When Centhra woke this morning she did so with an awareness that something was not the same. Her body, after centuries of familiarity did not feel as if it belonged to her. There was a heaviness, an indescribable sense of something going seriously wrong. She could see the sun streaming through the window, but it didn't appear to be as bright. Colors didn't appear true, as if she was peering through a filter of some sort. She knew, without being told that she was changing colors. The look on Darrabar's face said it all. Centhra was on the threshhold of the fading. She opened her mouth but could not create sound. Nothing of substance, just a faint whisper on the wind. One tear escaped her otherwise dry eye and slowly trickled down her cheek. Just one, there was no moisture left for another. She wanted there to be another, she wanted to scream and cry, she was not ready to go. She was not ready to leave Darrabar, the light of her life for all these hundreds of years that she had been his wife. This was not fair, she was only 800 years old. The lifespan of a dragon was half again as long. She wanted her full 1200 years, all of it. She didn't want to lose one minute of the life that should have been alloted her. She did not want to fade this soon.

Darrabar had loved her once, with all the passion and longing his young heart could muster. He loved her still, she was the dear friend and companion that older married couples become. She was the one he relied on, ever present and always faithful. She honored him with her love, with her devotion. Never in his wildest imagination did he think that the fading could come to her this soon. He gathered her to him and lifted her with his arms. "She weighs next to nothing. I had forgotten how light she was." he thought. Carefully he carried her outside into the sunlight while explaining that he needed to take her to Dragons Rock, it was time. She nodded, but his eyes were full of unshed tears and he only knew it because he felt her head move against his shoulder. He felt little, except the anguish of loss and the cold creeping through his body. It was a cold that the morning sun could not relieve. A lonely, abandoned type of cold. The cold of death.

What one dragon knows all know and as he slowly made his way, toward Dragon Rock the others began to join him. First came his children Terla, Algrim and Elgarth with his wife Layla. Then came Muldat and Sarcassa with their family which included Dremia and her sons. He saw Dremia weeping openly for Centhra, and he was pleased. By the time the procession reached Dragon Rock, the entire community had turned out to follow Darrabar and his wife to her final resting place. As he climbed the steps to the top of the rock, the others fanned out and created a semi circle at it's base. Silently they watched as he climbed. Once he laid her down, he kneeled beside her and bowed his head. All was silent and unearthly still. Slowly tiny tendrills of mist began to rise from the rock. First a few light fingers, growing heavier and heavier as time passed. Like fog, they began to envelop the rock and all upon it until the watchers could no longer see anything.

In the end, when the fog lifted all that was left of Centhra was a small pile of silver dust. The ashes were carefully swept into the urn that always remains on the rock. Darrabar mounted the flat section of the rock where Centhra had lain minutes before and walked to it's edge away from the gathered mourners. One swing of his powerful arm emptied the urn into the wind and he stood there watching as the glittering dust of what once was his wife Centhra slowly wafted to the valley floor below. Fighting tears he said the final words of farewell and slowly began his decent down the steps. Back to the world of the living, back to his hunt.