It is trust, Asterin realises, that drives her life. Trust in what, she does not know exactly. She knows however, that she stopped trusting in the witches around her long before the days of wyverns and war had ever started.
She trusts in her wyvern, she decides, trusts her blue specked wings and her scaly, strong back. Trusts her black, keen eyes and the spikes on her spine and her sharp claws and fangs.
She trusts in the wind. She trusts in the wind to carry her, to hold her in its arms and lull her across the endless skies. She trusts in the currents and the clouds and the Goddess watching over them all.
She trusts in bravery with just a tint of madness. In Valg blood smeared on her claws and rebellion raging in her lungs and grief-tainted insanity on her iron fangs.
Then, then, goddess, then Asterin feels her heart skip a beat, and her senses tingle in a way she's almost forgotten, a way almost foreign, but not quite. Never forgotten, her heart whispers, and a murmur rises in her, and answer to the scream that spreads around the world.
Her wyven yelps and she looks forward and sees, hears and feels her First's intake of breath. A tell-tale whisper follows suit up on Asterin's spine, fingers clicking against water, witchlings playing in the sun and a lover's soft caress, all as she notes the changes in Manon's expression, and feels them mirror her own.
Disbelief. Doubt. Certainty. Madness. Greatness. Immortality. Her jaw trembles from the excitement of it, from the sheer power flowing through her bones, and tears well up in her eyes as magic returns to the world.
When, for the first time in a long, long while, Manon's ice melts, and that ice calls to her fire, Asterin can only follow, as she always has and the world falls into place once more.
Black meets teary gold and two witches roar as one, tearing into the gleaming sky, drunk on magic.