“It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.”

-Edgar Allan Poe

She stood on a terrace bounded by intricately entwined stone railings watching the waterfall. A perpetual rainbow stood over terraced gardens containing exotic, blooming flowers, vines laden with fruit spilling over walls and walkways, and flitting birds like small jewels. They sported colors rivaling the rainbow shining overhead.

The roaring of the falling waters was strangely muted. The birds were silent. There was no wind.

Mountains surrounded the valley crowned with eternal ice and misty with distance and the late afternoon sun. The palace was built into the side of a lushly forested hillside.

The waters were slightly tinged with pink, giving everything a warm hue.

Walls, pillars, and buildings were fused seamlessly out of a shining white material. High arched gates and windows open to the surroundings made the buildings appear as if grown from the land itself. Sharply pointed, slender spires rose from large buildings replete with vaulted ceilings.

The palace was simply breathtaking, and it was empty. She walked for what seemed to her like hours through light-swept courtyards and gigantic halls. Sometimes she saw out of the corner of her eyes, laughing specters of elves clad in courtly attire. Some reciting poetry, some singing or playing fascinatingly complex instruments, some debating. But whenever she went and looked there was only the play of birds and flowers in an eternal late afternoon.

“Asandria? This is your dream, am I right?”

A slow song accompanied by a sad singing voice flitting like the birds and lovely as a tear echoed just around the corner and Alyssa walked towards that sound. The notes, crisp and crystal clear, seemed to hang in the air for a moment before fading- there was no echo.

She saw Asandria dancing in ice-blue veils and silk between the statues of a large plaza. Here she was not a spectral figure, she seemed so real but nevertheless looked ghostlike while defying gravity, whirling and twisting. She had long fuchsia hair intertwined with living flowers.

“Yes, you are right. It has been so very long since I could. Dream I mean.” Asandria's voice came from beside her, and there stood the specter she was getting used to, looking at herself dancing.

“Where are we?”

“We are in the Orchid Palace. Formed of the bones of Vyarlis the feathered Snake, the firstborn son of thunder. The water is his blood, you see?” Alyssa remained silent, watching. Asandria spoke again her voice a sweet lilting sound very near an instrument itself. “Here we courted the god of poetry and gentle dreams and here he fell to the allure of the elder fey, gifting her his crystal heart. She was the princess of icy stars, my mistress.” Asandria crossed her arms leaning on a stone railing.

“We knew the barest impressions of immortality yet for countless years we reigned.

Ours were mighty warriors, knowledgeable sages, and cunning sorcerers.

But everything came to an end.

The spirit of Vyarlis corrupted an envoy with his riddles and whispers, a gifted Wizardess of some Island kingdom far to the east, a human. We had never seen one before.

And she stole the heart and our court was cursed. Vyarlis vengeance, our curse. When he fell in the Age of Titans he foretold ‘By the glittering heart will your sight leave you and the fleeting interest of a mayfly, dreaming of immortality, end you.’ The end was neither quick nor sudden. The best of us tried to avert it. But all they could do was to doom her, who did the same to us. For even a pebble can make a warrior fall to his death.”

The living, or seemingly alive, Asandria bowed towards an invisible audience, basking in the adoration with quickened breath while gracefully gesturing her thanks. She looked vibrant, like a ray of light given form.

“You are that doom, the promise of despair, and I will help you achieve it.”

The last she saw and what few things she later remembered.

The smile behind gossamer silk, sharp as broken glass and deadly as a night in winter.