Red hair, shot with gold, sparkled on the pillow, even in the darkness of the night. Behind the fog that he had gathered, disguising himself with his goddess' mysterious features, someone smiled softly, knowing the girl was feigning sleep. No one could sleep on a night like this. The door clicked shut behind him, and he waited, idly gathering a stray moonbeam to himself.

It was true, Sioned was not sleeping, knowing that something was different in the air. She knew that she could call fire, that someone would come to her any night now. And tonight, the atmosphere felt charged, like a building storm, although the sky over Goddess Keep was clear. Now, her ringless fingers clenched beneath the blankets as she heard the noiseless step, the soft thud of the door. Green eyes opened, blinked to clear away the layers of shadow, and saw colors woven into the black night: vivid, sparkling, gemstone tones of onyx, ruby, emerald, and countless others, an untold heap of riches. Her own colors were threaded into that glorious swirl, but so were others which had touched her consciousness, any hue she could possibly conceive of. A voice, its timbre sexless and unidentifiable, uttered her name, provoking a sensation that started low, spread burning throughout the center of her being. The colors flowed toward her, threatened to engulf her, stopped just short of the bed, and she felt a human hand come to rest on her own. "It is time, Sioned," said the voice. "It is time, and our Goddess is here with us."

The girl shivered in slightly nervous anticipation at the words. She had known what to expect, but the actual magnificent presence of the Goddess, borne by whomever it was performing her work tonight, could not possibly be described in the giggled whispers of girls and boys alike in the dining hall. Even her own Cami, dusky face grown even darker with blushes, had not told her what this was really like. But her thoughts were cut short as another hand touched her bare shoulder, smoothed its way down her pale arm. She tried to make out its shape, saw only topaz, agate, moonstone, bleeding into her skin. If she closed her eyes, she still could see colors, dancing just behind her lids as the unknown Sunrunner traced the contours of her slim body, so she opened her eyes again, preferring to see their brilliant reality. Cool, invisible fingers touched her nipple, and she gasped, the unfamiliar sensation accompanied by a deepening of the gemstone hues and a raising of gooseflesh along her limbs. She lost herself in the colors as they swirled around her, into her, barely feeling the human body under the sparkling layers as it caressed her, entered her, murmured into her ear meaningless reassurances and phrases that mingled with her own incoherent gasps.

When it was done, she lay there in the pale rays of moonlight and cried, not for the departure of the nameless Sunrunner, not for her loss of girlhood, but for the pure beauty of those colors which she would never again see all together, that divine tapestry of which she herself was only a few threads. And, outside the door, Urival listened to the girl's sobs and nodded to himself in sad understanding.