[Quest] another heart and another world.

[Pavetta]

p a v e t t a - - - Pavetta couldn’t be sure what drew her to the meadow of wildflowers. At first it was a mere whisper in the trees, leaves shifting gold and red and rose hues and she was not sure it was a voice after all. Perhaps it was merely the wind. She dismissed it at first, but the kaleidoscope of colors and shifting feelings was unmistakable, luring her deeper into the forest until she was not even sure what part of Delumine she was in, but the beauty was like nothing she had ever experienced in Novus before. Flowers she did not know the names of, birds the color of sunrises, trees the size of giants with mossy beards. Is this real? Am I dreaming? The whisper became louder, more urgent.  She did not know the words, but felt a sense of desperation and excitement fluttering in her heart like a trapped songbird. She began trotting, cloven hooves shifting through the grasses, dew drops beading her ankles like a bracelet of pearls. The trees thinned, giants looming behind her and blocking the way home, as if saying you cannot turn back now. She was in some fairyland, some wonderland. The flowers were the wrong color, the sky too  vivid, too purple. Had she gone through another portal? Not again… Panic gripped her heart with steely talons. But the way was closed, you cannot turn back now. She knew it was still Novus, but it seemed…enhanced. The colors were more vivid, the smells more poignant. As if two worlds were colliding… She breathed in deep and slowed to a walk, listening to the urgent whisper that grew louder and louder with every step into the silent meadow. The words still made no sense, no semblance of any language she had ever heard. She realized that perhaps it wasn’t meant to be understood…perhaps if she quit trying to force meaning into the words and …merely listened. She listened and the whisper grew until it was a song. The song of her life. The song ebbed and flowed as a series of images, of feelings, of thoughts. Fearghal. The serious eyes, the ebony of his hair, the smell of sweat and dust. She remembers his hot skin on hers, the way he looked at her as if she were the only star in the sky. She sees the flames of his pyre burning bright, embers floating into the sky like fireflies.  She remembers the feeling of leaving him and that life behind, the elation…the guilt…and the grief. She saw other things, but none were as prominent as Fearghal and how he had filled some part of her that she hadn’t thought to admit until now…she felty a strange, aching emptiness in his absence. She saw the temple where the cold priestesses raised her, saw the dark world and monsters of the Rift, she felt the rain on her cheeks the night she was left to die, and too, the night she wed Fearghal. She felt everything. Saw everything. Raw and real. She saw the portal last, the portal that had brought her to the world of Novus. The song ended on that melancholy note and Pavetta opened her eyes. Somehow she wasn’t surprised, nor alarmed, by the presence of the young dragon amid the wildflowers. It was almost as if they were expecting each other. Pomona... Somehow she knew that to be the name of the glittering, brilliant creature before her, just as Pomona knew Pavetta's name. The dragon’s voice was like lilting, playful wind chimes in her mind accompanied by a series of twinkling lights and colors, like sunlight through stained glass.   “Yes, I think I have been searching for you, too…”  But I did not know it.  A wonderful warmth filled her heart. The light of dawn enveloped them both and  in that moment Pavetta knew Pomona was her soulmate, her bonded, her faithful companion, her forevermore. a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse, creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---