Over the soft roaring chorus that each waterfall combined to make, and under the watch of Bru's empty black eye, the warden answered.

"You're too young to be thinking about that. How old are you? Thirty? Thirty five? You are practically still a kid." The bearded man said without a trace of meanness in his words.

I knew him well enough to know that he said I was too young because he actually thought I was too young.

If he knew that I was truly only nineteen, he would probably be surprised that I could walk and talk without tripping or babbling every other moment.

I wasn't far from that, but I was both less a child and younger than he thought I was.

"Age and wisdom are not the same thing, warden." I replied, thinking of The Mother in Yellow and the childlike qualities she had about her. Glim was more akin to the children that played and roamed the streets of Erosette than she was like her sisters. Despite that, I knew her to be hundreds of years older than she appeared.

My body was nineteen. My memory was only a little more than half that. My mind however, had been a toddler to someone whose age was far into triple digits, and everything in between.

I may have been too young to think of marriage, but I had also been old, alone, and in love more times than I could remember.

"Ah, I know it isn't," The warden groaned. "But you sorceresses live so long, most of you don't know who you actually are until you reach the age that a mortal would consider the last years of their life. Why rush?"

I held my hands behind my back and took a slow swinging step towards him on the tips of my toes, trying to seem as innocent as I could. "How old were you when you got married?"

"Too young," He sighed as he pulled yet another burner from his pocket and lit it with a match he had taken from the other. "I don't mean for that to sound like it did, I don't regret it. My beloved has been the most true thing in my too long life. I was just not ready to be for her what she needed me to be in the beginning."

If he wouldn't answer my question directly, I would trick it out of him.

"What is she like, your beloved?" I asked, as bright eyed and curious as I could make my mask of Ire seem.

The warden smiled as he smoked. "Stubborn, demanding, judgmental, but also kind, giving and accepting if given enough time. You'll have to meet her the next time you come here. I'll make sure she comes by."

"I would love that." I agreed.

If I've learned anything from dealing with Alexei, when a question was asked was almost as important as what the question was and how you asked it.

I would give the warden a moment before I pressed him further.

The warden knelt down and patted the little shark at our feet right in front of the big fin on her back. "Alright, Bru, this is where you come in. I need you to swim down and find out which room our invisible friend is in. When you know, wait for Ire and I to reach the bottom. No biting, no thrashing, no killing, just find out where it is, understood?"

"I can't promise you that, Morty. It's been all I could stand to not take your hand because of the blood. You know how wicked my frenzies can be," Bru said, almost in a purr. She turned her empty black eye to me before she continued. "And you should be careful, I am not the only predator in this cave."

I knew she meant me, she had evidently caught on to my trickery, but I did not react. I stood there and played the part of the clueless little girl.

It was not a big stretch for me to do so.

The warden's tone changed to something serious and full of authority. "Bru-Tol. I command you as Hexis's chosen warden to bring no harm to anyone unless I give you permission."

Bru apparently had not noticed that the warden had taken his silken tether from around his waist and placed it on her rough skin. He had done much the same to Amabura and found just as much success with the shark as he had with the salamander.

"Yes, warden." Bru agreed with a little giggle before stepping to the drop off and throwing herself off it like I would throw myself onto the bed.

I peered over the edge and watched her break through the pool at the bottom of the cave with a much smaller impact than I would have imagined she would make. All she was then with the dark shape moving through the water with terrifying speed, and I knew that there was nothing in all the chaos that I could be offered, that would make me willingly dip a toe into anything that Bru-Tol was swimming in.

The warden groaned as he stood, his knees making an audible pop as they straightened. "Compared to the others, what did you think of her? She's cute in her own way isn't she?

"If by cute you mean skin crawling, and yes, she is in her own way." I answered just a little too quickly.

The warden laughed. "I guess it does take time to get used to her talking about eating you. She can't help it, her Lord was just a boy when he passed. None of them can really."

"Would it have made a difference if he hadn't? Would she not have been this way?" I asked carefully, genuinely curious, but not wanting to sound insensitive.

The warden nodded vigorously as he made his way to the left side of the outcropping we stood atop. "Oh yes. They may not grow and change the way your Samsara does, but they were not stagnant. My little theory about each of them being made with a piece of their master makes me think that as their Lord or lady grew that little part would as well. That's what's so tragic about them being left behind. They're stuck without the soul they are bonded to being able to grow, neither can they."

My thoughts of weddings and romance went cold as I imagined what it would be like to suffer the fate that all the familiars on Silkcradle had been left with.

To know that I had the potential to make a werelight, but being unable to learn how to do it no matter who was teaching me or how many times I tried sounded like something that would only lead to madness.

"Come here. Loop this around your waist. We need to be out of here well before high tide begins or you'll learn why it's called the drowning cave." The warden said. He handed me one end of his tether, and I did as he asked. Once the white silk was tied around me, did the same to himself and led me to the edge of the outcropping.

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All the way down to the pool at the bottom of the cave there were small ledges that formed a very precarious looking path downwards.

"It's just like the ladder from earlier. I'll go down and then you follow. If you fall, I'll catch you. If I don't catch you, the tether will. Slow but safe. Unless you'd rather jump?" The warden explained.

It took me no time at all to make that decision.

Falling, which I was almost certain that I would inevitably do, was not equal.

If I jumped towards the pool, I would find some way to land wrong or to do something else that was inexplicably clumsy. The pool at the bottom of the cave would likely turn me into a spray of red mist and Bru would feast on the larger parts of what was left of me.

