if i knew you so valiant i would always have traveled

Chapter 01: of all the stars, the fairest
Chapter 02: far sweeter-sounding than the lyre, far more golden than gold
Chapter 03: violet-tressed, one with violets in her lap
Chapter 04: o beautiful, graceful girl
Chapter 05: nightingale, sweet-voiced messenger of spring

Nia has always loved stargazing. She did it with Sister, as Da watched on, and she did it with Dromarch, the tiger soft and sleeping, wondering up at her place among things and thinking, is there really someone up there who's watching? Is there really such order to it all? And then Pneuma glides down from the heavens, and Nia knows that she couldn't possibly have been squinting hard enough, if she'd missed the Aegis in all her green-glowing magnificence. There is someone watching, and Pneuma as well is gratified in the knowledge of being observed, of being cared for.

Fiora knows what it is like to have a goddess inside; to falter in reconciliation of the immaterial, weightless internal with the machinatory, brutalized force of the external. She knows this, yes, but as she looks at Mythra, perfect in her promise and effortless in her way always forward, forward, forward, on and on and on, as they are joined past the unthinkable, unknowable end, she doesn't actually know the half of it. Mythra's preternatural understanding, too, takes a branch-predicting step avance of Fiora's own travails.

Someday, perhaps, they will both understand. There is something to be cherished about time.

Sharla is one who heals. Tyrea is one who, from the heart, needs healing. All their individual familiarity, gone. It should be a perfect match, should it not? If a match needs must be found, that is, and neither are particularly inclined to it, all in all, but nothing is ever quite so compelling as having gotten someone in your sights. Singularly focused are they both on goals, never stopping to rest and lay fidgeting hands in idle laps.

There is work to be done. There is progress to be made. There is you, there is you, there is you.

Both Pyra and Pandoria walk in the not-quite shadows of those who are larger than life, brighter than static, louder than logic. Innumerable strength is drawn from them as counterparts, it's true, and they are never - at least, hardly ever - cast aside, but still they are left wanting for possession and attention of their own.

Do you not see how I turn about? Do you not see the grace in my strength in my whimsy in my inmitability? Do you not see me?

Of course you see me. In so many ways, I am like you. Oh beautiful, graceful girl.

To see Haze is to adore her; we disregard the specificity of time period, for it is always true. Melia cannot but be enamored with the sweet-faced, sweeter-voiced girl who minds the same sensibilities through precious not-so-reticence. Arrive the winds, arrive the birds, arrive the singing of our pleasant yet sorrowful song.

Plaintive, they would call it. Soft, we are, and supplicative, but not weak. Never weak. We have seen too much love come and pass for to take this moment with anything but our strongest wills. Will you lend me your strength? Can we join and call it ours?