I love the sound of new foliage.

Birdsong is such a lovely season with its brilliant colours and vibrant sounds. I have found such solace in our new home, too, for there are so many interesting hues to explore. The waterfall, for example, ever audible in the background, pounds blue-white on my retinas. Today, various colours are interlaced with one another across this background. Birds call and serenade one another, pulling yellows and reds and oranges into the fray; the light breeze caresses the flowers blooming in the valley, offering light violets and pinks, as though they are a wine for the tasting; and, of course, there are the vibrant greens of windswept foliage. I am giddy with the beauty of it all, intoxicated with my lust for the colours.

I stand upon glass slippers at the base of a large, deciduous tree, a rarity in the pine-dotted landscape of the Hidden Falls. My view contains the crumbling mountainside and the myriad waterfalls and pools that dot its rocks, and my pupil-less gaze meanders along the rivulets and the rainbows that shimmer in the sunlight, and I shiver with delight. How did we become so very blessed as to reside here? I had never been impressed with the Windtossed Foothills, for they had never had the most interesting of landscapes - but this, this with which the God of the Earth had gifted our leader... well, it is simply heavenly.

A thought occurs, and I correct myself: our leaders, for we no longer have just one. My thoughts turn to the steed who has risen to stand beside my half-sister as Czar of this land. He is perhaps the most normal of all of us, and I cannot help but pity him for being alone among the institutionalized. I had entered their ranks both to offer my loyalty to Seele and to soothe the insanity in their midst, but of late I have begun to accept that the latter is a lost cause. Our family loves its insanity, and they have no desire to lose what makes them so unique. I can understand that, and respect it, even if I am not as lost in my own mind as they.

I have not seen traces of the ghosts that live in my skull in quite a while, presumably because all has been quiet. Helovia seems to have fallen under a spell after emerging from the underground caverns that had been our home for over a season. I wonder if it is false hope that leads me to relax so beneath the branches of this lovely tree, or if we have truly ended our struggles. Somehow, I am sure that at least one of the herds - or perhaps an outcast band, as we had been not so long ago - are plotting some manner of mischief. I can only hope that we are not its target.

"Talk talk talk."

Tag :: @[Midas]; all others, please ask before joining this thread!