Jade Fern Grove everything costs

Somewhere in the song, he had closed his eyes, but he did not see darkness. Instead, he saw light. Fragments of memories less vivid than when he had breathed them. Surreal and distorted. They danced through his mind like a summer mirage.

and from beyond those golden plains,
a vision! given gently,

For many days within the Gilded Sea, the summer wind drove Mother Rain away, those days of fear and Father Fire. In his first summer, the sun burned the grasses beyond gold. He had sung then, unceasingly. They all had — but he had felt his parents eyes upon him most, even more than they watched Evander dance for the rains to come.

to one who bore that crooked crown
to rule that blessed, gilded sea.

There came a moment, in that first summer, when he’d looked to the horizon and thought he’d seen a lake. Shining, as though lowered from heaven in some celestial sheet. He remembered the ecstasy. The joy overwhelming. And he remembered the sand that had filled him when he’d thrown himself in.

The fire came the next day, and he learned, then, that rain did not run for the mirage.

to one who cracked that crooked crown,

He had to open his eyes.

and broke that cursed, gilded sea.

And there, he saw her.

Rose. Rose. Rose. His eyes widened. An angel of gold pirouetting around him - Rose. Rose. She was dead. Was he dead? And why did she dance?

Why did she -

Ophelia.

The breath whispered through him, and his song choked with a dry sob.

On gilded legs she spun a trail of
sunlight through the night,
The one they’d lost becoming here
an angel of the light.