Bramblepoint in the deep of the night, near the edge of the know

Her silence decided his prior doubts - she was not her - and Wirt prepared for the awkward rush of apologies that often followed happenings as these. A sliver of his heart found relief in knowing he would soon be alone, if only to remember the voice of his flower, yet her stirring memory would not make easy the infant hours of the night.

But the stranger stayed, and her words surprised him enough for a smile to slip across his lips. “You are right, in this way and that.” He found himself saying, playful in his own accented voice. “My steps often tarry, for what does one know if the brilliant glow of the drowning sun is the last their eyes will see?” He tipped his muzzle then, to try and glimpse her through the corner of his eye. Thick shadows met him, richly cast by the forest. She kept herself a mystery, and this, he decided, he liked.

“Yet if I had hastened,” he continued, gaze relaxed on the spot he’d last heard the laugh of her voice, “and forewent my song and dance, and if I had rushed to meet you here three nights before - riddle me, would I have found you waiting for me then? Or would we have both found an empty wood where our paths should have crossed if I hadn’t run with haste, and a wandering still filled with the vanity of looking, not knowing whom we sought, and missing the days that might have been beautiful if had we rested content our meeting tonight would have come, at its proper time. For who knows if three days ago you were ready to know me, and I, you.”

He toyed at the flower. “But if I found a soul more brilliant than the sun - then even though my steps might linger, it would only be to memorize the world so as to share it with her, in moments far sweeter than the heavens can give.”