Even as she walked behind the bier, she remembered how she felt when they had first held one another. She had been twelve, two years younger than she was then, and he had been thirteen. He had returned from a trek as a junior guardian. His training as a guardian had lasted a whole lifetime, or at least as long as she had known him. At that time she only knew him by the nickname he had given her. "You can call me L," was what he had told her. So, she did. He was her L from not too long after that. When they were ten and eleven, they had declared their love for one another; then, that day, when they were twelve and thirteen, they became betrothed. In a private ceremony, he had told her, "I am Leon." Her next words gave him her name, Caulifla.

The boy ran out of the trees carrying on his back a pack and a staff.  The staff was bloodless, and that likely meant that their expedition had gone on peacefully. He beamed when he saw her. Caulifla stood near the forest's edge just inside their village. She had nothing really to do that day, other than wait for him. Unlike Leon, Caulifla had wandered about the trades since she was very young; nothing ever really sat right with her. When she met Leon, that finally made sense. She wasn't meant to work a trade; she was meant to homemake. It made her giddy with excitement. To care for her and Leon's children, to love her husband by keeping their home pristine, and to love her children by raising them in the old ways and taking them to the temple every Friday.

Leon smiled wide as he opened his arms and took her in his embrace. "I've returned, sister. Praise the Song."

"Praise the Dance," she said, buried in his chest. "Did everything go okay?"

"Completely uneventful." They realized together what they were doing and separated.

They both turned a deep shade of purple in their pale blue cheeks. The mud under their feet made a squishing noise as they both shifted their weight, uncertain of what they would do about what just happened. Caulifla remembered being so embarrassed. The relief that she then felt when he brought her back into his embrace. They were old enough to be hugging and even—

The memory of the kiss was so strong that Caulifla almost lost her footing as she followed the bier. For a moment she was pulled from the recollection into the present where she was following behind Leon's body as it rode a bier to their Mother Tree.

The memory returned.

—kiss. Leon brought her close and nearly pulled her off her feet. The Fae-man pressed his lips to hers and filled her body with an electric heat. That heat pulsed through her with every heartbeat as they remained intertwined. When he pulled away and set her back on the flats of her feet, she almost whimpered for his embrace to return, but he remained steadfast in his separation; at least he did that day.

Over the next two years, they spent an awful lot of time hidden behind trees, in groves, dancing and kissing. She returned home many nights with cheeks smile-sore and a heart full of laughter.

All of that was over now, though.

Before her the dirt road rumbled with the passage of the bier. The guardians who had found these bodies in the woods had crafted a makeshift platform to bring home their dead so they could be given to The Mother Tree and go to be with their ancestors. Caulifla wept. Where her tears landed the stem of a flower broke through the dirt.

Caulifla was covered in mourner's black and even wore a veil to hide her face from the world. Two women flanked her. One wept for her son who had been to young to be betrothed, and the other wept for her husband.

The bier neared The Mother Tree pulled by two dire wolves. When the mourners crossed the root that they denoted twenty paces from their mother they all lifted their voices in a magical dirge. The song coalesced into visible memories that flew across the village, riding the wind like it was a wave on the ocean.

Caulifla watched villagers come out of their homes grown into the trees and look up to see the memories fly across their vision. The girl was happy to see her love again in the images their song produced. The wave of thoughts raced towards the tree, drawing everyone in. The weavers stopped spinning their looms, the blacksmith set down his hammer, the merchants let their scales rest, and the artists stopped creating. Each villager was related to the spirit of the tree and thus to each other in a certain way. Caulifla knew that when one Fae mourned so did they all. That day three Fae mourned, so the hurt was multiplied. A crowd quickly formed around Caulifla and her two sister-mourners as their song finished.

The priest of The Great Singer, their god, stood outside the hall of worship that had been grown inside their Mother Tree on a platform that was actually a very large and specially gown root of The Mother. He proclaimed a blessing on the mourners and on all the gathered crowd. The Fae-men and Fae-women of the crowd were all dressed in their regular attire, woven fabrics made from hemp or cotton. Most were the color of the leaves of the grassy plants they wove the fabrics from, but a few, mostly the artists, had dyed their clothes to stand out more. Caulifla had been one of those artists as a child, but now the world had been drained of its color.

