The kingdoms altered before them, midnight spells and oils hinting at a long, drifting day, twilight haunting the murky void, and despite intertwining circumstances (a burning of their invitations, an unwinding of their kindness brought to cinders and ash), the songbird pacified, soothed, and assuaged, kept her tenderness wrapped and shrouded amongst the brambles, as if untouched by the vicious, vindictive feelings of others, like so many times before. She’d had practice in smiling in the face of bitterness, grinning in the wake of rancor, and bending down to whisper towards the sullen, disappointed Mirabella, hoped to prosper and mend what had been rankled. Through a generous twinkle, her mellifluous air glided through the tapestries, the star-lit horizon, and the cool constellations winking in the Thistle Meadow’s wide-open aperture. “The world is constantly changing.” Wars, pestilence, shadows entwined, squandering and upholding the vigilance of vitriol and animosity, and other moments rose, shrouded in bliss, in opulence, in grandeur, and she longed for it to be the latter, instead of their invites, their innocent enticements, being used and rendered for soil and embers; passion, beneficence wasted, faded, forgotten. Her harmony continued, drawing little stories to the child, to Sialia, as they drifted through the fields of winding lavender and mingling thorns. “Some hold onto what plagued them, but living in the past only rots the future.” She nodded in assurance, because she’d known, she’d felt, the strangling sensations of violence, of monstrous incantations, how quickly disasters rippled through heartlines and well-wishes. “Perhaps they’ll learn.” Another smile, extended and enlightened for the babe, preceded a warm brush of her maw across the tip of her painted ears. “Don’t worry, Mirabella. I’m sure the Outcasts will enjoy your notes.”

Thereafter, she did the same as before, relinquishing and releasing a collection of hand-spun cards into the wind, coaxing, unwinding, hoping, and cherishing, willing these to somehow make it into the hearts, into the minds, of those not yet belonging to a chosen sovereign. Perhaps they’d be united in celebration, in speculation, in wonder and merriment, instead of the blinding nuance of venom and vices. On a sigh, on a honeysuckle breath, she nestled one more promise into their drifting, unwinding journey, because she too felt the weariness creeping in along her bones, into her muscles, into her mind, longed to view the icicles and frozen echoes instead of more and more acidity from ignorant boundaries. “One more place, and then we shall return home.”

[You’ve been invited to The Aurora Basin’s Celebration of the Time God!

Below is a drawing of your invitation, provided by several Basin foals: