DISCLAIMER: Rayearth belongs to CLAMP.

-- A Tiny Feather of Love --

With Eagle as the new Pillar and everyone's hearts wishing for peace, Cephiro was quickly restored to its former beauty.

It took much longer for Alcyone to recover. After being freed from Debonair's control, she'd discovered that she was no longer able to use magic. Of course she realized this must mean that somewhere in heart she did not want to be able to use magic anymore.

Eventually, with time, the pain of her lost love faded... leaving her heart empty. She was like a robot, going through her days on auto-pilot.

Robot. Auto-pilot. Those were words that wouldn't even have made any sense to her before the engineers from Autozam came to Cephiro to study the Pillar system in the hope that it could help them solve their own country's problems. Sometimes she just sat and watched them work, although she had no idea what they were doing.

Once, Eagle sat with her and tried to explain about computers and machines. By the time he was finished explaining, the only thing she had really learned was that Eagle had a definite enthusiam for the workings of machines.

"You didn't understand any of that, did you?" he asked, with an apologetic smile.

Alcyone laughed and shook her head. "Not a word of it."

As Eagle watched, the laughter died in her throat and her expression changed to one of confusion. Alcyone couldn't remember the last time she had laughed, the last time she had felt anything that wasn't despair, the last time she had actually felt anything...

She felt something now, a fluttering warmth in the formerly barren wasteland of her heart. The truth hit her like a lightning bolt - she was falling for Eagle.

She stood up abruptly, stepping away from him.

"Perhaps I shall travel to Autozam and see where these things come from. Maybe then I would gain a better understanding of it," she said.

Perhaps. Maybe. Those were the words she'd used, but her mind was already made up. She was leaving. She would keep her newly born love a secret.

She would not repeat Zagato's mistake. She owed him that, at least.

-end-

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