Another road opened before them, one traversed and traveled many moons before – from the radiant climbs across cliffs, the rolling shoal of the ocean, to the hardened gloom and doom of loss; the peak of violence as rage was invoked over and over again, pricked, cyclical wrath. And all the while, as they whittled away their hours of wandering, roaming emissaries, consuls, envoys and diplomats, she coaxed the barest smile, the narrowest grin, too distracted by their destination to bear full regard to intimate conversations. The nymph recalled too many memories all at once, from the brightest (wandering amongst wondrous, knightly brethren, honorable Aurelius, reserved Huyana, cajoling Mauja), the dimmest (demands, commands, defeat, fleeing from the outreach that had once been theirs), to the malevolent (piercing, penetrating heresy, one of the few moments where she played their wicked games, where she claimed vigilance and violence, dreamed of slaughter and massacre). Reaching the Edge, the mist, the collapsing glass wall only gave forth the rancorous brim of her cornerstones: the heart, the crux, of all her motivations and aspirations. Once, she’d been another sprig, another sprite, coasting through its enigmatic depths, and thereafter, removed from its presence to fight another perilous war, swiftly losing morality each time she drew into its polished labyrinth, its foggy warren. Too much regret, too much remorse, tempted her ebullience, her exterior, into quiet repose, without the singsong praise, without the merry, whimsical fortitude; instead, she enacted justified fortifications, ramparts and composure, regal, finessed, possessive of statuary formations. Her words, her ditties, her strains, fell into strangled silence and paralyzed voids, Imogen strung along behind her light, calculating steps (she’d been scarred here too, thrown and tossed into copses at the behest of defenders, the genesis of Lena’s immoral indulgences), gaze riveted and fixed upon the whirlwind blurs of broken promises and expectations, waiting, lingering, with her Queen and knight. Their harsh roles, their demanding fixtures, their turbulent past, only led to constant quandaries, queries, and ruminations through her tense, stiff frame, the thin smile pulled across her lips as Illynx asked for the Weyrleaders. Were they to be refused, tolerated, or accepted? With information emboldening their steps, colored and infused with danger, treachery on the horizon, burning their innocent (Arah, her daughters, wounded and scarred without rhyme, reason, or thought), the Basin were justified in their steps, in their movements, but would they be pushed away before they could provide the news of ambushes, assaults, and ricocheted barbarity?