"Peace, children of our Great Mother, rest your voices, Daughters of the Songs, and still your feet, Sons of the Dance. Your brothers," the priest a stately, grandfatherly man dressed in ornate robes of white, lined and detailed with green, gold, and blue, waved a hand over the three bodies on the bier, "Cacton, Thomat, and Leon have finished this verse." The priest turned to The Mother Tree and raised his hands to her. "Oh hear us, Mother, as we sing these souls to your embrace. Let our song aid them as they find their part in our father's choir."

The Fae-folk of Mother Tree Village joined in a song that produced a powerful magic. The sounds came together and fell on the tree. The clearing where they stood was full of grass, flowers, and other plants which all seemed to Caulifla to stand taller as the song began. Three compartments opened in its side each big enough for the bodies. The song then lifted the bodies out of the bier, leaving behind the clothes they wore and floated them into their resting places. With the final crescendo the bark closed around the men and they were sealed inside The Mother as was the fate of all their kind, Caulifla knew. From Mother they did come, and to her loving embrace they returned. Always. The few times a body could not be returned to The Mother, they had at least been sung into the earth, who happily accepted them as her own children, at least that is what the stories always said when Caulifla read them.

There was a bitter taste to her memories, however. The children of the Earth had killed her Leon... and they would— her thoughts were interrupted by the priest speaking again, his mouth moving and emphasizing the wrinkles of great age and wisdom which surrounded his white irises. "Do not be bitter, Children. Do not let the hurt the Children of the Earth caused our brothers infect you. They are a short-sighted, ignorant people with little knowledge of the hurt they cause. Instead, mourn their ignorance and seek to tune your mind, so when they come bearing their discordant melodies, you have a pure song to sing for them."

Caulifla wanted to turn herself inside out and cry for hours. How could she not be bitter? Forgiveness on this scale seemed so far beyond what she thought possible.

"Do not mourn your brothers, Children," the priest went on. "For they now sing with the Great Singer and are a part of his eternal melody. This is a privilege only some of us will ever know. Be delighted for them, be elated that our great god has chosen them to sing with him." The priest turned to the chief mourners and spoke to them. "Caulifla, Daughter, I have heard The Singer's blessing for you, and it is this," he spoke once but all three women heard their own version of what he was saying, "your heart will join the chorus of lovers again. One day. For now, rest." This kind of magic, prophetic-multi-speak was what the books called it, was something that she still had no way to comprehend

Caulifla fell to her knees, unable to bear the weight of her sorrow. Her hands took fistfuls of cloth as they pressed into her skirt. She knelt before her betrothed's grave whispering prayers for vengeance that did not exist in the religious lexicon of her people, but she had to believe that a god powerful enough to sing the world into being, could sing a song of death and punishment for those monsters that killed her Leon. Surely his wonderous love did not extend to those that would so callously murder such a peaceful folk. Her eyes burned and her arms scrapped her dress crossing over her chest to try and physically bind a broken heart. The girl's thoughts turned to darker things. How many had he killed? How many of those Earth-Sons paid the ultimate price for their ignorance? Leon was no slouch, surly one or two lie dead on their mother's soil with cracked skulls. Show me it. She prayed to her mother. Show me his last moments, I need to know.

Caulifla knelt there weeping, begging, and demanding closure and justice from her mother for hours. The villagers had all left, the other mourners were gone. The rumbled under her rage. Her eyes burned with a ring of magical fire. She wondered what color they burned as the world shifted.

---/\/\/\---

Caulifla felt locked inside her own mind as she looked through someone else's eyes. With as much as she could see and feel she knew that she had been transported into the mind of Leon. His muscles were on fire, the staff in his hand was bloodied on both ends, and he panted hard. "Run, both of you, keep running!" The youthful Fae-man spun his staff and blocked another falling arrow, knocking it out of the sky.

Thirty yards away an Earth Son appeared in the trees drawing back his bow. "Stop!" Leon's voice cried out, Caulifla felt his eyes burn with a magical flame. The man froze, bow string stretched and arms taut. "Go with haste." Leon ran with the child and the older man. Their feet took on a magical speed and rushed through the forest.

The two ahead of him were the ones who got caught in the trap.

