Slippered feet passed over the tiles along the fringe of corridors that extended from private quuarter to quarter, here was where the guests stayed, here was where she hid and watched and listened.

Eyes, myriad purple and blue, silent in their flare, were hidden too, behind thick chesnut curls. She held her breath as new steps passed and she felt the thick shadow of wardens and cloistered women pass. She didn't like those who exhaled too much darkness. She didn't like darkness much at all, save for when it kept her disappeared.

With every urge to chant, to move from there to here, she refrained, and curled pink fingers to her white cotton, to collapse to her knees and close her eyes. Never to know what might be spelt out where most assumed ears were not. Drums like those in her own; resonating with the tempanic secrets of hushed plans. It made her smile, sometimes giggle to suppress with covering hand, and sometimes fill her heart like a sad balloon and her eyes in silver sparkle.

That particular eve, in flimsy blue cape and cotton, with the pale eyes and dark shadow-blending hair, she ran, tip toe tip toe, hither and low along the red carpet, but preferring the tiles that only faintly clapped her patter than the sibilant laughter of soles on grand mat. She ran and ran, eyes wide with the moon shining in and a turret-wanderlust burning her from within. She felt her finger throb then, reminding her of that Real to Fire Burn she encountered on one of her rare visits to the Inn, infamous and sparse in people and light, and had only incited further interest for the reflections she caught when no one else was looking. The ones that got stuck in the rafter cobwebs, behind the bar in that fabulous silver soaked glass and on the head of bespectacled folk. She would sit in awe and watch things glimmer. A different brightness to her own. She was so accustomed now.

But turning her affectionate, if shy nature from the pain, she took off down a diverging of halls, where the Bathing Chamber ran its welcome sign before a smaller study door. There she stood like a deer light ballerina, fawnish mannerisms as she hugged herself from beneath the cape, looped by its tie about her neck like some play-pretend hero, being enacted by a forest dwelling gypsy child (and by all accounts, in appearance, she was as matted hair and freeweeling right now, if not most times on journey) fingers yawning outwards from her palms into the air and she gasped. For she had not been silent at all. The cord that tapped her collarbone and chest reminding her of the wooden finger it held. The whittled wood flute. It had been singing with the draughts running through the halls, and so aware of her un-silence, she spun on her toes, pirouetting to peer past her hair and the dark down the hall. Opps, had she blown her cover?

She ran on, hair flying in tinsel streamers along behind her, convalescing brown and shadow again, becoming reaqainted. She stopped to a skid on her heels (she swore she could smell sulphur her glide to a stop had burnt her feet so) and thin, expressive lips, pretty and puckered, clicked and clapped with help of the red rind of her tongue as she came to an intersecting of halls she never had cared for, for their lack of decor and the many morose seeming guests that frequented it. She stood there a long while, conscious of her noises and the ones that were not hers. The wind. Cicadas far away. Miming leaves, tangling their branches like she did her limbs while watching shadows on the ceiling at night (when she had the time to dally), the gush of inviting air, to beckon her to the turrets. All a ploy, so that it could muss her hair and tease her eyes in sights. It was not the time yet, to see Card again and have a child. Not when she had visitors within the next ten hour period, each seeking her counsel. Her wisdom. She shuffled, grimacing at her scattered mind. Like her attentions. But at least she had remebered! So perhaps now she could return to her large room and reassemble her porcelain birds and glass animals on the mantle piece and vanity, explore arrangements for her hair, to sew a new pattern to the cloak a Master Lord had left with her, at her not abiding it but at his insistance, and perhaps designing a spell, a warrant, a case, for leaving and following the Howl. Her love. Her personal need.

She slumped, pouted and played fingers to her teeth as she trudged back to her room. Discreet, bumbling graces through the halls had lost its excitement. It was too quiet tonight, nothing to learn but recall memory. To decide what was to be, what had never and what was merely de ja vu'. It haunted her none the less, whatever "it" was. She could taste his fragrance if she held her breath, closed her mouth and breathed in deeply and focused on his angular jaw and gaunt-handsome cheeks.

Just then, with spittle covered digits she expelled such desiree and reached out for the handle. Only to hear,

"Vespar"

A chill ran up and down her spine. She turned, peering through overhanging locks at the only Visitor who had become Friend. The One. The Two they became together, never saying so, but being secretly Connected. He stood long and limbre in shadow, but he was not of it and so she did not recoil. He picked up her fingers and breathed hot air onto them, and immediately she fell into him, his arrangements of light plucked rhapsody, and she smiled. He had chimera eyes just like her, though his glowed gold and colours that had no name. She closed her eyes tight at checking they still shone so, and wept into his chest in relief and happiness. He reached around and fell into her; rosey skin and cotton. His barefoot bride. His scouting siren. He breathed her in, the scents of stars within her galaxy strands. It silenced him, stung him, and enlivened him.

"Vespar"

She smiled, and they pushed into her parlour and left the draught to its quiet echo.