flames around his neck and the winds around clawing and grabbing at his legs made him cry out and thrash, opening the wounds in the stone and crystal more and more.

The void below beckoned to him, stretching, seemingly pushing the shelves underneath him that could save his life out of the way.

"Speech."

The distressed child kicked and violently thrashed in his broken cradle, blind and unaware of the dangers underneath him. His sweet and peaceful dreams had been taken from him violently, and the gentle warmth had reneged on its promise to keep him safe. All he knew now was the wind that wanted to devour him, and the fire at the back of his neck that was already sinking in its teeth. He cried out and made one more kick - and the splinters in the stalactite above him could take no more and fractured clean through.

He was falling before he even realized what was happening, his chrysalis falling away from him. His thoughts stopped in that endless moment, his distress, his pain, his breath, seized by the stranglehold of fear that stole away all else. Death yawned beneath him, waiting, grinning.

One heartbeat, two. A cry in the silence that didn't come from him, a denial of death. Three. Cold arms wrapped around him and his eyes flew open. Four, he caught a glimpse of his savior, this creature wrapped in shadows and stretched proportions in the glints and embers that emanated from himself like fractured candlelight. Five, they crashed into the ground, and for a moment those arms became a necessary prison that almost crushed him in the impact. Six, seven, eight, they both lay there, stunned. Nine, his savior stirred, looking first at him, then away.

It was over before he knew it. He couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't register the words that the creature uttered until they had left. Heat rolled off of him in waves, sending off tiny embers that licked at his hooves and flickered weak light. It was enough to see that another lay hidden in the dark near him, and with all his might, he made his way over to her in a stumbling crawl.

The shock broke as soon as he reached her and he had collapsed to the ground near her, his embers finding solace in her fur. The terror that stole his mind from him cracked and shattered, leaving only a frightened child that had seen the maws of death in his very first moments, and the result of that was shuddering tears and soft, muffled sounds of crying as he leaned into the girl's flank.

"Speech."