In her dreams His shadow swept across the Wood as He passed overhead, like a flash of night in the great expanse of day; the wind He raised in His wake tucked flowers in her hair and when she woke she was still laughing, still smiling, as only people who have been nothing but loved their entire lives can smile. The only nightmares Ultima knew were the ones where He’d left her, stranded in silence as broad as a river. She had always been pacified by the knowledge – a logic sure as steel, so palpable she could have cut herself on its edge – that He would never abandon her. She was the Bride. She was His Bride.
 
And now? Where was He now? When the crocodile stared into her heart, hungry, wanting, as if he had any right to it, where was He? When the desert nearly drowned her beneath its mirror-finish, where was He? And before that, on the summit of the Altar, on the day of the Wedding, when Raistlyn threw her down the mountain and rushed her away (away, away), where was He? 
 
“Dreaming,” she wheezed, “And may He—” her chest suddenly far too tight, “Dream—” her heart beating far too quickly, “Forever—” She spun without warning, ears pinned, tassels flying and snagging in the sunlight as she searched for— Something. Something. There was a sense of urgency filling up her lungs but she couldn’t place it, a strangled desperation in the shallow gasps that racked her lithe frame; for appearance’s sake she was sorting through the crowd but on the receiving end, in the sweltering confines of her brain, nothing. White stars, winking in and out of focus. A bleary wash of colors that registered very dimly as the godforsaken desert. Not here, she thought disjointedly, have to get home. But she couldn’t feel her legs and the world was spinning in and out of focus and all she wanted was—
 
Home. She sank her teeth into the word and worried at it like a fox with a bone, wrung the memories out with every shake of her bowed head. The goldfish pond, she scrabbled, the bobble-eyed goldfish pocking the water’s surface like stars; the taste of the clovers that grew in that particular patch of sunlight just past the almond grove; the sound of the leaves whispering, gossiping amongst themselves of what birds get up to. Early in the mornings she used to clamber out of the window – the sill was always slick with dew, she’d shriek when it touched her underbelly – and tear through the meadow while the dawn was breaking, and the warmth as it burst across her upturned face was like a kiss.
 
Without thinking she stumbled forwards, blind, dumb, oblivious even of the ground beneath her feet, the slosh of heavily-salted water. One step. Another, and then she— “Oh—” Ultima floundered backwards, blinking rapidly, once, twice, five times, before coming to a shaky halt. “Pardon,” she managed, lashes fluttering as her eyes readjusted to the light. “I ...” As if a switch had flipped she stood a little straighter, her expression swinging shut like a door. “Sorry,” she said, again.

command me to be well.