Silver Creek cerulean

The wind was sweet with scents of spring, yet it tasted stale to her; too much grief, thoughts spinning into rage and sorrow and back again, a lightning storm behind closed eyes. Thalassa went still.

Was it his voice in the wind, or only cruel hope spinning tales?

No way to know, yet she thought again that she might have some of the gift in her: Orestes lived. She knew he did, she knew, though she could not have said how. The faintest echo of a voice under the wind — it could have been anything, anything, but she knew. He was alive. And she didn't need any other reason.

Without a single glance back, the Queen leapt beyond the treeline and into the endless night. For the second time in her life she left her people behind. For him; always for him.