Soft light. In lamps and the promise of winter she awakened. Outside and lost in the forest where he had left her. Alone. Perhaps not Forgotten.

Knelt there in the frost kissed grass the blades of green would be sharp. Cutting her flesh as she swayed. Lost in visions the silvered blue of her eyes was milked white of the unseen. She would see so much more.

Dream drifting. She was nothing more then a presence. A soul in wander. Caught in dreams.

The threshold, the thin painted veil of sleep and dreams, life and death was stepped through.

"Beast."

A whisper.

Melancholy wish for salvation of his presence.

The night was cold and no answer would come.

In the wispy mist of the dream lands she shivered. No matter how warm his distance from her left her cold.

Cold as Ice and Steel.

The Aes Sedai had promised guardianship but was there any that could save, could protect her from all that had come to pass?

Pheus lifted her hands, found the blades of grass were far more cruel then she expected.

Sharp blades of emerald green would leave lines of ruby. Marked her palms bloody.

"First Blood. You offer it now?"

A whisper in her mind. The familiar haunting baritone of the Dream Keeper, sensual as a caress.

Broken.

With no answer to offer Dream Keeper and no answer from the Beast she sank down into the cold green blades.

Flesh cut.

Visions fading, her lashes fluttered closed.

Haunted.

A spirit cried out.

Her spirit.

In the Dreamlands would call and cry out for a King.

Blissful surrender she gave herself over to the claim of the Dream lands, knowing well that to remain on this side of the Veil was only more of a risk to lose herself, lose everything and belong to the Dream Keeper once more.

She would not be his... but it was cold here and there...was no where else to go.

Pale fingers reached out, the veil severed and cut open to keep the mortal realm from the dream realm.

All needed was a touch before... gone...

Her voice a whisper, called out a summon and a wish. They would hear her call. Or so she would dream.

Pheus would become One within Dreams once more.

"It's not so lonely here now."

A voice in the shadows, sweet and soft. Calling out in a gentle way far from the bewitching resonation of the Dream Keeper but still it would call.

Her brows furrowed as she looked in the direction of the voice, Artic blue eyes searching.

"Show yourself"

A whispered request would not part veils but would reveal. A fashioned mirage, a fable.

Chimera's Token.

"Hello there. You have lost the way haven't you? The Beast has left you behind and the King has gone away. Where does the Maiden go now? Does she have no choice but to return here? Why. I could help you. Help them find the way."

Not too slender not too smooth. Blades of hair forged in the nature of crystals. Reflective and never seeming one solitaire color. Like her way, multi-faceted.

"Phaedra. Pheus. Should I help him find the way?"

All the King's horses... all the King's men... perhaps could put the Maiden... together again.

"Could you help him...show him the way. But before you go...who ... who are you and why are you helping me?"

A soft laugh. Ringing gentle and sweet.

"You knew me as Felicia once when you were Phaedra and when the Raven was Neoma. Now I am Finch as you are Pheus and she is Solah. I help for we are sisters. Thrice born. Thrice severed. I will show him the way."

A promise. A devout offering of words. Cross her heart and hope to die.

Finch was gone.

She after all was the only one who could go where she pleased.

Untouchable.

The King would find the way. Finch would make it so.

The Maiden closed her eyes and gazed down at her bloody hands. Lacking the understanding of why her blood shone as rubies in the shadows and moonlight.

A Parted Veil. Separate and Detach. It was far more easy then expected. Rebinding a soul to a body, a heart to a spirit oh that was another thing.

Pheus remained with head bowed since Finch had left her. Unmoving as the Dream World moved and altered around her. Never would it be constant.

The Dream Lands...that World that she kept herself tucked away in now would ever be forged by the moods and motivations of the Dreaming.

She had her ways to visit those that dreamed, become a small imprint as she would watch on through their fantasies and wishes. She could even make subtle alterations... but this was so much different.

Now the Dreamer was Lost.

Death had come for her and the Raven had brought her back.

Surely that had a price. A cost.

A burden they both would owe and would have to carry. The Death Raven had gone against direct orders from her prior master, even the Maiden's choices were a direct defiance against Morpheus himself.

There would be payment gathered in tokens and trinkets Pheus had no desire to pay.

It all had to be done.

There was that sinking feeling deep within the parts of her spirit that she hid so well. That fear to know that she would be owned again. Property. One to wear his collar.

The Beast was gone, The Shade had left her and had become untouchable...and the King... even his distance was measurable only in paint and whims.

Her fingers stretched against that veil that parted reality from dreams. Closing her eyes as she gave over to sleep.

The dream lands corrupted her mind... made her wish, dream, think, believe... that she could feel him there with her.

But they were all gone... and none of it mattered.

