Noctisardor Bypass the night is long, and the path is dark

Captivated as he was by eventide over the Rising Sun Valley, the Elvhen found daybreak nothing less than enchanting; where evening woke quiet frantic flutters of nocturnal vigor, the twilit morn cast a different sort of vibrancy through the land. A sleepy stirring, the Wilds unfurling, yawning, blinking bleary eyes. Amadis picked through tall trembling grassland cast flaxen by sunrise, a bloodshot inkspill winding through dimlit Arcadian hills. His wandering found him creekside, following the twisting waterway to where it broke over mauve-shadowed rocks. The prince lingered over stone-strewn shore, admiring the water's surface, the windchime whispers of burbling creekflow. The sound of it was bittersweet, the clench of nostalgia and homesick yearning round his battered, aching heart.
For all that it had spurned him, for all that it had maimed his fragile soul, he missed Elvhenan. He missed the serene beachside mornings, the coarse warmth of sand between his toes, the gentle murmur of the tide skimming the shoreline. He missed the pearlescent grandeur of Tarasylan Telas, the simple sunbleached elegance of sleek stone palisades and slender spires, the distant drone of pompous debate among royals. He missed evening walks through labyrinthine Arlathan, the eerie echoes of clicking nails through endless jewel-crusted corridors, the shrill screech of stonework by tireless Scholars under long somber shadows. He missed walking the length of the Chronolog, the stretching soapstone slabs engraved with intricate runes representing the history of Elvhenan. In another life, he might have been a Scholar, might have added his own marks to the Chronolog until his teeth were worn to nubs from clutching crude salvaged stone instruments and he retired to passing verbal history to the Noble youth, old and accomplished and content in his fate.
If wishes were fishes…
The silkie stepped into the water, seaglass eyes tracing the glassy surface incarnadined by dawnfire and watching it break in chromatic ripples around delicate darkling ankles. He sighed, closing his eyes to the foreign scene that suddenly struck him as cold, unwelcoming. For several blissful heartbeats, the prince imagined that he was back on the island, that the sunlight warming his back was reflected off the sea behind him, that the creek bubbling over his paws was the purling oceantide.
Then he took a breath, and the sweet deepgreen scent of inland flora shattered the illusion, too heavy and musky to sit on delicate threads of seaside daydreams. One by one, the dreamcords snapped, and left the wayward elfblood bereft and broken-hearted. And still, he felt no desire to return to his forsaken throne.
Home was no longer home… but neither was Rivenwood. Home had simply ceased to exist.