Non-English translations at the bottom. Some things will be referenced from Chapter 34 of Once Upon A Time. You get your choice of either brownie (dessert) or brownie (house sprite) if you catch them, but you have to point them out in your review.

Update June 13th: Almost all flashes in this shot are canon/fanon, only Prince and Princess are pending because LA Knight loved them and is figuring out where they might fit in "Once Upon A Time."

SMILE

(Co-running with Chapter 8 of "Once Upon A Time," sometime during Dylan & Nuada's initial separation after the events in the healing sanctuary.)

"Zwezda hunk at nine o'clock, looking this way," said Vica in sotto voce to Lorelei at their usual outside table at the coffee shop owned by Vica's brother.

"Und?" Lorelei rejoined after giving a passing glance in the direction that her friend had indicated, candid disinterest dripping from her voice and her casual way of carrying on, sipping her hot beverage.

"Istenem," the young táltos breathed, still checking out the handsome elf with cat-like eyes of gleaming steel gray and hair as dark as blackest oblivion. "He just licked his lips when you pursed your lips to blow on your coffee." Eyes like dragon's gold rolled skywards and an amused half-smirk manifested on Lorelei's blood-red lips, while Vica kept staring at the elf in question. "He reaally looks good," commented the táltos softly. "What I wouldn't do for something like that in bed one of these days."

The rhinemaiden gave a soft snort of a laugh (luckily having already swallowed her sip of the steaming dark liquid in her cup), and a lopsided grin pulled her mouth up and to the left as she rested one arm on the table and cradled her chin in her hand. "For someone who is divinely born, you don't tend to express very 'godly' thoughts whenever a pair of strong shoulders and a lean waist crosses your path, my friend," said Lorelei with a clear sparkle of fondness in her golden eyes and in her tone of voice.

Vica shot Lorelei a very botched attempt at a scathing look, her smile far too wide to be taken very seriously, and retorted, "Hey, divine powers and divine purpose do not exclude one from having less-than-pristine thoughts, so live with it."

A scoff from the Rhine daughter as she muttered into her drink, "Thanks to you, I do."

"Szívesen," said Vica cheerily, and both women burst out laughing. Then the younger woman pointed with a jerk of her chin. "What about the minotaur at four o' clock? Would it interest you to know that he's got his eyes on us right now?"

"Soso," Lorelei interjected in a soft voice that flowed like run-off from mountain snow, her jet black brows quirking in a clear expression of intrigue. The river faery turned her head to look, and sure enough, only a little ways off stood the form of a young minotaur, his eyes on the two women. A softer version of Lorelei's characteristic fox-like smile curled the corners of her crimson mouth and twinkled in her eyes, and she tilted her head just a little in acknowledgment of him. The horned male scratched behind his sable bovine ear bashfully, and Vica grinned and giggled at the scene.

"That's one for the minotaur and zero to the elf, then. You and your not-so-secret taste for the wildly whimsical, I swear," chuckled the táltos, shaking her head slightly. The river maiden shrugged, and then both women grinned, raising their coffee cups in a toast.

Right as Lorelei was about to take a sip of her drink, though, she spotted something that looked familiar out of the corner of her eye. Her head flew up to regard it fully, and then her whole manner brightened, a glowing smile lighting up her lovely face and shining in her ultra-gold eyes with recognition. "Wink!" Lorelei called out to the passing cave troll, getting up from her chair. The bristled warrior stopped in his tracks and turned around, his one eye sparkling like a polished jewel as soon as it alighted on the approaching rhinemaiden while a broad smile came to his tusked face.

Vica watched the two of them with a smile, chin cradled in one hand and tapping a rhythm on the table with all six fingers of the other. She could tell in short order that wherever Wink was going, he wouldn't be getting there anytime sooner, and that Lorelei's coffee would be quite cold by the time she got back.

LOSS

Life and Death, comings and goings, were all part of an eternal balance. One cannot exist without the other. Such was true of all things in the universe, actually. No thing can exist without its balance, its compliment, its opposite, its other side.

