The haunting minstrels faded away, leaving the crisp, golden sun to beckon them from amidst piers and aqueducts, reborn and renewed. She aimed to make the most of it, dancing and waltzing from beyond massive monoliths and towering summits, pretending and obliging in fairy tales again, bounding from rock to rubble, from ruin to repose. While not entirely opulent or taken into incandescent reveries, she was still enticed into rendezvous with the unknown, pulsing and gliding from leaf to bough, nestled and chiseled in the filaments and fineries of warmth. Though scarred, though blighted, though punctured, lanced, and bruised, the Songbird awakened in the sheen of day, casting back the glamour and splendor of the summer’s vestiges, singing and humming as she drifted into the threshold. Her intentions were pure and well founded, searching and exploring the vast regions for more individuals, for more citizens, for more inhabitants to ensure her herd continued its wondrous growth. She breezed past locked gates and beneath clouded branches, Imogen trailing at her heels, chirping and chirruping in the vestal haze, neither paragon nor sinner, caught in between havoc and virtue; they both explored, ventured, dug into soil and soot and sand and stone, extending movements and motions in the shadowy corridors and the pressing villas, twinkling into midnight pools and venetian resplendence. Up ahead, she caught a scent, unfamiliar, tangled into the newcomers’ travels, stories and mythos mixed with mysteries and enigmas. With only a wry grin, a rapt smile, she poised her intentions towards the ivory vixen, and they sailed like saintly merchants, following the trail and path of visitors. They were not the first to arrive, gentle, warm eyes ensnared the image, an obsidian stag flecked and flanked with gold, a Pegasus extending her greetings (she only caught the tail-end of her speech, Rei, of the Dragon’s Throat), friendly, open, and the Mender knew the effects of kindness, granted hers in the bed of rivers and currents of the uncertain. A lilting aria, beautiful and harmonic, transpired from her mouth, a composition of niceties and amiability, followed by a dip of her tiara, a dance from Imogen nestled at her heels. “Good day! Welcome to Helovia!” She paused, tilting her head a fraction, glancing from each, warm, tenderhearted. “I’m Lena of the Aurora Basin. Who are you, and what do you hope to find in Helovia?” Perhaps one of them would be able to provide and bestow his ambitions and aspirations.