When her husband had gone to bed, Diana sat quietly and looked out onto the garden beyond. It was quiet, peaceful, in her small world. Oh, how wrong had she been! To have children pass in such a way, to lose as he had – he was not made for such losses, her bright lit husband.

Yes, she had heard stories prior to his, where the sad stories made the ladies weep and she too had felt the pain those soldiers could give in their quiet, honorable manners. She had felt the distant awe of a task far more difficult than her own sensibilities might have managed. The woman's heart, while buried under the machinations of society, still felt the pain which had made her tender as a girl. Yet, every time those tales were told to the crowd, the pain was lifted, changed. This was a world far away from her own, kept to a safe distance from herself by the lights and the songs given right after. True, gentlemen touched a finger to the eye and the younger girls would lean on their great shoulders and have to catch their breath. Yet the story, embellished no doubt for such an effect, had been one more diversion and the tears, female and male, always were done up to a purpose which often was met before the evening was over. 

Here, in her own home, without the lights, with no violin or pianoforte to distract, Diana was forced to accept the world into which her husband had been thrust. Was it that this world he had traveled to was so different from the others, or had she fallen for the glitter and missed, as a younger woman, the truth buried below the artifice? She assumed the latter. And yet, something this tour of duty, had broken the ability in her husband to play pretense. No longer was he strong against memory, protecting she and his listeners from the horrors which he had been subjected. 

She did not cry. No – to cry over him would have been pity when a strength she had never noted prior was finally given to her in the fullness of its gift. Had she been offered such a thing prior, she might have laughed it away. She had been but a silly chit of a thing, hadn't she? She and her dances and her social rankings. 

Before, yes. She'd have wept like a babe over his story. Now, she too had been in her own manner of battlefield and while her heart was no less tender, it was far more understanding. She had been a fool twice over, however, and she recognized that in the lamplight which cast a rosy glow over the quiet sitting room. This time, she had thought herself to be the only one. She had failed to see his adventures as the trials which they'd proven themselves to be. But that would be true no longer. Her eyes were open! And her stalwart nature was stronger than his. Oh, but it would be. She was the woman, was she not? Were women not greater in nature in so many ways, built by God to bolster the man whom she had tied herself to? The man would do as he wished, but she – she would guide him now as she had not before. 

Firstly, she clenched her hands together, her fingers trembling as she did so, she had to set herself to the task of building her husband into a return to his strength. The trials he had undergone had done so little for his spirit and she, it was her duty to protect him and so she would. 

Resolute, she kept to her chaise and when the maid came to put out the lights, Diana begged but the girl's taper and had her go to rest. Diana, however, remained long after when the taper was burned low. Like a sentry, she watched the moon pass and the sun bring a bruised light to the sky. The first birds burst into song as below in the belly of the house the kitchenmaid hauled wood and began the fire for the cook who would waken soon. Diana, pale from her day of enforced watch, stood and went to prepare for her day. Early, yes, but she had a night's worth of vigil to consider. 

Across the town, as the first birds broke the night's silence, a girl with dark hair and bright daylight eyes leapt from bed, fully clothed. She bit her lower lip in delight. Before her stretched a day of usual toil, but before that – a witching hour where the fae, the magic of the world was at her fingertips. She slipped from her home, her hair still mussed about her neck and her skin still tangled in sleep. Yet beyond the last line of stone fence, the woods called. 

She had been warned many a time against the dangers of being within the trees. Still, she'd argued, if she chose the right hour, when those who would harm her were either to bed or still waking, then there was little concern to have. With a song, piping high and clear, she skipped along a deer trail to her place, a bower of mosses and thick ivy, heavy trees surrounding the small stream. Here, the birds still kept time with her and the quiet of the late morning had not yet settled. Instead, it was aflame with lift overhead even as the sun had not yet risen. 

By morning, true morning, the tavern keep's daughter would have returned to her tasks, her life of buckets, washing, cooking, waiting, watching boys. But during that small hour as the world hovered between one world and the next, she was free to dance free and wild. Spinning about the water, she fell to the mosses and took a deep breath of laughter which burbled much like the streams. She was content within herself, no need of a companion, for the ways of the winds soughing in trees and the birds and the stars still winking out, she had companion enough in the hidden hour.