Knowing this doesn't change how it hurts when someone you love leaves you alone in this world in some way, whether by parting ways, or by departing this world altogether.

Wink had lost much in the thousands of years he had lived up to now - friends, family, loves, comrades - some never to be seen or heard again, ever. Some slain, others dead in the course of their due path of existence. Others simply wandering elsewhere in the world, to be wondered about, but never to know how they fared and if they had changed at all in the years gone by, if they had lived and loved and lost as much.

Lorelei, too, had lost much, in under a century while she lived. Her country as she had known it when she was a girl and those people that she knew who were swallowed up as it was torn apart and put back together again. Older siblings that came into her life only to walk right out of it again, or were felled by the ravages of the world, some before she'd even had the chance to ever know them in her lifetime at all, only to be heard of in tales that her mother told her of them.

But with Time came Change, and Change will often bring the balance to Loss.

Other friends were found and held dear. New homes made with each new path of adventure. Loneliness or grief was endured and pulled through, and the heart was made glad again by all still worth living for. Each friend, each love, each brother or sister in blood or in spirit, was cherished for what they were as they were, and never sought to be replaced for want of something that was, frankly, irreplaceable in its own right.

Long life dooms one to enduring the whim of Time, and with Time comes Loss. But it is not those precious things that you had, which you lose with Time only to hold in your memory, that makes Forever still worth keeping, rather, it is what Time still brings you... And in the quiet dim under the Manhattan streets, this was a truth that Lorelei and Wink once again remembered, looking into each other's eyes.

REPUTATION

Lorelei didn't mind, in fact she found it wildly amusing. No matter where she went with Wink, there was usually someone around who recognized him - had heard of him or knew him - and no small number of those who did were female.

Lorelei grinned whenever dryads would bat their eyelashes at Wink. She'd hide a silent chuckle whenever a fox maiden would give him a coy smile with a quirked eyebrow. She nearly had to fight to contain herself whenever a selkie would speak to the towering troll in a tone of voice that was so inviting.

Lorelei just smiled and politely kept the inward merriment that she derived from it to herself as much as she could, but it was all just far too entertaining! The way that other faery women would practically embarrass themselves around Wink without even knowing what it was they were really doing!

Never once did it make her jealous, though, not even a little. Lorelei knew Wink far too well to ever be that. How could she be jealous, when he looked at her with such tenderness and admiration in his eye, when he touched her with such infinite care and gentleness, when he held her like she was the only thing in his whole world worth having?

Almost everywhere that she went with him, there was a likely chance that somebody would be there that wanted him.

He made it clear with every breath that he only wanted her.

PRINCESS

"This can't be real," Dylan breathed, staring at her reflection.

"Nein," said Lorelei, smiling at her, "it is actually among the most real of all things that you will ever see."

Dylan just stared at herself in wonder. No scars. None. She was... so pretty, but... She knew that she had scars on her face, and she knew that she was just wearing ordinary clothes, but the radiant brunette looking back at her from the mirror that she and Lorelei stood in front of had no scars at all, and she was wearing a simple yet elegant style gown that looked as though it had been spun from purest silver flame, and a crown of stars rested about her head like a stellar, coronet-styled halo. Lorelei didn't look too much different than how she was, though in the reflection she was wearing what looked like a slip of a gown woven from the essence of turbulent water, and her fair skin shimmered with a dusting of gold, like the specks of mica often found in riverbeds. Her hair and skin looked slick and wet, too, though the tall maiden was quite dry.

"What you see," Lorelei said softly, "is the truth. This mirror is not glass on silver, but carefully crafted, flawless quartz. The same little-known variety of quartz, in fact, that Doctor Schufftein crafted some diopter glasses from that were designed to see through different layers of fey glamour and illusion, and show things as they really were to 'ordinary' folk, though you probably have never heard of Schufftein. What you see, Dylan, is your true form."

True form... But how...?

Lorelei answered Dylan's question before she could even find the words to ask, as the perceptive Rhine daughter raised one slender white hand to rest hovering in the air by the mortal woman's brow, though in the mirror it looked as though she was touching the starry crown that circled her curly-locked head. "Star Kindler's child," the river faery whispered in Dylan's ear.

