The opulence of winter framed her spirits into the mysterious, the poised, the exotic, weaving her sentiments into the bright, frolicking days of snow and rime glittering from the sky, cold and unrelenting, but beautiful and magnificent. She stared at the sky and gleamed of its splendor, of its curling vapor that pulsed from her nares, of the clouds dragging in their cumbersome load, relinquishing more and more flakes of frozen vigilance. But Psyche’s call pierced the air, and her honeyed, amber gaze was forced towards the horizon, the distance of time, space and personas, dragging her elegant form among the carnivorous, the bewitching, the immoral and the sanctified. Given another world, other experienced, she may have been one of the licentious, brooding, calculating, designing a monstrosity that would ultimately enact some grand, diabolical scheme, but since she had grown into whimsy, into fortitude, into perseverance and might, she strayed from their ashen characters, gave her life to the beauty, to the grandeur, to the reverie of the Basin, and not the strange murkiness that dwelled in her heart. She followed, drifting in and out, listening to the demanding court of the unfamiliar, the presence of her Empress, the chosen General and the strange figures looming amongst the glacial piazza. Imogen nestled close to her side, and they became outsiders nestled on ice, adrift in the sea of comments and concerns, once taken by the ideals of politics, and now even further distanced from what they’d once been. The Nurse tucked herself close to the outstretched limbs of a fir, nestled beneath its heavy boughs, and tried desperately to not speak when Psyche relented her concerns over the Throat. What affairs bristled between them now – it had only been seasons ago when she’d embarked on saving, rescuing, beloved Aurelius and the Corporal Elizabeth, had gathered her bravery and stalwart companions for a treaty already broken. Where they to be dragged into another calamity (at this, she suppressed a shudder, for the armaments of the Edge could still be christened across her vision, still formulating a heinous atrocity that she’d been a part of)? Would they embark on more violence, more villainy, more defending of their homeland, refusing to be torn from another kingdom and empire? The more she questioned herself, the more she sank into a hushed silence, unease painted across features that usually wore delight, harmony and serenity, and so she listened, witnessed and absorbed, afraid of the answers building across the halls.