Everything was in a blur. First, she had a glimpsed at an odd silhouette of an adult Aleisten waiting at rising woods. Then the slow trot of the furry back she had latched onto vibrated into her chest as their troop carried her higher and higher towards the sky. Between the passing of familiar oak and chorusing birds, the trickling river and whispering crickets, it must have been evening when Bernadette felt the hug of pine and sweat. She knew who was the warm flesh and how it made her feel safe when his strong arms enveloped her softly.

“I wish I can say my gratitude but…” her Dah offered.

There was no response. Whatever had given Bernadette to her father, she understood they were fae. But whoever they truly are, she could not name.

She had smelled her mother’s cooking and the hunger plowed her wake. The bothering hotness of the cloth she was bundled into spun her anger and the sweaty pillow, an agonizing mend of coolness.

“Come now, my Acacia,” her mother wiped away the sweat and tears of her cheek. The glorious dish was dragging her nose like a bloodhound was further near. Bernadette remembered she had eaten but how or whatever her Mah fed her was lost into a dreamless sleep.

There was a time Bernadette was lost in an endless sorrow. No, she did not see anything, nor felt anything. She just heartened she was alone in that trap. She heard nothing. Smelled nothing. And it made her sad. She did not discern how she had come here nor how could her family abandoned her. There was this unknown loss. Loss she could not claim to imagine. Nor she could cry for. Without else to do but labor in the void, Bernadette harbored no expectations or dreams that this will end.

But then a voice sang,

“Willow and creek, a great maiden’s den

Silver and horn, her love and ken

They held their hearts and bore life

Offered home thee and everyone had forgotten

Forever did they joy and all, forever not will they flourish and glow

By fire and blood will it end, but by devotion and forgiveness will it mend”

The loss was the same as what the song portrayed. Scorching fire and the dance of swords in a blizzard of smoke and ash. There was death, the scent of iron in the air. There was rot of the harpy’s crumple of bones onto earth. There was defeat as lumber crackling like thunder and the splash of water.

It was chaotic, senses all shaping in the shadow of her eyes. Wracking her mind into turmoil. She could not name them. She could not touch them. They were not solid. They were things that have yet to happen but will.

When wood sunk into a capsule bole, it was the first Bernadette had recognized of reality. The creation of a wall and the soft cacophony of hammering. Bernadette knew these well and she latched into it like a rope. Her rope saving her from falling into the endless nightmare of loss. She held to it tight before it pulled. Pulled her and blasting her to a crashing star coming from above. Slowly it came. Slowly it carried her back to the life of the frontier.

Bernadette opened her clamped eyes.

She was right to believe that the hammers were not dreams, nor the murmur of folks outside her window.

A window. Bernadette looked at the aperture framed with iron. A robin passed by while Bernadette took stalk of the bed and the room, she was in. It must be morning, Bernadette decided, as just the crack of dawn pierced a ray into the glass panes, illuminating her room. Bernadette sat and was rattled by the wave of nausea. The cabin walls drifted like waves in her vision as the forester tried claiming her bearings. When the room stopped churning, Bernadette found herself in her sleeping gown and the scent of vapored sweat wafting from her armpit. Bernadette wretched her disgusted nose away when the knob to her door twisted.

Her mind was still digesting her current chamber when her Mah entered. Amborella smiled when she finally saw her daughter awake.

Apparently, when Prophet Gipuse sent word that the dolt Forester girl was a Seer, most of the Frontier made it their mission to providing a home for their future priestess. Thus, Bernadette ate breakfast on her family’s table while the rest of their folk were still building their houses outside. Although the Foresters were already considered an honor family, it was clear to Bernadette’s Mah, the grouch on her eyes and lips as she kneaded dough, that their rise in status did not bode well. Especially when Bertha, Bernadette’s beloved sister was already taken by Gipuse just that morning to be trained, explained the blind sage. Bertha did not even had breakfast, so while she sips yesterday’s chicken soup, Bernadette waited while her mother prepared for her sister’s and father’s meal for it to be sent later by Bernadette herself.

Her Mah had said she slept for ten days and it was time for her to rise when Bernadette was dragged out from bed, bathed and clothed on skirt. Amborella was kind to her daughter but a terror to the chopping of spices and vegetables. Their silent conversation amongst the clamor of pots and pans were precious moments between a flustered mother and half dosed child.

Half dosed she really was when Bernadette, dulled by her Mah’s stalwart buzz by the kitchen counters then turned her eyes on her new home’s window. A hornet flew in and had perched onto their pale curtain. Bernadette continued staring at the possible danger that bug was going to make if it made its nest here, when a gust of cool wind flapped onto the curtain, precariously lurching the hornet. Fortunately, the bug had remained astute, clutching on to the cloth. The flap of the curtain however across the window, when it had returned to its clippings somehow magicked a toad into the stool.

Bernadette rapidly blinked and found the toad doing thus as well. Its dark pupils did not flutter at the same time as it gawked at Bernadette. The girl was still gathering her thoughts about how familiar the toad was and why is it was so big when its eyes broke contact and peered to the struggling hornet. An armed hornet, that be with a horned helmet and a sword, holding on to the curtain with dear life.

Bernadette’s spoon clattered on the table before falling to the floor. Which unintentionally took her mother’s ire. The racket of her spoon kissing floor shook Bernadette’s periphery of the toad and fairy. Rallying however her attention to her Mah.

“Bernadette! What in by your sire’s butt did you that?”