White Winter Hymnal

[Philomel]

Philomel,

I hope this message reaches you in good health. I am alive and well, and we need to talk. I will send you an escort to Whitevale to ensure your safety. Meet me here and we'll set things in motion.

SvO

Underneath the warming mid-summer sun's heat, that was no longer choking but bareable, a dragon frolicked.


No, he was not the winged beast of nightmares and demons, and no he was not there to eat your children. This dragon could not breathe fire, he could not fly, and he could not tear through a whole army as if it were paper. Instead, this was a wingless, long and agile creature; his four legs athletic, his body reptilian, his face similiar to that of a horse, and his long tail a whip. Great claws that could gouge any boulder from a quarry danced across narrow streams and bright patches of green grass, and made deep furrows in the endless field of flaxseed, crops and grass that stretched before them. He charged merrily at the stalks of some young saplings, peering from amongst the grasses, snapped at white birds that his form disturbed, and made the peaceful natural chatter of the plains landscape grow wild and awry, as he disturbed the order.


Disturbed it by making a mellow voice ring out with bright, glorious laughter.


Philomel van der Aart laughed, for she had two things to be greatful for. First, her daughter was back in her life. Celandine, the young four and a half year old, recently claimed back from a Radasanthian brothel where she had been hidden away all this time, had quickly become the darling of the warriors who inhabited the Gilded Lily fortress. Safe and secure within its nearly unattackable walls, she was now where Philomel knew. With the young faun's own father, Ramese Vaeron, and under the watchful eye of sixty well-trained warrior women. Over the last three days she had earnt the nickname "Dear Dine," from them, and it was called out so much now that it sounded like a chant.


The second thing that Philomel - Matriarch of the Gilded Lily, commander of the Lily army and soon to be scourge of Lye Ulroke - was happy for, was that Shinsou van Osiris was alive. Her close, dear friend and staunch ally in the times of war. For so long after the battle of the Crystal Cavern she had persumed him to possibly be gone, but now she knew he was well. She had sent him a letter, begging him to be alive and requesting if he would help in her conquest to end the life of a maniac, and he had replied. Upon a pale-yellow piece of paper that was still tucked into her breast. Paper that had been folded so many times, and handled so often that it was now soft and limp. With few words, but they were so strong she now could not end the smile on her face.


"I am alive and well, and we need to talk. I will send you an escort to Whitevale to ensure your safety. Meet me here and we'll set things in motion."


Now she was on the back of her great bovine beast, known as a tera'k, with his soft, huge hooves and his black and white fur. Behind her on the saddle poised a rabbit and a fox. The rabbit, who went by the name of Mao, was currently snoozing, long legs stretched out, was currently annoying the fox. He, who went by the name of Veridian, was sitting upright, gold-amber eyes flickering around at the dragon and the other company that went with them. Unlike the rabbit he possessed a high intelligence of his own, and thus he regarded the three horsemen carefully stationed around the back of Philomel and the tera'k with some high suspicion.


I still do not see why we could have left earlier, and avoided this 'escort' he deems you to have.


Quite determined not to be broken from her jovial mood, Philomel turned around in her seat. Her own eyes flickered from the russet red and pure white fox, to the three black-robed humans on black steeds who rode to her direct back, and either side, trying to keep their horses in check as they shied naturally away from the cheery dragon. A shriek went up as Delath, for that was the dragon's name, disturbed a hidden kaka-birds nest. The foot-long grey-backed bird leapt up through the grass with a vehement cry, stabbing her beak at Delath's scaled face. Easily he swated her away with a large claw, and there was a sickening crunch as meat and eggs became his afternoon snack.


The three Brotherhood riders, the 'escort' Shinsou had sent to guide Philomel, had to calm their horses and looked equally as disturbed themselves. This made Philomel laugh more, her hands winding deeper into the fur and reigns of her tera'k beast, he himself a stone, and no longer weak to the strange sounds that life with a dragon made.


As she looked back to the horizon, Philomel finally replied to Veridian.


As I told you before, he wanted to send them, and so I let him. She shrugged, He knows where my secret world it, it is time I knew his. Yes, we could have likely found our own way to Whitevale, but this is better.