[SWP] gather 'round

[Pavetta]

p a v e t t a - - - Pavetta can see the flames burning blood red in the late night from the castle walls. They are tranquil tonight; a steady glow that might be beautiful as it blended with the first rays of dawn were it not for the lives and land it consumed. What is to stop them from consuming the capitol next?  She doesn't sleep much. The dreams are too real and she finds that she cannot wake from them once she enters them. The sound of her own screams, the heat of the flames, the smell of burning flesh and hair. She is trapped in that fire over and over again. The smell of ash remains when she wakes and she realizes the nightmare is ongoing, the fires still burning, destorying Dawn Court.  How much longer can they hold out? There is no help coming or surely it would have arrived by now. The other Courts were tied up in their own disasters.  She is about to turn away from the wall and return to begin her dawn shift holding the flames at bay when something peculiar catches her eye. A stranger, shrouded in the shadow, standing in the center of the court yard.  Dawn's first light is gray and solemn; illuminating the stranger in a strange, otherwordly glow. He is not proud, but bent and broken. His voice is soft, and yet she hears it from the walls. He calls to them, his children. A god, then. She remains rigid and umoving, as if her hooves had frozen to the cobblestones. Part of her, the angry, desperate part, wants to blame him for the tragedies of Dawn. If he was anything like his brother, the Sun...she wanted nothing to do with him and the games of the gods. For surely that is what this all is?  They gather to him, sheep to their shepherd. Ulric, Po, faces she does not yet know, and even the children.  She can't do it, she can't heed his call. She stubbornly refuses. They are all the same. And yet, if he has any answers, brings any help, she knew she must do away with her pride and anger and welcome it, because Dawn Court surely needed relief and sanctuary.  a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse, creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---