When Thirra awoke, she was alone.

She had swallowed back a cry of alarm: she was no child, now, and she knew that the world could offer more cruelty than kindness. How she had come to lay here, nestled in a meadow that burned red and brown, Thirra could not recall. But if she wanted to find her sister, she had to be subtle and clever. No matter how much her heart yearned for her to blaze forward like the vegetation of this land.

She did not know how far she walked in this unfamiliar landscape before, at last, she found what she sought. She caught her sister's scent on the winds that came down the rolling slope, and Thirra trotted over cool, hard earth at a swift pace. There was a coldness within the ground she was unused to, and Thirra wondered if beneath the soft ground ice lingered. Yet she could not mull over these questions for long, for she spotted a cream-and-brown shape up ahead. Somehow, she knew it was her--even if, dimly, she recalled that once, neither of them wore the shapes they did now.

Sisko! (Sister) Thirra called out, her long limbs picking up speed.