Home was a beautiful word sprinkled with blissful connotations. Home was a sanctuary, a sanctum, a secure, safe world prospering beneath the sun, the moon, and the stars. Home was a haven built on stone pillars and marble columns, stretching past the horizon, glowing within a resplendent heart. Home was a palace floating on air, on wings, on taffeta, on canvas, painted and anointed with strokes of bright, brilliant hues, splashed against the backdrop of rapture, of reveries, protected and guarded by its inhabitants.
 
So she never understood why so many left.
 
Maybe their souls were torn in two, begging for absolution but incapable of finding it within the chilly, winter realm. Maybe they were tied and tethered to other strings, other pearls, other wishes and affairs, swept away by the course of time and seasons, forgetting and forgoing the taste, the sounds, the essence of snow and rime. Maybe they hadn’t found what they were looking for, grasped and tried and deluded their minds into clouds of smoke and ash, and finally couldn’t take it any longer, fleeing, escaping from the deluge and torment. Maybe it wasn’t for them, and they found no will to survive amongst the tundra and the glaciers, couldn’t push their determination beyond the mountain range, beyond the power, the glory…
 
Her theories melded and molded together for the benefit of afterthought, of reflection along their journey from threshold to the Aurora Basin, because she didn’t pry, she didn’t ask, she couldn’t form the question so carefully balanced across her tongue. Perhaps bringing it to reality, to tangibility, meant she’d have to face the notions of being left behind again, of gilded faces disappearing, of mysteries unraveling and puzzles withering – but Frost Fyre was not Roland, and she wasn’t going to force her being, her core, into the painful, bitter nuances plaguing her mind. Imogen glanced her way, and the Songbird didn’t do anything but stoically face the world ahead, gazing at the Sentinels and the crisp leaves falling around them. Too strong to break, too weak to reveal, plunging on as she always did, the same, sad pattern as before.
 
The nymph turned to the newly returned Scholar as if she were the sun, a remnant once lost, now forged back on the steps of her homeland, revering those who’d come to claim what they’d misplaced. Her head gestured towards the bounty, the lore, the manifestation of ivory, of beauty, of wonder, well beyond their frames, the playful lights blinking in borealis renewal, placing lavender and emerald beacons across the sky in a heavenly welcome home. The warmth of her smile radiated past her lips, out into the grandeur, the opulence, the blessing of the twilight expanse, the evening radiance, the tender nuances of an ice child’s reappearance. “Not much has changed since you left, I’d imagine,” and she winked, eyes sliding from the spotted mare down to the valleys below, freshly coated in white. “But I’m sure its glad to you have home.”


[Come welcome Frost Fyre home! ^_^]