==> Eridan: Daydream in the purplest of violet prose.

The air was soft and sweet with sadness, heavy with it; tangible weight, like the coolness of the mist that hung between the cherry-trees in the cloister even now as morning turned to afternoon. Grey stone arches were washed darker with the drizzle; tree-branches and boles painted black, the ruined gold of the past season’s leaves bright and somehow sharply melancholy against that quiet darkness.

A little breeze stirred the folds of the filmy curtains. The windows were thrown open; moisture gemmed the glass curves of the water-carafe on the table, weighed down the heavy brocade hangings, kissed coolness over the face and throat of the young man lying against heaps of pillows in the great heavy ancient splendor of the bed.

He rarely woke, now. When he did it was always as if coming back to them was an effort only just yet bearable, as if he had to remind himself to breathe; as if his chest would rather be still. But he smiled at them, as much as he could, and beneath the dark smudges of fatigue and pain that stained his eyelids his eyes were as vivid and beautiful as ever—the color of violets, of amethysts, of deep endless royal velvet. That brilliant hue put the gems on his fingers to shame, made the black fringes of his eyelashes seem still darker, the angles and planes of his face beneath the alabaster skin sharper than ever.

He had been so ill, for so long, that barely any of them could recall a time when he had not lain in this high bed in the room overlooking the cloister, when he had danced and dueled and ridden with the others, his quick wit and easy grace lifting the mood of the whole court when he was there. The King and the King’s heir, his elder brother, came now very little to see him; whether it was for his sake or their own nobody knew. At first they had demanded answers from the healers, sent for experts, specialists, witchwomen, users of magic, as they became more and more desperate; then, as it slowly became clear that the King’s youngest son was no better for any of their ministrations, the visits had become fewer and farther between.

Beyond the courtyard beneath the window, in the distant quiet woods, a whitethroat sang: on and on, like rain, like tears.

Aww yes. That’s the stuff.