Komali had been huddling, eyes closed and trembling in a small crevice between a stone bench and a brick wall. He hadn't known what kind of building he'd hidden in, only that it was stone and therefore fireproof. His nightmares had been, as always, of fire.

But then the explosion had come— different from before and when he opened his eyes, the creeping lava was gone, and in its place driving winds. The child had rushed to look out the doorless entryway and all unknowing had been swept up like down. The Rito were hardly a heavy people.

Bird had eventually met a wall weakened and crumbling by the typhoon forces, and the unsteady bricks collapsed over and around him. Miraculously, he wasn't dead, or even badly broken, but it was well beyond the young prince to do more than sob and scream— he couldn't lift the weight that threatened to crush the breath out of him as it pressed him into the crack-crazed ground.