Valucia had wished to find a guardian to protect the Maiden, in the Dream Lands that seemed more like the Shadow Lands each and every hour... Pheus was starting to believe that maybe it was just too late.

Slumber was a thick and deceitful thing. Unwilling to relent as she fell into its possession and gave of herself.

Around her the Dream Lands altered. Split.

Showing the revelation of the war torn land she had visited and found him in when she had visited his dreams.

On one side.

On the other revealed a solemn quaint, quiet town that seemed to have a presence of a village ever in hold of sacred breath that would not be dared to be let out.

If Cobra would understand and seek the contemplation of what was revealed to him, he would know that he would be seeing the world and village from where Phaedra, Neoma, and Felicia had come.

The triplets drawn and split apart at birth.

Everything had to come in threes did it not? The past, the present, the future. The Maiden, the Mother, the Crone.

But in the gathering of the Three Sisters the past would ever be that of the Death Raven, the present of Pheus, and the future of Finch.

The Maiden would not be the Dreamer but instead would be Delirium's youthful mind, the Mother ever the Dream Keeper's sweet spirit, and the Crone ever would be the Raven's steeled will and dark knowledge.

There were shivering, trembling visions in that half parted village. The shadow children, the fragments of who the triplets had been before they had died and had been claimed by those incarnations of immortality.

Neoma the blacksmith's seeming black eyed daughter standing with her hands pressed to the muzzle of a fine steed that she spoke to in hushed tones to sooth the agitation of a beast finding new shoes to be worn.

Felicia with her laughing eyes and bright spirit at the printmaker's shop. Fingers black smudged with ink and a grin at the written word a vibrant offering.

And finally Phaedra. Daughter of married artists. One a sculpter the other a painter. Her lineage of art and beauty already defined in youth. Her art was like a dream.

On the opposite side of it all existed the war torn lands of Cobra and his siblings. All in three as well. There in vision. The Cobra. The Phoenix. The Wraith.

A touch of lips had her body lifting with a breath of one in awakening.

When had she become Sleeping Beauty?

A stirring and parting of snow pale lashes. Blue eyes born and vivid in their intensity of wonder and dreams.

Her whisper was one of wonder and curiousity.

"They said in the stories... that spells can be broken... with true love's kiss? Is this... what this is...."

"I thought this once was where I belonged. It seemed home to me. All of this."

She looked around for a moment seeing that which she had invoked around her as dreams. The barely existing line that separated and drew their pasts and their families to be different.

Wonder spun a soft web around her and near would blanket them as she rested in his arms.

"Phaedra."

She tested her own name on her tongue.

"So long it has been since I have known that name as my own, King."

Her words were so softly chosen. Delicate feathers stirred in a dream wrought breeze.

Those gentle blue eyes lifted to his own as she smiled to him tenderly.

"I will remain here... with you... at your side. If it is what you wish. I will offer that vow."

Maiden with her King.

Just as a Maiden had been once with Shade and with Beast. She could not break the bond with the Beast if he returned to her but the dreams had wavered and altered.

Become more reality then she ever expected. Looking out on the replay of her live and the lives of her sisters she could not help but wonder over how once they had been together in the same village and yet never had known until their deaths and favored claim by those incarnations of Immortality that they were triplets.

No longer was she the Dream Keeper's property, just as Solah no longer was under the whim of Death. Finch's bond however was still a strange struggle.

Who after all could save Finch from delusions within delirium?

She stirred in his arms then, not wishing to worry over the truth and fate of them all.

It was time to live within the now.

"Take me home..."

"This... this is all I have. All I need. This can be home."

Her family was her. Her friends. Those she loved. She closed her eyes as she had been drawn from the Dream Lands. A feeling now that it was her choice and no one elses of when she could return.

Her choice.

No longer did Morpheus claim her. No longer was she under his power, his possession, his persuasion.

The world shifted, divided and had separated. Swirled together till the awarness of the real world clung to her flesh.

She would not shiver because her skin was always tranquil and cold.

"You brought me back, King. You risked..."

Everything.

Some didn't come back from the world of dreams.

Some wanted to stay. Some were driven mad. Some died.

It all depended on the weaving, the woven control and power of those dreams.

She was in his arms then and the sense of him there, the tangible warmth of him seemed surreal.

Such a comfort after everything lost. She ever would be bound and tied to the Beast as his Maiden, but Zedi was not here and his pull did not twist upon her spirit as once it had.

Still she shared his madness and his pain, his wild ensnared power. It had made her much of what she was.

She would not forget that.

As she curled in his embrace there were flashes of the Aes Sedai, her sisters, the Shade.

There were so many lost and so many found.

Phaedra would not lose them again.

Her arms tightened about him, the soft caress of her voice hushed with wonder.

"You saved me... you... freed me, King."