- Found amongst jumbled papers from the re-founding of Celest -

To whom it may concern:

I am in search of a distinguished Celestian gentleman named Vlath Symfale. He
owned a small watercraft and worked as a merchant. I remember him as a jovial
fellow, merian of course, and wearing a monocle. If he survived the fall of the
old city, I would like a way to get into contact with him or his wife, though I
do not know her name. Any information you could provide would be welcome.

Sincerely,
Lolly Pringle

[Written neatly across the bottom of the letter.]

Replied to Mr. Pringle informing him that no record exists of Vlath Symfale or
his wife Zenda surviving in New Celest.

- A handwritten note amongst Estelbar record, attached to an empty box -

Yes, it was highly my doing that allowed Vlath to stay with us after Celest
fell. I really cannot tell you what moved my hand, but he is an honest man and
his eyes were kind. I think that the commune has taken to him well, especially
after Nayt was born. You should write to Vlath again at the address below. It
is a high shame that Farella misdirected your last letter, but you know how she
can be. The attached package is for the leader of Estelbar, the return of an
item she loaned to me long ago. I apologize for sending both that and this
letter together, but the road has gotten dangerous, even for delivery of mail.
Please pass it along.

--Ona Symfale

- A recording found with Lolly Pringle's belongings after his death -

Master furrikin!

Aye, twelve years is been far too long. I never thought I would see you again,
not after the whole city were blown up in such fire as never I'd seen. I still
cannot say I know much o' what happened there in the end, for all I'd lived and
breathed me every day in ol' Celest. Thems that were there could tell you, if
you'd left already when the trouble started. I was afraid that you were lost to
us for good, but here you are writing letters to find me!

I remember clear as day what happened after you left me boat. I loved me wife,
o' course, but I didn't much fancy going home with brandy on me breath. She
were the type to scold and pester until dawn, Gods rest her soul. So in the end
I decided it were a better idea to finish me brandy and then wait a while to get
home. I'd some plan about telling her the wind and tide had kept me out, an' the
world were looking pretty rosy when it came to me that she might look for me in
harbor.

So I cast out me sails and decided to float out a spell and come back into dock
later. I have never been a man afraid o' the sea at night. Like I said to you, I
think something watches o'er the waves an' nothing has ever made me feel
different. But in any light, there were me and me boat in the dark seas, lazing
about and waiting for the flush to pass from me. I was just starting to fully
regain me head when I saw the dark folk streaming into the city.

I were pretty far off at this point, but sound carries far o'er the Crystal Sea
and me eyes were still sharp. I stood on the deck and thought I saw me people
diving into the open waters, and I heard faint voices, not knowing if it were
in battle or in slaughter that they sounded. But I turned course and set out as
fast as I could to see if I might pull them folk from the water - or find me
wife.

I hadn't got too far when the Goddess rose out o' the city and called to the
far mountains. To be honest, I didn't listen much to it. I was more worried
about thems in the water and me wife. But then me boat rocked even though the
wind were almost still and the waves small and calm. I poked my head o'er the
rail and looked to see if I had steered into a shoal somehow. And me boat
lurched again and tipped to the side, and I fell into the Crystal Sea.

There were some kind o' sea folk then pulling at me legs, and had I no merian
blood I would have drowned in a blink. They were set out to kill me some way, I
wager, but something flashed above the waves and drew their eyes heavenward, and
I swam as I've not since I were a wee lad. It were only when I felt safe to
surface that I saw what had happened to me home, and the smoke blowing in the
salt breeze, and the dread silence in the ruin.

I spent months searching for me wife, you understand, without sight nor sound
o' her, and by the time I were over me grief, thems survivers were building a
New Celest on the other end of the Inner Sea. I just couldn't bear thinking of
living in a place pretending to be Celest when it weren't, and so I went north
and found me way to the Serenwilde.

They weren't happy to see me, I tell you! I come to understand that the
priestess, that Lunseer woman, wanted to close off the borders and keep the
survivers out, and then I found that another of that coven pleaded me case, and
so I were taken in. I went later to find her and thank her, and we got to
talking and...

