Though she could remember when she had fallen from the willow tree, and how her sisters had carried her to her mothers gentle voice and touch; though she could remember the sound of the stream as it passed under the Alaishal crossing; though she could remember well the warmth of the summer breeze, it was never these things that came to her in reverie. Irilenthalys perched silently on the edge of the lamentably tawdry bed she had unintentionally and unwittingly received with the room she rented. Her slender form was tense, her fists clenched, and her dim violet eyes staring into the world of memory that returned each night to haunt her.

He didn't scream, she remembered, nor lament or cry. He simply faded, like the fireflies at dawn as the sun rises up and belittles their puny glow with it's own self-righteous radiance. His gaunt face was pale and ashen; the toll of the constant pain he had endured over the last year wreaking havoc across his once youthful and handsome visage.

Her own face was wracked with grief and hurt and some noticeable measure of fear, as she regretfully realized now must have caused him yet more suffering to endure the sight of it. Whenever he could muster more than a voiceless rasp, his words had always sought to console and encourage her, as if it were she whose final strained and serrated breaths were slipping out of lungs on the verge of submission.

She remembered the clammy feel of his hands, icy and dully wet, enclosed gently in the warm softness of her own grip as they had been since she had ceased leaving his side nearly two weeks before. Her face had been inches from his, her bright violet eyes locked with his, as if in a prelude to a kiss, like the thousands they had shared in these short years together. Only this time she knew that it was not reckless passion, not joy that would grip her, but fear and emptiness as she listened to the lingering echo of the life passing out through his pale, cracked lips.

It had been a very starry night, like a bag filled with a trillion sparkling diamonds had been scattered over the heavens. Her mother's eyes were large and filled with concern as she observed her weeping daughter. Irilenthalys had been certain that of all people her mother would understand how inexorable her passion was, and how it was impossible to deny her feelings for her beloved. It was not so, however.

"Your days are filled with hope and joyous abandon, but think for a moment what will reside in that place when his days are gone. Think of the lonely centuries that will lay ahead."

She could still hear the assuredness of her mother's words, and could still remember the revulsion and anger she felt as she recoiled from her mother's consoling embrace. She had clutched the symbol of the Goldhearted as she dashed, sobbing, from her mother's chambers. It was that night that she mounted the mare that carried her away from her family, and it was that night she left her home for all time.