Even if I was actually falling more than I would be, if I dove off the outcropping being caught by the warden several times on the way down was assuredly much less violent and painful.

Besides, it would give me more opportunity to press him about his beloved.

"I think it would be better for both of us if we took the slow and safe way down. I could not live with myself if my death was the thing that got you killed." I said with a smile.

He nodded and smiled back as he lowered himself to the edge and hung his legs off of it. "Watch, do it just like this, and your guard won't have a reason to leave me in pieces."

I did as he said.

Nervousness ran through me and made every part of my cold body feel jittery and thin. It wasn't just the jump and the distance that unsettled me. It was that the warden had referred to Alexei as my guard. If he knew the white haired man was mine, surely he had asked himself why I needed a guard in the first place.

When I finally worked up the courage to push myself off the outcropping and into the air, I had meant to ask the bearded man about his love life, as soon as my feet touched the ground once again.

They didn't.

At least, they didn't as soon as I had expected them to.

My angle has been wrong and if it and if it had not been for the warden's scarred and strong arms, I would have plummeted right past the place I had been aiming for.

He caught me however, and the instant feelings of safety and relief, changed the words I had been meaning to say.

"Does it not seem strange that an underwitch from Lun needs her own personal guard?" I asked without truly realizing what I was saying until it had been said.

The warden, who I already thought to be one of the greatest people I had ever met, looked down at me and shrugged. "I live with souls that were woven into new life by the closest thing to a God that anyone has ever heard of. My definition of strange is a bit different than most. What does it matter if you have a guard? I don't know if you're one of The Mother's or Ladies' daughters, you have some special power, or they're worried you'll run off, but I don't particularly care. What you are right now matters far more than what you have been."

I would have cried if he had given me enough time to.

"And right now," He continued as he put me down. "You're my junior warden and we have work to do."

It took three more jumps down before I was certain that I would not break down into a crying mess. The warden had needed to catch me the very next jump I took, but after that I began to get better at what we were doing.

The air was cool and the constant mist wafting from all the different waterfalls dampened my hair and the green dress I was wearing, but I took great care and keeping Anna's gifts held firmly in my hand.

Halfway down, when the outcroppings began to grow slick with the water that had settled atop them, I returned to the question that I meant to ask before.

"How did you meet her, your beloved?" I asked, nearly slipping on the wet stone.

The warden continued our descent as he answered. "It's a fairly boring story, common as these things go. I was a mortal that grew up outside Zenithcidel, but was still in the territory of The Mothers. I joined the enclave as most young mortal men do, and made Knight mostly on brute strength alone."

He paused as we took another leap down.

Mortwyn had done almost exactly the same thing that Arthur had done.

The tall man was off somewhere. I had never been learning how to swing a sword so he could become my knight.

Dummy. I thought fondly and hoped that I would see my friend again soon.

"She was one of Lun's moons, a half moon if I remember correctly, but had taken time away from the school to make a name for herself," The warden continued, having raised his voice so he could hear him over the loudening sound of the waterfall. "I was assigned to her to help her bring peace to a small village that had been caught in a war between two wealthy families."

I could see what he was saying in my mind. A young warden fighting side-by-side with a beautiful sorceress that was wearing the same uniform that I wore.

We took another platform down.

"Is that how the two of you fell in love? Going all over chaos and helping people?" I asked timidly, no longer needing to slide off the edges of the outcroppings. I jumped down after the bearded man and landed squarely on my feet without a hint of imbalance.

The warden laughed. "I wish. By the time we accomplished what she had set out to do, she hated me. It turned out that being strong, fast, and good with a spear didn't necessarily make me a good knight."

"She hated you?" I repeated his words.

"Oh yes," He nodded. "Told me that herself. When we met again several years later, I was with the enclave no more and had taken up as the warden. She liked me better then."

We made our way down to the second to last outcropping and I asked another question that was just a bit too honest. "You said that you were a mortal, does that mean that you aren't any longer?"

I was not a fool.

I knew that I would not age the way Anna did, but if there was a way to keep her as young as I was, I needed to know about it.

"I'm still mortal. If left to my own devices, I would wither up and die in just a couple years, but she's not ready to let go of me just yet." The warden gave me an honest answer in return.

The first night I had been on silk cradle, after Taloo had taken me up into the air, Precept Seram I told the warden that he knew she would never let him go.

I had thought she had meant Hexis, not the bearded man's wife.

"The girl you're collecting all those trinkets for, is she a sorceress like you?" He asked as he reached the last piece of stone that jutted out above the pool.

I took the final jump as I responded. "No."

My feet hit the damp rock, but they had become slippery from all the water they had been in before. All of my weight shifted, and I went slipping back off the stone with a panicked shout.

The silken tether that the warden had made me tie around my waist tightened and stopped my fault before I crashed into the surface of the pool.

I could not hold the chalice that was filled with Anna's gifts. I watched them splash into the water and could do nothing but reach for them uselessly.

"No!" I shouted, my power coming to my palm and the desperate need to stop the gift's sinking formed working in my mind.

I had the will.

I knew the way.

I just was not fast enough.

A dark shape thrashed up beneath me and I recognized Bru cutting through the water towards the fallen gifts.

The very next moment after they had fallen from my hand, they were swallowed by the sharp toothed familiar and I knew I would never see them again.

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