The Time Mender’s morning began with stretching out limbs, yawning, murmuring well wishes and mulling over dreams, pulling her body from the nestled blessings of boughs and branches, and smiling at the sun’s rays filtering through idle, dancing leaves, courting the threads of life back together for another day. With Imogen curled up nearby, soaking in the dawn’s essence in a steady bout of slumber, the nymph partook in herb gathering and hunting on her own, close and safeguarding her companion with one eye steady on the ivory form, and other upon the ground’s gifts. The pathways, either created by petal soft does leading their fawns to water, or the silent, awe-inspiring Romani interludes of her own wayfaring species, were lined with distinct edges and brush, ferns, berries of use, good-fortune, or ill will. They remained silent, void of explanations and answers, winking and teasing, coy minstrels sunken and rooted into the ground. She attempted to piece together knowledge from Alysanne’s notions, her father’s infinite wisdom, the innocent bearberries, the distinct pasque flower, others hidden jewels and furtive shards along the forest floor, enticing, inviting, tempting. Another prompted her interest, a little berry clustered in evergreen undergrowth, amber and bright, blossomed with fruit and intrigue. Perhaps this was a cloudberry, enriched in vital nutrients and wholesome for her herd, her friends and allies, not cloaked in deception or unease; the notion transpired quickly, but was lost a few moments thereafter by the sound of footfalls and rustled feathers. The sylph, eternally curious, inquisitive, and emboldened by the queries her mind constantly brewed, pondered over the noises, the raptures, the reveries of another within the corridor. She followed quite gingerly, soft and sliding along the moss, across the bracken and thicket, slipping into the copse veneer and lacquer, careful not to crush sticks and boreal debris, hesitant to utter a sound. Perhaps it was another companion, undaunted by the scent of her presence, longing to venture into sleep, loathing diurnal hymns and rush of midday sonnets. Maybe it was a friend, weary and fatigued, and needed protection, a watchful eye, from the labors of the dawn, too mulled and murky from twilight’s ebb and flow. As she grew closer, quiet and dulcet, her attention remained fixated upon a silver coat, a twitching of recognition, a form and frame she hadn’t seen in ages (when was the last? When danger and treachery struck, when monsters came into the night’s shadows and concocted mayhem from their rhapsody?). Tangere, a scourge of her own heart, seemingly well after all of the trials, the tribulations, the afflictions they’d overcome and rampaged against; a friendly grin crossed over her lips, limbs, smooth, finessed, approached with a quiet, unsung ambience, a vibrant, silken whisper pulsing and pervading amongst the sylvan loam. “A wondrous return, Tangere.” As if uttered through a dream, circling through membranes and minds as a vision, as a trance, flickering and fluttering like her pale raven, plucked from the strands of virtue and divinity.