A/N - The snow was falling in feathery slo-mo. I was reading Tsubasa translations. Enough said. I write in moods as much as with plot-bunnies. This one is a different twist on the Dream of Smiles theme. It's there, it's just… more melancholy. And I intro a couple things that I believe that most of you will look at me and go 'WTF!" when you read it. I got the one idea from my friend and fellow fanfic writer, Erenriel the Elven Canuck.

Oh yes, and deep apologies to everyone for the former chapter's un-canon-ness. Unfortunately I am stuck reading the English translations as Del Ray puts 'em out, and until mysticdawn5 kindly sent me a link for translations and scans, I didn't know anything that happened past about chapter 80. Now I am a spoiler freak. Thank you Erenriel and mysticdawn5.

…. Anyways, I hope you enjoy. This is probably even more uncanon, but as far as I know no one can bug me about this one.

Disclaimer - …still don't own.

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Down on the flats, snow falls like tiny feathers dropping from on high, kissing the frozen ground. It's the kiss of the longest sleep, the one the widow gives to her husband as he lies still and cold in his coffin. The snow is a shroud for the land, hiding damaged features and the maps of pain on its surface from unkind eyes. Maybe the snow will heal the land. I don't know. But I probably won't be around to see it happen.

The snow swirls in the faint breeze from the north as it approaches the city. When the wind is right, the crystalline dragon wings that arc over the buildings like a protective shield sing, a low wordless melody that changes with the wind. Most nights I hear it as I lie there alone in the echoing palace. I try not to listen too hard. It mingles with the wind, rushing and sighing around the palace in gossamer threads of sound. I bury my head under my blankets and try not to notice that it sounds like a chorus of ghostly voices. There are enough ghosts here.

I walk the halls in the daytime, and in the pale sunlight slanting down from the high windows I see the shadows of the people who used to walk here. Vague faces, even vaguer wisps of murmured conversation, and then once again they are gone. But I know those aren't real… most of the time.

I walk the halls and conjure up memories. Not in the literal sense, although I could, if I wanted to. I don't.

There the old king would walk, slow and stately as he headed down the stairs to face another day. The huge fireplace there was where my prince, Ashura, would lie before like a sleek ebony cat, dreaming and working. There the two of us would run down the corridor, dodging and laughing as we raced each other into the mages' quarters and skidded to a stop under the disapproving eye of the Royal Wizard. In the deep eye of a window, the princess - my princess - Freya would sit, knees drawn up to her chest, bone-white hair falling around her in silken angel wings, watching the comings and goings of the world outside.

I know where my princess used to run down the upper walkways, giving chase or being pursued by her half-brother. If I look closely out of the corners of my eyes, I can almost catch a glimpse of Freya's sometimes solemn, sometimes sparkling eyes watching me from a balcony. I know the spot in the western wing where she would go to be alone; when she was younger, she would play there with her invisible friend, a girl she called Chii. I was the only one who never laughed at her for that. I could not bear to break her smile.

I dream that I hear her laughing delightedly at some joke or prank, then wake to have it fade away with the night. I dream that she comes and sits by my side sometimes, that she curls up in her favourite position, and we talk. Sometimes in the dream we don't say anything, because words are not needed. One night I reached out to her, so sure in that moment that she was real, that everything that had happened was nothing more than a dream within a dream, that when I took her hand it would curl around mine, warm and alive. She dissipated like smoke into the shadows.

I never tried it again.

I try not to dream of Ashura. All I ever see is the fear and the hate in his eyes that I saw the night I was forced to seal him. I never dream of how it used to be, when we were friends.

There. There. You can still see the darkened spot on the otherwise pure, cold marble where she lay… dying.

I know I'm lonely. Of course I am. At nights the emptiness stretches wide, wider, widest, filling with the darkness and an insidious fear. The kind of fear you feel when you wake at night… and the house is still… but your door has just swung open on its own. You know it must be a draft, but the fear is still there. Or when you're alone in the house, and you've just heard a noise that you know you did not make.

I know I'm angry, angry that this had to happen; angry at myself for not seeing the wrongness that I should have seen. Angry because all I could do when it all went down was watch, unable to move. Angry because it's partly my fault.

I don't think I'm mad, but I might be; and if I'm not, it's probably only a matter of time.

There was light here, once. When the place was full of people, day and night. When at times I would have given anything for a moment alone.

Now the only light here is what I carry with me, a soft, all-purpose magic glow that shows me that, still, nothing has changed. And every day, that light seems a little less bright, seems to illuminate a little less space. Now, I'd give everything I have just to have someone to talk to.

But every day, I'm still alone.