The brunette's spine prickled wondrously as the river siren sang in softest tones by her ear, one of her improv verses.

"'Tis not royal in blood that thou art,
Yet thou be a princess, in soul and in heart."

If Dylan's smile got any wider her face was going to crack, she just knew it. The faery woman wore a smile of her own, pearly points of her teeth gleaming against the ruby red of her lips. "Komm," said Lorelei finally. "There is more to see in this museum and our men will no doubt die of bereavement without us." Smiling and laughing, the two ladies started back to where the two warriors that they adored so much awaited them.

Dylan felt she would never really understand in a million years why Nuada insisted on staying behind when they had come to the room with the mirror. What was it that he didn't want to see? ... Or was it, that he didn't want her to see?

SNOW

Wink couldn't help thinking that the snowflakes bedecking Lorelei's thick black tresses were finer than any crown in the world, as he carried her in his arms over the piles of snow on the ground to the nearest way into the labyrinthine world of the city's underbelly. They sparkled prismatically, like feathered stars caught up in the night-spun strands of her long hair, and melted and shone like the tears of a comet when she nuzzled in closer to him, seeking more of the warmth that his body offered. Black butterfly lashes closed over eyes of dragon's gold as the rhinemaiden blocked out the winter frost and the sounds and smells of the city, and focused instead on the troll that held her, the sound of his strong heartbeat near her pointed ear, and the unique deep scent of him, filling her senses with him as much as she could, until he carefully set her down again at their destination.

PRINCE

"So..." Nuada said in a tone that was thick with intention, his arms folded and his stance as one of someone who had absolute authority.

"No," said Wink flatly, already knowing the implied question that the blond elf was asking.

"No?" Nuada arched one white-gold eyebrow at his vassal.

"No," repeated Wink. "And do not think that you can stand on your princely authority to have me change my mind, Highness. I may have a sworn duty to you, but Lorelei does not, and she is every bit as involved as I."

"Yes," Nuada said mildly. "I determined as much from the way that she was lying curled up under your arm looking like the very picture of sleeping serenity itself when I arrived."

Wink scowled at his prince and then looked away, scratching at the spur of his broken tusk as he grumbled something under his breath.

Lorelei stepped out from the other room, fully clothed, her hair wet from having a brief wash to be rid of whatever might have been left from... Nuada stopped his thoughts right there before they could conjure images in his head that he decidedly did not want to think about in regards to his friend and his vassal together. "Ich bin bereit," she said, her voice as soft as a good morning kiss.

"I'll escort you home," Wink rumbled to her.

Escort her home? Did he now forget so readily that he had a duty to consider? Did he not think that Nuada perhaps required his services?

Nuada started to say something, but was immediately silenced by the stone-cold glare that the troll leveled at him. The prince then shut his mouth and merely gave a short nod, deciding not to push his luck with his vassal in this. There were some things, the elf knew, that you simply did not argue with a troll... Even if you were a prince.

TANGLED

Geri liked catching Lorelei's long, soft hair and winding it through his clawed fingers whenever she was close enough for him to get the chance. He enjoyed how the ebon tendrils of it slid so smoothly through his grasp. He liked even better when it was tangled in his loose grip and she couldn't get away. He would always growl a few low, soft words by her ear, giving her a few light, grazing touches along the side of her cheek with his nose before he ever let her go. Sometimes she would smile, amused, and other times she would roll her eyes, flashing like new-minted coins with mild annoyance. His favorite reaction was whenever the lightest bit of color would rise to her cheeks.

PAIN

(In a safe hideout in the underbelly of NYC, after Lorelei and Wink have escaped the Midnight Fest - see Coruscation Parts 1 & 2 in this fic and Chapters 55 - 57 of "Once Upon A Time" for reference. Unrelated to Snow, above.)

