AMALIA
She stays in the glade through the waning afternoon, watching as clouds shift and fade and the first chords of winter begin to fall. It is a song of snow and shortened days, of delayed mornings and early nights; it is a song she does not love, but knows, a song she was born into. Amalia is not a summer child, but a daughter of the week of longest nights. Born into a time without stars, it is strange, then, that she reaches for the sun- but she does, again and again and again, standing up each time she stumbles, her fingers ever straining up to brush an unreachable sky.She thinks about this as she waits, and many things beside. By the time night settles on the trees there is a strange light to be found, glowing antlers in a distant evening, a gold the girl knows well. The luxere are back, and Amalia smiles, feeling her heart rise with pleasure at the sight of the familiar cervids. A doe and a fawn; the baker hums, extending a hand to to invite them closer, her back against an arcing tree as the pair creeps closer, curious and unafraid.
It is a rather idyllic pastoral picture: the Shield of Safrin surrounded by a mythic menagerie, with starlit whales chasing luxere children, a unicorn and antlered doe looking wearily on. The baker's smile is radiant as she sings a tune among them, her back to the descending eagle, her dark eyes glittering with mirth. Oh, she saw him in his fall, knows that he is there- and oh, she knows that it is him, for who else could it be?
She does not dare to turn around, afraid of the ferocity of jubilation he will find upon her face.
Reaching out to brush a hand along the suddenly anxious Luxere's neck, Amalia glances sidelong, half turning to him over her shoulder, her face obscured with hair. There is mischief in the timbre of her voice, in the lilting alto of her tone, the laughter hidden behind a veil of thinly constructed seriousness. "Well, Mr. Shade," his lover whispers, "Are you prepared to fly?"
And then in a flash the girl is gone, an owl in her wake, her starlit wings beating with swift skill as she launches toward the sky.
You are flesh and blood
And you deserve to be loved
and you deserve what you are given
And oh, how much
And you deserve to be loved
and you deserve what you are given
And oh, how much
