The Weaver’s acceptance was quick, swift, pledged with sweet promises and no misgivings – and like so many times before, Lena was absorbed, immersed, in the generosity of her Basin brethren. From the outside, they must have looked like monsters, bending and breaking over the shambles of their collected ruins and follies, undertaking violence to match their heartaches, their strife, their pain, but together, they were immeasurable companions and patriots. United amongst the ice, the beauty, the treachery, the grandeur, loyal comrades in the chilling winds and the cloistered glaciers, and no matter what the world said about them; consigned to oblivion, damned, rotten, withered and decayed minions, she knew they weren’t. They held different beliefs, swaying opinions, broken, disheveled theories and raging tempests, scorned and scorched and scorned again, but they always came through for one another. She sang for their wounds, their lacerations, their well beings, the Lord and Lady guarded and slashed, the soldiers practiced and trained, Thieves and Impersonators gathered and entranced, and crafters molded and melded their art into necessary objects. Even when Farenjer gave her no price, no cost, charge, or fee, the little wood nymph, with her honeyed gaze and sylph essence, vowed and assured she’d make it up to him. For all of their heinous efforts, there was so much heart, so much devotion, so much conviction nestled amongst all of them (even on the most jeering or apathetic of faces, she felt it, hovering, pervading), she couldn’t fathom why the world treated them so ghoulishly, as if they spread pestilence from wall to sea. Her gratitude for the ice-marked stag and his talents radiated from her face, clambering and cajoling in their tender nuances and glimmering smiles, prosperous and gilded, harmonious and incandescent. “Thank you.” At his invitation, the two followed, eyes adjusting from sunlight into the rummaging, toiling darkness, fumbling for proper sight, until all that flickered around her were wonderful creations and oeuvres waiting to be designed. Cotton, like floating whims, capricious puffs, were laden against the walls, while hidden tapestries and banners, clandestine, covert, furtive as if unfinished, cloaked and daggered for another day, rested, nestled between stones. She wanted to query, inquire, question for hours on end about each one, about the little bits of cloth and what they stood for, what they were bound to be, about his work and how did he accomplish all of these things – but she saved her curiosity as Imogen sniffed at the many bundles, responding to his prior sentiments with a mellifluous air, singsong wonder, eyes tracing back to the stag’s. “I was hoping for one long strap, so I could wear it around my neck, and perhaps a long flap, to cover the opening.” Light and fae, she established and composed only one more note. “Is there anything I can do to help?”