Merry or sad shall't be?
As merry as you will.
A sad tale's best for winter....
The Winter's Tale, Act II, Scene 1. Shakespeare

Wintertide had come and gone, but winter was fresh in her thick drapes of snow and adorning crystals of ice. She whispered wishes across windows and breathed deep into the stones of the walls. Tapestries, rugs, and bright tended fires were valiant defenders against her usurpation. In some hours, the sun would draw away the snowy clouds and reminder winter of the suns eternal dominance. But Winter would just smile back all brilliance in white, prisms of delight across her shimmering finery.

The halls of Seansloe Manor carried on this duet of emotion. Merry in the bright sun, subdued in the rein of steel clouds. Sylvia smiled when she saw the same influences play upon her children's faces. How they would run and play in the drifts of snow of the gardens when the sun beamed down, noses and cheeks turning rosy and eager to press against her neck when she scooped them up and lead them back inside to seek the warming of their rooms.

There the play would wrap its way around chairs and beneath tables while Sylvia would read the messages of the day. None came from Rhydin. She had stopped looking. It made no sense to do so. Each messages came in its turn, resolved or replied. Seals broken before her mind had time to acknowledge them. The contents mattered and would reveal the sender in its own time.

The shrill delight of Beata running through the room drew Sylvia's gaze that way as she opened another letter. "Be careful, Aidan. Beata is drawing too close to the plant and may knock it over."

"Yes, mama," the boy replied and steered his sister away back around to chase him another way. Cian looked up from his studies, eager to join in, obliged to remain at his books. Sylvia caught his eye and gave him a wink that got a smile back, and she looked down at the letter.

"Mum?" Cian asked in such a tone Sylvia knew her expression had been too well read. The shock, the dismay had pulled her blood down from her face and deep into her chest where it weighed heavy as chains upon her.

She hated to keep things from him, but he was so young. Burdens he carried, and he did not need to carry her's as well. A smile for him, "Just surprising, Cian. Do not worry. I am well."

The letter, its linen white folded again, she placed in her skirt pocket, and she went to the next letter, checking its seal before breaking it.

Sylvia remembered the journey like one remembers a dream. Hamlets of the countryside were portraits of a past, her past. Their alterations subtle as time aged them with lines imperfect along shutters and rooftops. Some she had defended in her youth, and the children cherub faces were now parents with their hardened and weary bodies.

The company she rode with now consisted of one guard and Beata nestled and cloth bound to her. Gazes followed them when they passed in the mild expectation of news, but nothing more. Some few eyes checked twice, or lingered longer. Was it recognition, or did they too wonder if she were just a dream remembered.

A landscape altered, winter dragging it heavy with mud and cold. Nightshade lands, three of its own hamlets in the borders, were not so grand or vast as the barony she now called home. However, it had always been well kept - and well defended.

A week it had taken with the artful help of some portals via Mount Yasuo, to gain this north eastern territory. Rhydin far behind, and Yransea even farther. Seven years since last she rode here, the necklace of Kieran about her neck, the child left in that far away hall just a thought and a hope inside her. Sarai, her half-sister, had accepted their fates in a mixture of relief and jealousy. Letters only passed between them for some years after that until they left off entirely, except for the one.

That one brought Sylvia back, drew her in like a web, to take up the loyalty buried inside her to her father and her father's lands. Time had wrought its heavy hand upon her, and slammed a fist upon the lands of her father. Sarai's sorrows had been many, but they had seeped out into the populace. Hounds were at the hall, baying in the shadows, and Sylvia came.

"My lady!" gasped a voice from the doorway of a shuttered home. This town and its people surrounded Nightshade Hall, gave its labor for the near protection and benefits of more lenient taxing. The woman stepped from the protection of her home with a heavy wool cap and a likewise heavy woven shawl about her shoulders. "You've come."

Sylvia did not recognize the woman, but she nodded. "I have. Nightshade blood flows in these veins." She need not add that it was likely it flowed in many others, but Lord Nightshade had acknowledged her his bastard born daughter and none others outside of Sarai, only child of his arranged marriage. "Be well, mistress." She spoke and set her horse to walk on.

Nightshade Hall doors also held a womanly figure in its doorway. Her clothes finer, but held on a body cramped with pains, beaten with sorrows, and not the spine to carry them far. "Sylvia," she greeted with a smile wanting to be warm but had the ice of the season in it. "Be welcome."