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"Did everything go well while we were away?" Cytheria asked.

"Oh come now. You're just as bad as him." Perun replied. "What am I supposed to respond to? The sheer obviousness of your question? The actual question? Or the implied assumption amongst the three of us here regarding how obvious your question is?"

Cytheria scowled at Perun but there wasn't any true emotion behind it.

"After all this time we still dance these dances." Kwyn said flatly, moving her gaze from Perun, to Cytheria, and back again. "Why is it that we still cannot move on, nor even talk about the past."

"We dance because that's why we are here. We all know things that we will not speak for fear that we will be implicated in some way." Perun said with a sigh. "I never left."

"I assumed." Kwyn added sadly. "For all of this time? For all of those years?"

"Each year I remained. Each year I returned." Perun said animation growing in his voice. "For hundreds of years I presided over nothing. Crumbling stones and leaves caught in the corners of stairs. A chipmunk, dumb animals, nothing the came with purpose. I was there." His eyes were wide with the energy that he felt.

Reynard was back from the wagon standing in the shadows with a clay jug of wine watching and listening. Cytheria had shed her mask and watched. Were one to compare her and Kwyn at this moment the apparent differences would be much harder to spot.

"I witness autumn descend upon an eternal summer and I did so alone. Promises were given, and those promises broke one by one."