A net sprung out of a collection of twigs and leaves, smothering both the Fae-boy and the older Fae-man. Leon had been just on the edge of it, narrowly avoiding getting caught. He looked for a rope that held the trap, but couldn't immediately find one. Caulifla wondered what he felt. With the sweat collecting on his palms the racing heart in his chest, both of which she could feel, she had to imagine he was afraid and nervous. He was the guardian on this trek, he should have been able to protect them.

That was when the Earth Sons arrived. They called themselves "duine" but that blasphemous word was rejected by the Fae, they were the Sons and Daughters of Earth, her first attempt. She had failed with them and all the rest of her creations, including the Fae, sons and daughters of the spirits of the forest and their Elfish progenitors, suffered for it. This collection of ignorant killers surrounded Leon. Each of them, Caulifla saw as Leon put eyes on them individually, had eyes burning with rage. They wanted Leon dead. The girl thought a blind halfling could see it in their faces. 

This Son of the Dance readied himself for the final waltz. Caulifla felt his heart calm, felt his mind clear, and saw the dance before he performed it. With a flourish of the staff, he stepped to the first man. His staff spun far faster than the human seemed able to track so when the archer went down with a loud crack of the staff against his temple, the rest of them jumped back in surprise. The girl found herself cheering for her Leon as he continued to the next Earth Son.

The staff spun and so did the dancer, whirling about in a series of flourishes that confused the hunter he faced down. Another crack and the leather-clad man crumbled into a bleeding heap on the dirt. Caulifla felt a sharp pain in the back of her calf and looked with Leon to see an arrow sticking out of his leg. The tough-as-bark Fae reached down and snapped the arrow off at the wound's entrance. Cursing he turned to run at the next archer. Another arrow sprouted from his shoulder. A third from his gut. He pushed through the pain and found the next Son of Earth and felled him. The man put up a fight, blocking Leon's staff with his bow shaft a few times before Caulifla felt Leon had the opening he needed. Just as she realized that, he had too and brought his staff across the Earth Son's jaw. The girl could see through the man's open mouth that the strike had sent teeth flying back into the man's brain.

Out of the small of Leon's back sprouted a fourth arrow. Caulifa felt herself cry out in pain as Leon roared a sound that was half-rage and half-pain. A hunter to his right brandishing a sword charged at the Fae-man. "I made a promise!" Tears choked his voice as he ducked a sword swipe and leapt into another twisting staff flourish that ended by cracking the back of the sword-bearing hunter's skull. That made four.

Caulifla knew what had to come next but she still hated it. The arrow in Leon's gut was joined by a second and that made him stagger. Three more quickly sprouted from different parts of his body. The dancer fell to his knees, still trying to struggle back to his feet, he put a good deal of weight on the staff that he planted in the ground. These Sons of Earth were opportunistic and saw the weakened warrior for what he was, vulnerable. Another hunter came out of the trees and swiped at the Fae-man's staff with his sword. The support being swept out from below him caused Leon to fall to the earth. "No," he said, weak. "No, I have a promise to keep, I have to live."

The Earth Son that had knocked away his staff, used his sword to lift Leon's chin so he could see him. The words he spoke were in a language neither Leon nor Caulifla knew. The only thing she recognized was the word "Rome." Every Son or Daughter of Earth that Caulifla had ever even heard of in the last three hundred years mentioned this word, this "Rome" what ever that was or meant.

The thing wore a long brown-leather cloak and the sword he carried was not the regular longsword Caulifla had seen human merchants carry, instead this sword was shorter than those and curved in the middle of both edges. His eyes were brown, his mouth a straight line, and his hair was cut too short for Caulifla to really make out a color. He spat in the face of the dying Fae-man before leveling his sword horizontally to Leon's neck. The pain of an open throat just added to the pain felt by half a dozen arrows sticking out of his body. Leon fell into the dirt, the backside of his head landing on the ground. As he died he watched the archers aim up and fills his friends, the small boy and the older Fae he had been assigned to protect, with arrows. They screamed and fell limp at the same time that Leon's lungs filled with blood and the world went black.

---\/\/\/---

Caulifla found herself back by the tree returned to her own body. She was in the same position that she had felt Leon was in when he died. She crossed her arms and brought her knees to her chest before rocking herself in that fetal position.