I wear three colors on my dress this evening.

Red. The red of blood and pain, of the red garden day and the tablets that made me forget, and remember, of the sunrise and musky paint on cavern walls.

Green. Green like my banquet dress and green, green eyes on a green girl, like the smell of spring and serene calm, and green tablets I did not need.

And blue. Blue like Xander's eyes, and Vick's, and like the ocean and the sky, stretching on forever, where Ky told me Indie went, and the blue tablets that I walked through, and the stench of death.

They billow around me, like the words always do, and I twirl and twirl until I can't and the stars spin in circles.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

I do not. I twirl the long, long paper with words around the village trees.

I've put words on them, different words from different poems and songs and my own, too.

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I sing the words for a boy with blue, blue eyes and a girl who flew away. The paper in my hands keep unfurling, and I keep reading them.

Newrose, oldrose, Queen Anne's lace.

Water, river, stone and sun.

I think of my mother and her flowers.

Wind over hill, under tree.

Past the border none can see.

Birds fly through the sky, their feathers glittering like broken glass, past trees and hills and the border that is where we cannot go.

Climbing into dark for you.

Will you wait in stars for me?

The stars begin to fade as the red, red sun comes up. I stop dancing with the paper to watch.

They dropped like ~ Flakes ` . `

` . ` They dropped like ~ Stars

I walk through the graves and pause. I look at names.

Dark, dark, dark it was

But the Physic's hand was light.

I pick a white flower, the one that saved us, and tucked it into my hair.

Any day her boat might fly

Across the waves and to the shore.

Indie's boat flew, across the blue waves.

But my feet slip nearer every day;

...

When I am telling thee.

I think of the Archives, the trading. In my mind's eye, I see shelves and my papers and my trades.

But I must count the journey, all

For it has brought me thee.

And I point at the stars and think of Ky.

To heal our wings for flight.

I know how to fly now. Fly free, with nothing but the wind and the sea and the sky and the stars.

I step back and look at it. Black print against white paper, my words floating in the sky, the trees, just like that day in the garden, when I danced and I made my poem known, so that whoever took it down, whoever burned it could see the words, and watch them slip through their fingers.

The sunrise is red. The cool, morning grass is green, and the mountains look blue in the morning light.

Footsteps sound behind me.

I don't turn. I know who they belong to.

"What did you do?" Ky breathes as he stares at the paper.

I turn now. I look at him, watch his face as he looks at the hours of work I did.

I don't know for a while.

Red garden day, Grandfather reminds me.

I smile.

I almost gave my life with the tablets. I gave my time. I gave my possessions. I gave my home, the Society and the peaceful life. I gave up myself, to go to the canyons, and I gave up my family. All for this stone village and for the sego lily.

"I'm giving them what I didn't give them yet." I say.

"This time, I'm giving them my words."