As a child, they said she wore a ballgown fashioned from an ancient sun, and when you saw her you could not deny the truth of it. It was not a colour you had ever seen before; beware the girl with the Delphic dress. The shadows lay tattered and bleached in her wake, for they could not withstand the might of a child cursed with Solis' heart. They loved and loathed her; pushing and pulling at the fissure between them until it yawned into a monochromatic void that harboured only the most bitter parts of she.
And yet -- beneath the disorientating clamour and the violet bruises left by Caligo's disappointment -- someone loved the wild sunlit soul that so many had come to hate. He did not mind the way her smile lit matches in the dark, or the burning of his fingers at the touch of her lightbulb skin. He was not afraid of the way she loved the sun, and in return for this small virginal kindness, she fell in love with him. Except it had never felt like falling; not under the gentle caress of a summer innocence that sheltered them from the voices of doubt. They had tumbled through stained glass windows, hearts beating to a handmade rhythm inaudible to all ears but their own. In that fairy-lit haze everything had made sense.
Until one day, it didn't.
Rhoswen stood in a silence that was her own, leaning listlessly into the breeze that carried with it woodsmoke and magic. Autumn in Denocte had always possessed a charm unparalleled to any rivalling kingdom; the kaleidoscopic canopies, the crackle of fires old and new, the bite of skeletal leaves underfoot - even a siren with sand in her bones could see the beauty that lived here. But her mind was not on the seasons. Instead her thoughts drifted lazily in and out of the past, reliving secret sunny moments that had unfolded upon the very ground she now stood. If she concentrated hard enough, she could feel the memories as if they had been born again: her fingers entwining between his own, the sound of his placid laughter echoing across the water.
The red woman shifted, her dark gaze rising from the reflection below up to the clear denim sky overhead. If asked whether she could turn back time, whether she could save the childhood happiness that she and Raum had created, Rhoswen knew that her answer would always, unconditionally, be no.
Rhos waited. It was only a matter of time before her ghost returned to haunt her; for that was all he was to her now: an empty husk of a boy once loved by a girl.
RHOSWEN
