The morning after the disastrous birthday of Caelony Van Wyk was not as enjoyable as Eiren would have liked it to be. After suffering several more confusing, terrifying dreams, he had awoken with a thunderous headache that continuously made spots in his vision. Any sound at all in the vast house sounded suspiciously like that of the dog he had dreamt of, and it was after his restless night that he became convinced it was one of Lord Van Wyk's hunting dogs that had assaulted his door and startled him so from sleep previously.

As annoyed and afraid of dogs as he was for the rest of the day, Eiren found that his fear of his betrothed was far greater. Her day had gone even worse than even Eiren could have hoped for, from being totally unable to influence any of the entertainment, to the arrival of her most hated guest (though Eiren knew she disliked almost everybody she met, even, he thought with a pained laugh, her paramour, her total distaste of the sculptor made her attitude towards everybody else seem nearly friendly), and then Eiren's unfortunate accident on the pews.

From the moment he'd woken up, Eiren knew he would have to hide somewhere Caelony would not be walking. As much as he feared the loose greyhound, and running into a priest almost as peeved as Caelony, Eiren knew he would brave anything at all that wasn't his bride-to-be. And so, with throbbing temples and frayed nerves, he made his way quickly past the dining room and out onto the grounds.

The sky throbbed with icy rain - fat droplets occasionally fell and pricked at Eiren's cheeks. Swatting away at the cold, he hunched his way towards the front of the Estate, absently making his way to the statues at the front. The leaves on the hedges and vines had begun to die, the vibrant greens from the summer turning to black in the fall. He had heard of countries where fall was a glorious season of browns and reds, but it was assuredly far from here. Cold and death, that's all it really was for miles around. Even in Perrinton, the beauty of their flora was quickly reduced to decay.

He wandered around the hedges until the castle was mostly hidden from view. I wonder if the Ladies ever felt this lost, he thought as he ran a cold hand against an even colder tree. Nearing the bench that sat in front of the statues of the last Van Wyk wife, he slowed to a solemn stop.

What had once before appeared an obvious resemblance now appeared a drastic difference in the expressions of mother and daughter. The closest statue to Eiren wore the face of pain, as though the subject had been bitten by the greyhound of his recent dreams. He shivered, grateful that this poor state of sleep hadn't included any dreams of these depictions.

A crunch on the dying grass sounded and Eiren whipped his head around, only to groan under his breath. Severin Quilby approached, his peculiarly ash-coloured hair flowing around his papery face. He had on spectacles, today, thin frames that bordered his unblinking white eyes. Up close and in the bright, lifeless daylight, Severin was much stranger looking than he had appeared in the artificial light of the candles.

"Ah," he said, a half rasp and a high accent making the greeting sound more like a cough, "I heard you had taken an interest in my lovely statues. I'm glad to see a new face here, especially one who enjoys my work!" The sculptor came to a stop before Eiren and held a hand out. Eiren looked down at it and regarded the impossibly skinny fingers with a resigned revulsion. Was everything that entered the Estate destined to become so disgusting?

"Not so new as everyone seems to believe," he replied with a sigh, as he eventually took the hand in his own. The sculptor raised an eyebrow and smiled, his lips twisting in a crooked smile.

"I recognize you not from before," came the quick response, in a highly jilted tongue. Eiren chuckled and stood. Perhaps speaking with someone so hated by Caelony and the priest would keep him free of their company, at least for a while. Well, if he is so hated by them, he thought privately, then will I find something important about the one person who loves him so dearly?

"No, nor I you. It seems you and I were not residents of this lovely castle at the same time." Eiren gestured his head towards the grounds and waved a hand in front of him. "How long ago did you last walk the grounds?" He forced the tightening in his stomach, a tell-tale sign of regret, deep down and plastered a smile on his face. The sculptor leaned forward at the waist and his smile widened.

"It has been quite some time," he admitted as they began to walk. "Though, I must say, the Estate has been rather remarkably well kept." Eiren inclined his head and stepped over a worrisome pile of rabbit bones. I'll have to come back to that, he thought with an alarmed look.

"I have been absent for the last ten years," Eiren said slowly, peering out of the corner of his eye at Severin, "but I don't remember your name from even then."

The sculptor laughed aloud, throwing his head back and chuckling heartily.

"Remember?" He grinned, exposing a series of unsettling teeth. "You could have been naught but a boy, ten years past! What could you have remembered, Mr. Adair?" Eiren flushed red and turned away.

"I remember... unfortunately, Mr. Quilby, what I do remember has been wasted on Caelony."

"Wasted? No, I should say not, and please," he added, raising his eyebrows - a feat that Eiren did not notice straight away, as the man's brows were ten shades lighter than his hair - "I beg thee, call me by my given name!" Raising his arms to the distance, Severin nodded in the direction of the castle.

"Have you yet seen all of the wonders of dearest Kelfordshire?" Eiren held back a snort at that. Kelfordshire had regrets and secrets, indeed, but no wonders were on the grounds, he was sure of that.

"No, I have yet to see them. Caelony shared the hunting dogs at the entrance," Eiren explained, when the sculptor gaped in astonishment, "and the statues we stood by a moment ago, but that is, I am afraid, all I have been privy to."

