Wings and Steel

Chapter XXIV - Happy

A/N: I know some people would rather see pictures of clothes rather than imagine them based on the description, so I included references for the main characters' formalwear. Of course, you are free to imagine them differently, if you so desire.

~

The morning Kaltar went to sign the Treaty, Lilly came to me. We'd all be staying in a temporary facility before the formalities were done and we could start building our lives again.

"You know...if you want to see her....I can tell you where she's resting." She said, her icy blue eyes filled with sadness.

My own eyes filled up with tears even before she continued. She gave me the address on a piece of paper. I just nodded and left the room without even saying goodbye.

I reached the spot after a while of walking through the forest. She was buried at the edge of a clearing, in the comforting shade of an oak tree. Her grave was simple, her name carved at the base of the tree, and covered in Dahlias. I stepped closer, sprinkling dried petals over her eternal bed to pay my respects.

The wind was softly whistling in my ear and the sun peaked playfully through the leaves. It was a beautiful day, strongly contrasting with my internal turmoil. Suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me.

"She was my mentor, you know?" I said softly as Hilda stopped by my side.

"What was she like?" She asked in a quiet voice.

I smiled sadly, "To say she was amazing...would be a grotesque understatement. She was more than that. She was the best of us. She meant to us what Kaltar means to you..." I explained, feeling tears already running down my face, "After the war, we were all broken, and she was the only one strong enough to pick up the pieces and make us whole again. My mother had died and she took me in, raised me as her own, taught me everything I know." I paused, attempting to drown my sobs.

"She sounds like someone worthy of legend." She said.

I nodded, "She was. She was the last true Warrior Fairy. She was beautiful, proud, fierce, but also gentle and loving when she had to be. She was motherly with all of us, firm but just. She was everything all of us aspired to be and everything the humans feared. She deserved this proper burial."

"The flowers are lovely." She pointed out the colorful Dahlias, cheerfully dancing in the wind.

"A Fairy is of the Earth,
And to the Earth she shall return
Upon her death.
A great tree shall be her roof
And the fresh dirt her blanket.
And on her grave I shall sow
The plant whose name she bears." I recited, "The eternal bed, by Rig Moen, the first Hjalmari to enter a contract with a Fairy, thousands of years ago. Her name was Jasmine. She is rumored to have had hair as white as snow and eyes as blue as the ocean."

"...But despite her unearthly beauty, that was not what attracted Rig. For he fell in love with her nightingale voice. A voice so clear and melodious that would leave the Gods themselves hopelessly caught in her spell the moment her rosy lips would part." Hilda continued proudly, "We know the legend as well. I'd never heard his poem though."

"He is said to have composed the poem upon her death, as he lied down next to her grave, unable to live on without her." I smiled bittersweetly, "Found by their son later and entrusted to the Fairies. It is said that jasmine flowers grew on her grave, despite nobody having planted them there, contrary to even the poem. Because of it, the Fairies started to sow on their own graves whatever it was that they were named after."

"Dahlia is a beautiful flower." Hilda nodded.

"It is. Her hair was the same color as this one." I said as I gently touched a velvety red flower.