He wasn't bleeding anymore, thank all the gods that ever watched over and looked on her with favor, and his wounds would have a fighting chance to knit together and heal now. They had time, they were safe. But they were not well. Lorelei could sense the simmering coils of pain in Wink as he struggled to just sleep. He hurt so much. He could scarcely even breathe without that slightest movement screaming all through him. Lorelei's own aching bruises weren't even a fraction as bad as everything that wracked his body in merciless concert.

Tentatively, as carefully and gently as she could ever attempt to be, the rhinemaiden lifted the flesh-and-blood hand of the silver troll that she sat watching over and placed it with the palm resting over her chest and collarbones, over her heart. She held it there as she closed her eyes, inhaled a deep breath, and intoned a single, prolonged, and exquisitely beautiful note for the full exhale of that breath. Then she took another deep breath and did it again, but at a different pitch this time. Again and again, she repeated this. Inhale, exhale.

Purest sound, focused through a living creature in such a way that light through a prism could only be termed absolutely pitiful by comparison. Such intensity, such focus of intention would have been considered admirable by an observer, but to Wink, it was the first taste of comfort, of blissful respite, that he had been able to have in all these past several hours. Magic saturated the resonant waves of Lorelei's clear voice, vibrating through her chest under Wink's palm, soothing every throbbing ache, every burning pain that was in the great warrior's form, with a power that felt as no sound and no touch he had ever known. Something utterly indescribable, and beautiful and wonderful.

The river maiden continued on, until the angry pain writhing through her companion's aura all but dissipated completely, and his breathing evened at last and became regular in its pattern. He would sleep now, finally eased in body and mind. Lorelei lay down beside her valiant troll, tucking herself as close to his massive body as possible, her soft skin whispering against his leathery hide. It would do more harm than good if he were to suddenly wake and feel her presence absent from him, even if she were only a little ways off.

A/N - The Zwezda in Smile is just some good-looking elf, not Eamonn (ew, the creepy fop) or anyone else important.

- The most visually interesting versions of a minotaur that I've seen are the white witch's general from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (live-action movie from 2005), and the Tauren race from the artwork and stories of the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment (computer/video games are never as interesting as their stories. Seriously). Do a search for elves on deviantART and get a boat-load of fantasy-game fan-work. Who knew? :P But as always, THE most epic minotaur ever still remains the original Greek monster in King Minos' labyrinth that was slain by the hero Theseus.

- It should be noted that Vica is not meant to be Lorelei's personal Francesca, so to speak, she's just young, and very guy-crazy.

- Who remembers the Schufftein Glasses from the Hellboy II movie? :) Canaries and kittens for everyone that does!

- The coffee shop owned by Vica's brother and the museum with the mirror are NOT in the Troll Market, but in other parts of the city that most mundane folk never see. Note that I said "mundane folk" and not "mortals" or "humans," as (quote from the Hellboy Wiki): "Little fuss is made over the arrival of human BPRD agents in the Troll Market by the various peoples, indicating that human presence isn't something all that unusual there. It is unknown if the Troll Market is the only place of it's kind in the world but it is indicated ("... over in Jersey, maybe...) that there are other places of supernatural activity than just downtown NYC." Which, to me, says that regular freaks like Abe, or Vincent (from the live-action TV series Beauty and the Beast), or not-so-obvious freaks like Liz (pyrokinetic) or Dylan (Sight) and (in legend) witches and saints, can often be found mingling about with demons, angels, and fey folk, because they are people who are aware and acquainted with what's out there - that's all it takes.

- The inhale/exhale intonation thing that Lorelei does for Wink is based off something that I learned at a performing arts workshop, to help center yourself and ease tension (and it works, too). It sounds really beautiful when you've got a group together doing it, very harmonious, and the actual pitches and pitch-changes themselves don't matter so much as long as the sound is relaxed (not forced) and you have a unified syllable going, like "aw" or "ooh."

TRANSLATIONS

Istenem = (Hungarian) My god/Oh my god

Szívesen = (Hungarian) you're welcome

Und? = And?

Soso = (in the context of calm interest) oh yeah?

Ich bin bereit = I'm ready