The Sentinels it is ours to hold the banner, is ours to hold it long

a dream had roused her, but upon waking she had begun The Forgetting of it. but there was a beauty to the thing she had seen within her head, and when deirdre stirred she sought it without reservation. it was, perhaps, the first thing she had done without fear since the fateful day the ogre of a woman had come well past their doorstep. truthfully, as she thought of it, deirdre felt no fear of her evil at all. she wandered deeper into the forest, her eyes tracing the forest that sang as she moved through it. deirdre, our daughter, our beloved, she felt she heard the wind sing. and then! the phosphorous light that did glimmer came to her again, and deirdre turned to bound after it. the moment she felt she would capture it, the floating flame disappeared, but returned again as the wind laughed and tousled her furs. deirdre moved more warily after it, now, until the flower her mind had conjured in its dreams was found just beyond the path it had ceased in making. deirdre moved gingerly toward it, feeling safe as she looked to its flavescent center, as though all the ill she had seen in the terrible face of the cruel woman directed toward her was gone. deirdre stood a little taller without knowing it, her muscles relaxed, the negativity she had clung to the past few weeks beginning to unravel. the world was strangely quiet, but she felt shielded and safe.