Once upon a dreadful time

Renewal

Over the lands the Sickness had despoiled a wondrous bird flew and sang, and where he passed the world was healed, the scar being replaced by new growth and fertility. The animals who had succumbed he could not restore, yet others of their kind were fecund and soon offspring would once again run among the trees and undergrowth and fly through the air and fill the streams, for such is the character of nature.

One of the lands he flew over was a small desolate demesne, where lived a rock creature named Caillou, who was mayhap an entire mountain of stone. And when the Phoenix had sailed on, Caillou gave a great shout of joy, and rocks cascaded down, for at last the land Orbane and his five acolytes had destroyed in a dreadful experiment was once again whole and fertile.

And elsewhere in Faery and a season later, at a mound where sat a great dolmen, Regar and Lisane were wed, and in attendance were many, including Raseri the Dragon and Rondalo the Elf and Chemine, Rondalo’s mother, and many of the other Firsts, a tiny Twig Man among them. Too, in the number present were all the princes and princesses of the Forest of the Seasons, and King Valeray and Queen Saissa, and Duke Roulan, and Vicomte Chevell and his wife and newborn child, Avelaine and Amelie. Also, Sieur Emile and Lady Simone and their sons Sieurs Laurent and Blaise attended, as well as Flic and Fleurette and Buzzer.

Regar’s mother, Mirabelle, had come from the Wyldwood for the wedding, but Regar’s grandmother, Alisette, had stayed away, saying, “I am yet in love with Auberon, and perhaps he is yet in love with me. It would tear my heart out to see him again. What it might do to him, I cannot say. And Gloriana?

Well, ’tis better I stay away.”

As for Gloriana, she seemed softer, more placid, since the death of her only son. A gentle sadness had settled over her, as if a great burden had been lifted. And she had come to see that neither Regar nor Mirabelle could be held responsible for the straying of Auberon. Even so, she was merely cordial to Mirabelle, but she did bless the newlywed pair.

As to what the Phoenix had done to cause Gloriana to curse the magnificent bird, she did not volunteer, nor did anyone dare to ask.

Both the wedding and the reception after were held outside in the open air, for none present wished time to hasten by if they were foolish enough to dine in the chambers below.

But then who’s to say what might have happened had they eaten Fairy food and drunk Fairy wine in the Fey Lord’s Halls Under the Hill? Perhaps nought whatsoever; but then again. .