War raged as they fled.

Leo rode left, solid and patient, such even ground that his fellow soldiers never suspected the depths of his passions, the chasms of his commitment.

Jin rode right, laughing and clever, careless and mercurial as the wind he took for his second name.

And she always in between. Jin had been correct: she was cold as snow upon the mountain, as inexorable as the tide, as pitiless as an undertow.

Earth, air, water. But if she prayed, Mei decided, it would be to the spirit of the fire they made, the three of them together.

(100 words)

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