The brook ran by and she listened to a swallow’s song, eyes closed, basking in the breeze, before opening her eyes, pulling off into grasslands and shoal, soil and sonnets, a poet’s roughened prose made by springtime ease and the pursuit of hope. They ascended to small hills and dulcet outcrops, pondering over the streamline of possibilities, the endless, unwavering hope that still managed to burn, blossom, and bud within her chest (how – when she should’ve lost it all by now), maneuvering past sullen rocks and trying to make them sparkle, make them gleam, with the eternal glory of beautiful, incandescent arias instead of damning laments.

They might’ve danced elsewhere and beyond – towards imagined castles in the distance, with fountains of youth and triumph, where beasts never tied and tethered them like enemies to the floor, where no one was ever squandered, ever broken, had a ripple of noise not interrupted the fluid waltz. The Mender stopped immediately at the echo of words, at the soft, ginger approach of more hooves on grass, turning towards it as an echo of nymph-like posture, ready to dash from satyrs and sadness.

But the unknown femme was full of compliments and smiles, and Lena relaxed, dropped the eager, fervent pose, scattering her own features with an earnest grin and a solidified regality. She bobbed her crown, careful not to let the barbs and thorns fall out, the whisper of damnation to trickle from her brow, paying heed to kindness when it’d been expressed to her (such a fond, fickle thing – to hear generosity and regard in the days of sorrow and melancholy). “Oh, pleased to meet you, Raeden.” She pondered over the information readily available: from the Edge, unknown and unrecognizable, a deer at their side (like so many before her; beautiful, walking glimpses of the forest, pieces of oak and pine and maple, whittled from moss and boughs, twigs and the intricate secrets of rose gardens), and gathered necessities to express her own notions. “I’m Lena, from the Aurora Basin. This is my companion, Imogen,” and the ivory kitsune stepped forward (too keen, too aware), and the lithe, honeyed Songbird couldn’t understand the wariness floating from her bonded, the pieces and sparks of growls growing, simmering below the surface, chiming and echoing across their connection as an incensed, coiled wave. She ignored it, briefly, acknowledging the systematic approach of greetings, not comprehending the nature of foreboding, settling for warm, mellifluous queries, polite and courteous. “What is your lovely companion’s na-,” and she ceased mid-sentence, eyes finally pinpointing on what was unsettling the white vixen.

There, resting upon the mare’s brow, was Roland’s ruby circlet.

Lena knew it instantly. She remembered diving amidst the stream of mermaid lagoons to grab it. She recalled fixing it with seashells and adorning it with bright, wonderful sentiments (love, she’d known it to be, all the love and adoration she’d held for the blue-eyed brigand). They’d polished it with seawater and laid it along his cave in hopes he’d find it, understand it for its worth; all those unspoken, merry things she’d been too afraid to proffer, so she’d bestowed this instead. She’d been sure she’d laced it with her heart, with her soul, with her essence, but there it remained, not on his horn, somewhere off in the distance, but there, on Raeden’s.

Something in her chest dropped and a layer of absolute apprehension rolled over her frame, curling and foaming and gripping her lungs, her ribs, her bones like a vice. There was panic for where’d he gone and why he’d lost something she’d thought as precious (but maybe he hadn’t?), if he was dead and she’d found it on a scavenging expedition, knowing full well he wouldn’t ask for it again, or if he’d tossed it aside, like it was nothing (like she was nothing). The question resounded off her mouth instantly, and she forgot to pull back the mask, to do anything other than round her eyes in disbelief, in shock, in despair, for another memory tarnished, withered, and decayed. “What a beautiful circlet – may I ask where you found it?”