Severin frowned and hummed to himself, tapping his fingertips together. Eiren noticed they were very pink, as though Severin held hot things all day, or was in the habit of clasping hands roughly against objects. The man was peculiar, no doubt - he raised more questions than he seemed to answer!

"Where to begin, where to begin," muttered the sculptor, looking up suddenly at Eiren and leaning forward. Eiren flinched at the movement, for the man's eyes were wide open, and the effect was rather disconcerting.

"What is it?" Eiren swallowed and found himself taking a hasty step backwards.

"Have you met any of the other darling Ladies of Kelfordshire?" The question paralyzed Eiren - was the sculptor aware of his interest in the women, and his suspicion of their connection?

"No, sir," he stammered out, backing up a few feet more. The sculptor seemed not to notice, and he nodded, as though he had indeed expected something so impossible to be a mere inconvenience, an unfortunate missing of introductions. Is he altogether sane?

"Very well, then. Would you say, in the strictest of confidence, if you are nervous about admitting so ghastly a crime, that you are a terribly religious person?" He peered intently at Eiren, soft breaths interrupting the pauses between his words. Their brief walk appeared to be taking a toll on him, which surprised Eiren in no way, for his companion was just as slight as he, and Eiren was several inches shorter, as well as any number of years younger. Severin did not appear to have an age, but if he was old enough to know the Lord Van Wyk before the priest, he was not a young man. To be as frail and weightless as he was told Eiren that even the lightest of winds would knock the man right down.

"In the strictest of confidence," Eiren laughingly admitted, "I would not say that I was. I practise that which is required of my station, and no more. This is," he added, looking up at the sky and allowing the sluggish rain to bestow another series of droplets upon his face, "not exactly a secret." The sculptor clapped and laughed.

"Rebellious, are you then?" He grasped one of Eiren's arms and began to walk a tad faster than Eiren thought he ought. "I know exactly what you shall see next, then, for a decade is indeed far too long to be without sight of my beautiful Ladies!" Eiren had not half a mind of what Severin said, but with the breathless and eager sculptor pulling him along, he did not have the opportunity to encourage the sculptor go slower, lest he be walking a corpse around the grounds.

After a hurried sprint down a crumbling path past the castle, Severin led Eiren to a stop in an unfamiliar area of the grounds. He could faintly make out the Hatchhanger Abbey, with its smooth, white walls, on the other side of a few tall hedges, so he suspected they were still on the Western half of the Estate, but arguably close to the middle. It was a rather large mess, impossible to decipher without the benefit of a map, but he still felt it was important to keep a hold on his bearings in such a hostile - and quite possibly dangerous - place.

The area in particular was lush with flowers and bushes, something Eiren found especially odd when set against the general decay of the rest of the greenery. The plants were not particularly bright, per se, but were definitely not dead. Greyish-pink flowers and sky-blue vines wrapped around benches and light posts, and seemed to envelop everything in the area. Eiren was pleasantly surprised - it was not distasteful in the slightest, and even the aged, timeless look gave everything an added charm.

Severin nudged Eiren forward, an ugly pink splotch appearing on both cheeks. His chest shook as he wheezed, a thin and high sound that pierced Eiren's ears.

"Look ahead, Mr. Adair, if you would, and give an old artist much-needed critique." Giving the sculptor a cautious look (he knew all too well the pain of being unable to breathe, and the whistling that followed every word of the sculptor gave him some measure of alarm), he walked slowly forward and into the little clearing behind the bushes.

"Oh!" he gasped, holding a hand gently to his chest. There, glistening and rippling gently, was a pond, some hundred feet all around. It was a cool green, with the rusty pink flowers and dark green leaves floating peacefully in the water. Surrounding the pond were seven ivory statues, each depicting a nymph of some sort, holding on to the branches or caressing the very real leaves around them.

"These... these are your doing?" Eiren turned to look with an open mouth Severin, stunned and almost in disbelief that anybody so unnatural could produce anything that blended so beautifully with nature.

"You like her, then!" The sculptor pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and coughed, a sharp, grating sound that echoed deep within his lungs, and looked up. He returned Eiren's worried expression with a demure smile. "She is her own, Mr. Adair. I am merely the tool with which she found her true form." Eiren looked at the nearest nymph and peered closely at her figure. The nymph was wearing naught but a hooded cape, the hood pulled softly over her pointed ears and her loose hair. Her eyes were closed as she leaned towards a branch, the plant having grown a rose perfectly in her outstretched hand.

"Who... is she, Mr. Quilby?"

"Severin, I insist!" The sculptor shuffled forward to stand beside Eiren. "This is the dear lady wife of our very own Elmund Van Wyk!"

With a jolt, Eiren realized this must indeed be the first wife of Lord Van Wyk. He leaned close enough to stare into her soft face, and he gasped. She was, he thought with a terrified shudder, the girl from his dream.

As he looked into her face, sculpted to fit the fantasy of Severin Quilby, he admonished himself for not recognizing this wife from the paintings he toured just a few days prior. Ah, I suppose Caelony had something to do with the memory being pushed back, he remembered with a grimace. Still, the information was wildly important, even if it was given to him by an unwitting madman in the form of an elf. How much he had to add to his notebook, how greatly had his dreams increased in their detail!

Eiren turned to congratulate the sculptor on his depiction, but to his unfortunate surprise, Severin had collapsed against the light post and either fainted away or taken to sleep.