It was a curious thing, to have time repeat itself.
Many years ago, a time before even her father's time, when Liridon was not yet ravished by scorching flames and suffocating darkness, a queen with eyes like violets and hair of fire spoke to a god. He was a violent god, as was his nature, but he was not unkind, however much he pretended to be. The Fire Lord granted her request, for he loved mortal games and admired this firebird's fearless spirit.
In fact, he rather thought it a pity if she were to die.
Hell and Back Again, the journey became known as. Up the spine of Mt. Zjarri and down its throat of darkness and into the belly of flame and things unknown to mortal eyes.
"Because none would ever return, you see," Zjarri would say, as they would climb their rather less formidable stargazing hill. "But not your grand-mother, for the Fire Lord favored her above all else."
Many years later, past both the queen and her monster-son's time, a god fashioned from the very bones of the earth who was both gentle and patient, granted the grand-daughter of the Firebird her only wish.
And so it was, that Yseulte braced herself against the cold that stole the very breath from her lungs and the wind that slashed her body with bits of ice and snow fashioned sharp and cruel like broken shards of the glass substance she was soon to learn how to craft. She strained her eyes for signs of movement, pushing herself farther into the barren reaches of the land to lay eyes on the snow leopards. Though the snow crust was frozen, and not entirely difficult to traverse across, she couldn't help but miss childhood winter days when she was not alone, and her father would melt the snowdrifts with his fire-breath that were taller than her. As Yseulte always did, she pushed those warmer memories away, and embraced the onslaught of cold and snow.
As if the land were a tomb to the living and green, he wild winter grounds were full of forgotten silence—a hollow, somber silence that seemed to sing just for her, and no one else.
apprentice craftsmen of the edge,
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![[Image: ysueltetable.png]](http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/7876/ysueltetable.png)
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the wind was on the withered heath, questing
