When she tired of people, of their chatter and their lies and their senselessness, she'd run, and run, and run until she found a place long untouched by sentinet beings. Then she would sit on the dry, cracked earth—in the searing sun or the dim shade—and she would place her hands on the ground, turn her face up to the sky, and simply be.

Fire always caught her attention first. Loud, brash, and hungry, ever hungry, Fire howled in her senses and screamed for more, more, more. It would catch her in its cacophany and whirl her around, until she became Fire, and hungered with it.

Then playful Wind would come and snatch her out of angry Fire's grasp, as Fire roared in fury behind her. Bouncing and spinning through the air, revelling in the freedom of going where she wanted. Watching Wind tease and torment, laughing with it and flying with it until she did not know where the sky began and where she ended.

Water's serenity would attract her then, as she skimmed the surface of a still lake. Moody Water, who could be calm, or wrathful, or joyous, or hurried. She would flow with the swift rivers, crash against rocks, trip down streams, fall with the rain.

And finally, soaking through cracks and dirt, and sinking to the bottom of the deepest crevasses, she would find Earth. Steady, patient Earth, for whom eternities passed in seconds. She would shift through Earth's layers of silt and dirt and rock until she rested in its molten core. Wrapped in all of Earth, warm, protected, she found the mother she had always wanted.

Slowly, slowly, she would withdraw from her safe haven, her spirit trickling back into her body like sand into an hourglass. She would become Ravi Thistlethorn once more, and Fire and Wind and Water and Earth would be there, under her, around her, part of her. And she would smile.