Well, our boy's five year now, name o' Nayt, and all I have as sorrow is that
he weren't born merian but took after his mugwump mother. True, I miss me first
wife and Celest, but thems times are gone behind and I guess I'll be here the
rest o' me days.

Master furrikin, you are always welcome at our table. I'm sure me boy would
like to meet a name such as you have, that I've spoken of since he were a babe
on me knee. The wife likes nothing more than serving a guest, and she makes an
eel pie that makes a mouth water just thinking o' it. If'n you come anywhere
near the north forest, give us a call.

- From the journals of Nayt Symfale -

As a child, I never thought of Lolly Pringle as other than my father's oldest
friend and someone who had the good fortune to have experienced at least one
adventure before settling in to retirement in Estelbar. At least, I presumed it
was an adventure, for my father often talked about the Taint entering the
Crystal Sea and how he met Mister Pringle. Lolly would never speak of it, for
his own part, even though I begged and pleaded until my father set me to
tending all the elder trees in the forest, picking up after the bonded animals,
and polishing the astrolabe in the Tower as punishment for my 'thrice-cursed
mouth' that I could 'no sooner keep closed than thems know-it-all lucidians.' I
sulked for months after this, but I did not bother Lolly again, and it was not
until his memoirs were released that I understood exactly why he would not tell
a rambunctious mugwump child about his role in the Taint Wars.

Instead, Lolly entertained me during his frequent visits with stories of
Ackleberry, of Gloriana-that-was, and of various and usually silly assignments
he had been given prior to Cosmic Hope. Ah yes, now I know how privileged I was
to have known him, and that I was able to see through his stories the world
before the Taint. My father was exactly the kind, good person Mister Pringle
described him as in his memoirs, but he was never quite the sort to tell
stories, or at least not well.

I was still a teenager when my father passed on. He was an older man even when
I was born, and my mother was beside herself with grief when he fell so ill. A
teenaged boy has a fine way of mixing up his anger and his true feelings most
of the time, but I was heart-broken as well. The healers said there was nothing
to be done, and we were left alone with him, a robust merian made skeletal by
illness and pale by approaching death. And I remember:

"Ona?" he asked, and my mother took his hand. "Where's me boy?" His voice was a
weak husk. I took my place on his other side, and he smiled at me with effort.

"Ah, Nayt," he said, and his eyes unfocused as he muttered, "I..."

My mother's voice was choked and terrible. "Vlath?"

He stirred a little and turned his unseeing face towards her. He paused, and
then said, "Zenda, what's there to cry o'er?"

Tears rolled down my mother's cheeks, and I could not breath as he continued,
petulant as a child, "I be a bit tired, Zenda, be a lass and let me sleep."

Mother leaned over him and kissed him on the cheek. She found the strength or
the grit somewhere to whisper, clearly, "I love you, Vlath."

And he said, "Love you the same, woman, you know it were truth." His eyes
closed, and he muttered something I could not hear, something that my mother
refused to repeat to me later, and then he passed beyond consciousness, and did
not speak nor stir until a few days later when finally he died.

Lolly came to the funeral, of course, and I told him what had happened on my
father's deathbed, and how angry I was that he had called the name of his dead
wife to my mother's face in the end.

"You never stop loving what is lost, Nayt," he chided me, and then he paused.
Something passed over his face. I think now he must have been remembering
Ackleberry and Gloriana-that-was, a time when Globglob was a great aether
celebrity, and a world where Light ruled unquestioned and there was innocence.
Then he continued, "But what you have is precious, too. Your mother knows that,
and you need to remember it."

I rarely spoke to Lolly after that, but he never stopped visiting my mother.
They were close until he died, and she inherited a number of small possessions
of his. As for me, I received a letter one morning before anyone knew that
Lolly Pringle had passed out of this world, and inside there was a very small
braided ring. The note explained that it was made of a kind of sea weed that
once grew in the Crystal Sea, and now of course is no more.

"You never stop loving what is lost," Lolly Pringle once said to me, but I
think it could have been my father speaking, or anyone who survived the War of
the Taint.

--Nayt Symfale