Alphaear stands in the river, the water rushing and tugging the fabric at her knees, soaking the lower half of her dress. In a dream, the world is still innocent. Her hair is long, and her hands are unbloodied. She raises her arm to let gentle moths settle upon it and then fly away as they desired, for here - by the river - the world is without fear. The starry reflection in the lapping ripples should have been a warning; the moonlight illuminating the scene was a herring in red, but her back is turned to the threat of danger. She continues to laugh at the kisses of the moths. Feather-light do they touch and then dart away; though some linger on her arm, pale-white wings opening and closing like a dance.
“I told you that you would be the better,” comes a voice that is slow and strong; assured of his own rank and status, and whose tenor comes with the easy grace and strength of the waves in which she stands. Yet when she turns around, there is no one there. All that is to be found are the low-hanging boughs of the willow trees, and the cattail reeds springing up along the shoreline, amid which frogs and other river creatures dart and play. A breeze moves along the banks and stirs the hanging leaves of the willows, but still, she finds no one, and she does not hear the voice again; though his words still linger with her, deep in her chest. Heavy in her heart, unlike the lightness with which the moths take flight and weave arcs around her as they try to tempt her out of thoughts that stray to the day whence that promise was made.
As a fluttering moth closes in on her face, she raises a finger for it to land upon. It does so, opening its wings out to the starry night sky above. As she stands there with it, and grows still so as not to disturb the creature, her thoughts wander again. If that promise no longer means death and the world ending at her feet - if it no longer means staring down the wicked end of a silver blade - then what is it all for? To what end has she devoted herself to war and strategy; to a life that has left her hands bloodied and remorseful? For if that promise can be broken, and changed, and instead represent the end of a long journey on the shores of a distant land, is she truly worthy of it? She stares at the moth as though it would give her some answer. It does not speak.
Instead, it flutters its delicate wings and takes sudden flight. It joins the myriad of its brethren in the crisp night air, thousands of white moths suddenly dancing through the sky. Moonlight leaves dapples across their wings, illuminating them as they take shape down the river. As she watches, Alphaear almost imagines the bows of a great white ship take form, sailing down waters stronger and less forgiving than these, and wonders if the thought will become a prophecy or an omen. After waiting and watching for several moments, and the form of a ship once again becomes the truth of thousands of moths in the air, she begins to give chase.
Now she is running with the current. Careful footsteps dance along the moss-slick stones that she remembers from when she was a child, and her leaping from place to place was marked by bravery instead. Now there is a hesitation at each stop, with her arms swinging in the night to steady herself, as though mimicking the flight of the moths. She would dart from stone to stone, and every misstep where she crashes into cold waters and slick mud around her toes gives her the chance to look up to see how far ahead they have gone from her through the leaves of the willow trees. With the water pushing her along, she draws her stuck foot out of the mud and chases once more, hoping that around the bend she would find the answer to her question. If not death and the halls, then what?
A peal of joyous laughter slips from her mouth at the thought of what could await. The sound joins the cacophony of other creatures in their symphony on the riverside; frogs and crickets and cicadas alike. If this is the heraldry of what is to come, then perhaps words that were uttered in her waking state are not as so full of folly as she had first thought. If there is still true hope for her at the riverside where she was a child long ago and where her innocence was stolen, then perhaps there is still hope for her now, with fingers bloody and bruised. Hope for her to put aside her ways of anger and weariness and to forget the ghost that she holds herself to in standard. Hope that there is still enough innocence and fearlessness left in her waking world for absolution - and from that, the chance to take arms with another, and to visit homes lost and left behind, and from there sail onward to a final deathless peace.
But as she rounds the bend of the river, she finds that there is yet one more menace to face. The moths all suddenly take harried flight, dispersing from each other and fleeing without any unison. The water begins to thin, trickling down quickly to leave nothing more than a dry gully in its wake, and dust where she stands. Alphaear turns; the sky has turned red with a rising sun, and the stars are obscured from view by thick clouds of smoke and ash. Now only dim flames engulf the horizon line of her surroundings, and she can taste blood in the air. She raises her head, silver hair falling over her shoulders, to look out at a scene of war and death and crows that bid for murder. Not one she had ever been to herself, but one she had seen in a vision long ago when she was a child grasping at her father's sleeve and begging him not to leave her behind. So this was where her father died. She thought it would look more poetic.
