Lara stood at the top of the cliffs, her heart pounding hard.  She looked across the expanse of rock at Nicolas, her heart in her throat.
           
“Are you certain you want to do this, Lara?  I can do it for you,” Nicolas offered.
           
She shook her head.  “Terry and Gerald were my friends, the closest thing I had to family really.  I was passed around so much as a child, I had problems with the concept of trust and camaraderie.  A team of expert cavers was formed in order to conduct a study in Greenland.  I was looking for extremophiles for the University to study and both Terry and Gerald were part of a team studying global warming.”
           
Nicolas studied her drawn face.  She needed this, whether he liked it or not.

“The conditions were extreme cold and very dangerous, the winds were terrible.  Unlike Carpathians who can shift and float down a moulin, we have to go down on a thin rope, terrified the rope is going to ice up.  When you do that with someone, when you rely on them for your life, they come to matter to you.  Gerald and Terry were like me.  Neither had anybody and we’d sit together, huddled in a tent, listening to that awful wind.  Terry would tell the funniest stories.”

Feeling the heavy stone weighing her down, the sorrow and guilt pushing at her, Nicolas framed her face with his hands.  “You didn’t do this, Lara.”

“I honestly didn’t think my childhood was real.  It seemed such a hazy dream, but I kept searching and I kept taking them with me.”

“You can’t go into an ice cave alone,” he pointed out.  “You need climbing partners.”

Lara looked down at the two urns, both containing ashes of her two friends.  Nicolas’s explanation wouldn’t remove the guilt she felt, not for a long time—if ever.  Both had suffered terribly before they’d died.  When Terry had yanked the snake head from his ankle, he’d dumped an entire mass of parasites into his system.  Gregori had fought long and hard to remove them and everyone thought he was okay, that he just needed rest.  Gerald had gone back to his room to shower and no one had checked him.  But she should have.  She’d been preoccupied with her past rearing up and with Nicolas claiming her, changing her life for all time.

“There isn’t an excuse—not for any of us,” Lara said.  “They were good men.  Brave men.  Both descended five hundred feet into rapidly changing caves in order to get what was needed for research.  And both of them were so funny.  I didn’t really know how to have fun until I met them.”

Nicolas caressed the top of her hair.  “I’m glad the three of you found each other.  You probably enhanced their lives as much as they did yours.”  He wished he hadn’t been so jealous, his primitive side refusing to share her, not thinking to check on her friends.  Mikhail was right in thinking they needed to enlist the aid of humans, widen their circle of trusted friends.  His family had a symbiotic relationship with a human family and had for many centuries, yet they still didn’t trust others.  If they were going to survive the coming war with Xavier, the Carpathian people were going to have to have allies.

“The blue and white stripes in the caves indicate age, the summers and winters, just like bands on a tree.  As the years pass, the bands compress into these very thin lines.  Gerald was obsessed with counting them,” she laughed softly remembering.  “One time we were in this rapidly changing pit.  We’d measured the walls and knew that the conditions were deteriorating much faster than we’d anticipated.  Terry and I were like running for our lives.  The walls were creaking and groaning and we were showered with ice shards.  Terry was getting claustrophobia.  And there was Gerald, calmly counting the bands, like we had all time in the world.  Terry finally clipped a carabineer to his rig and jerked on it like a leash attached to a dog to get Gerald moving.  I was laughing so hard I could barely make the climb.”

She rubbed her wrist, a habit she couldn’t seem to break.  “The ice world is beautiful, with unbelievable color, but it’s so cold.  Even waiting for the right conditions, huddling in a tent with the wind whipping around you and your hands so numb you can’t grip anything, just going to the bathroom is hazard.  Ice explodes around you and it rains shards and slivers.  You only have each other.”

Nicolas pulled her into his arms.  “We will keep some of their ashes in our cave.  They would like that.  We can find a niche for them and you can have a memorial there, but let me do this with you.  Instead of you shifting and trying to harness the urns on you, let me carry you through the skies.  I’ll fly over the mountains they loved so much and if you want do scatter some of the ashes, you can, if not, we’ll give them a send off to the heavens.”

“Both always wanted to fly.  They climbed so much, but both of them would spread their arms out sitting on a rope and pretend they were flying.  I want to give them that.”

Nicolas nodded.  “I’ll shift and you climb onto my back.”

He was already changing, feathers spreading across his body, his form morphing, wings dipping to allow her to climb on.  Lara wiped at the tears on her face and picked up the urns.  She couldn’t bring them back, but she could give them their dream.