There was something about the darkness of the red forest that called me back here, something that, with each return, I was less sure had to do with the victory over the bear; it was something intangible, something that had not occurred but which was always occurring. All I knew was that I enjoyed the eerie serenity of the red light filtering down from the dense foliage above, the rush of the falls distant and audible in every facet of the wood.

So I was here, more often than I should be, especially with the threat of the strange Rift land evident with the arrival (and subsequent death) of the bear – a more responsible boy might be walking patrol in the wild lands, waiting for the next magical fluctuation or Godly summons.

I’m not that guy, I guess. I don’t have any real reason to be, with very little care for the Basin remaining in my thoughts but that Erebos lives there, and that I was born in a cave within its borders.

Sometimes I feel guilt about it. Isn’t there supposed to be some depth of loyalty to man who seeks to be called a warrior? But, at the same time, I know in my heart that it is not my fault at all, that it is no one’s fault. I simply went away too long, and came back to find that things had changed too much for me to feel much familiarity with the land anymore.

I had come back there. Let that be enough, for now.

From my thoughts I am torn as I arrive upon the falls, having unconsciously followed the pull of its roaring descent; a figure stands along the shore, her ankles submerged in the red water, her body a steely gray that whispers of lavender and is accented by the pale stone of her banners. Dipped in black, crowned with ivory, she drips elegance from the tip of her spiraled blade to the ends of her lion’s tail, drawing warmth through me in unmentionable places; she is a Goddess, a Goddess besieged by a small white child of horn and wing (I recognize her vaguely through the lust for the woman in the water that has stolen my attention), and it is with some measure of surprise that, as I approach, I find that I know her.

The name escapes me, the same way that the child’s does (though a God yelled it and, once, I was sure I would remember it), but the steely damsel’s face, the small white snip along her nose, it all makes me think of a gangly but pretty girl whom Erebos called his sister. I see her in my memories, a distant figure; she had seemed so much older than me at the time.

Now, she doesn’t seem so unattainable, framed in crimson light, smelling of spring snow and flowers.

"There are rubies along the bed," I say as I approach, remembering the hard sensation of their shape against my split hooves as Erebos, Aithniel, and I had battled the Bear alongside the others of Helovia, alongside this annoying little filly that I really wish would poof into nothingness (so I’d be alone with the flower maiden and not burdened with the presence of the child’s diminutiveness); I say as much because I don’t assume she was drinking the water, but curious as to why it was red as myself and her brother had been, "it was red as blood even before the battle."

@Lothíriel