Firelight threw a warm, orange-gold glow over everything and everyone. Voices were raised in conversation and song as peoples mingled among the tables set up to hold that evening's feast.

Once a year the troupe took a season off to rest and recharge, repair and rehearse.

New blood started the basics of their training, old hands worked and reworked new performances. And most nights, most nights they made up for the celebratory feasts they performed for, but were rarely invited to.

Occasionally they were joined by friends for these events.

Close to the end of what they all considered their off season, they were joined by a Prime. A blonde woman whom most of them had met seven seasons before, at the table of Dionysus.

They'd come to view these visits as semi-dress rehearsals, for the woman with warm amethyst eyes and a ready, full throated laugh never failed to pay the whole of their fee. Voluntarily. And more often than not she'd pitch in to help where it was needed, or take a turn at dancing.

True, her dances were mostly hip-lead, or a simplistic movement of her feet in time with a drum, but with coaching and as her confidence grew, she'd developed enough confidence in at least one of their simpler, "down time" dances to circle the fire with the other women more than once. The thoughtlessly sensual sway and shift of hip had been incorporated for evenings for Dionysus or Aphrodite, the martial stamp of feet in time with a deep voiced drum had pleased more than one god of war and warriors. The trade off, while unplanned and wholly unexpected, had been quite profitable for both sides.

On the Outer Planes, especially those aligned with good or neutral, there were heroes in abundance. Finding someone who had extraordinary skill at anything was as easy as throwing a stone most times. But finding a Prime, what most would consider a "normal ordinary" person, who'd risen so high through trials, tribulations, and accidental deeds, was another thing entirely.

When the bits and pieces of that person's life tale that were known wove together in a way that had less exalted audiences clamoring for retellings, that was a massive bonus on the part of the story tellers and players.

The perks were greater still when those who crafted, and those who acted the tale out, had the opportunity to laugh at the subject's red-faced, squirming, stammering reaction to their efforts.

The Song of The Wind and The Rose, didn't disappoint the bard who'd spent several years perfecting his rendition.

The song told of a clueless berk befriending a tiefling with a heavy lacing of Merelith's blood. Even saving the male's life from coming winter's chill. Against the warnings of those who knew what he was, what he had been, she'd become his friend.

On a trip, a birthday present for the Rose, she'd found out the truth of his occupation during the life he'd left behind. The cruel torment he'd been trained to put his targets through, the sadistic pleasure he'd taken from the acts. And still, the Rose had been the first friend the Wind had ever had.
When the Eldarin, at the urging of their mad, Widow Queen, had gone hunting the Wind to bring him to justice for the murder of her husband, the Rose had taken the commander of their first wave prisoner. And had thrown the force of her will and the keen edge of her mind into saving the Wind's life once again.

Through persuasion and the liberal use of loopholes pointed out by the commander himself, she'd argued and fought for the people to follow their own laws. Punish the Wind yes, he'd already accepted that he'd likely die in payment for his crimes; a proxy for the Queen's rage to be spent against for she could not touch the one who'd guided his hand in the act. But not to take his life. Destroy the weapons used in the punishment of the king.

And so it was that the Wind lost his Breath, the acid weapon he'd used to drive innumerable victims mad before ending their lives, and his precious dagger. A dagger sharp enough to slice the breath of a Power, strong enough to punch through one of Tiamat's scales, never dulling, ever ready. Ever thirsty.

In the destruction of the dagger, after the surgical removal of the Wind's Breath, many members of the Court were killed, including the Mad Queen who'd howled against the Law, against a Prime's using of it.

The song ended there as very few knew the rest of the story, and Thorn wasn't sharing.

She wasn't sharing that being faced with the crimes he'd committed under compulsion by the Lady of Pain, had started the Wind's long, slow slide into madness and self-destruction. She wouldn't share that in saving his life so many times, she'd doomed his sanity and very nearly his soul. And saved them as well.

While she could own it personally, privately in her heart, the redneck hadn't been able to bring herself to say it aloud in a handful of years.
Not since she'd finally been allowed to know where his soul rested, waiting for the time to move on. Not since they'd said their final good byes.

That, was for her and her alone.