Editing Conversations in the nymph pool

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The nymph pool is clear and slightly warmed from the heat of the earth and their excitement.  As they greet you, all familiar faces and sights, they let you and mother take the pool as sweet honeycomb treats are brought with dandelion wine. It is a quieter evening then he suspected since they delay a sensual bathing till you seem less distracted. scythe flys above free to roam familiar skies after so long.

Friends come by and greet him briefly sensing Cyrene has priority with her son.

After wood and relaxation she takes a glass of the wine and looks into it seriously.

"Son, many things have changed in the last year since Julian left Arden. The Courts are unhappy and a crisis will come of it... There are secrets in the heather that few know and its your time to learn.'

She refills booth glasses, looking aside.

"It is a failing of ours that we sometimes forget centuries. We of the woods may shift into shadows that only we can find and spend years in a night, in dance, in craft, in love making, in song. And we forget time is different for others. Others are ageless too. Those in Amber can grow young with joy in their lives yet so many age and parish. Once long ago a young Prince of Amber came among us and for a time became of us. And we loved him. I loved him. He was magical of nature and we were a young people. Amber was young. And we had been in this land only a century at the time. "

She stops, sipping her drink, a smell of fear in her.

"When we sing of the coming of our being we sing of Great Oberon and fair Titania leading us from the darkness of being and giving us form, Many ways this tale is told among the many courts. Courts...the irony is great."

"The tale in its many forms fit many songs and many tales. But as you go out of the greensward you will hear many things. You may have heard them in the Hell prince Benedict commanded you to attend. It is best you hear the tale from me. Our tales tell of us coming from the darkness of shapeless being. But it was not unknowing. Some versions say we came from primordial chaos, and this is closer to the truth.

"Soon you will gain the power to walk in shadow, not just to the fae realms nearby but to the vast shadowlands. When you can walk in shadow you may go as far as you may and you will find two places. One is the Abyss. A gash which crosses north to south and divides the shadow lands and Amber from what lays farther in the west. What lays there is the infinite voids of changeable chaos. Once a great beast called Entropy crawled from the furthest reaches of formlessness, a thing of devouring rage. As it passed it left nothing behind it, not even infinite chaos."

"It threatened to devour all things. So the Lords of the great Chaos, in an age before Amber, brought those most skilled at evil and war and death and fear and they through all their might at him. They forced him to destroy a great construct and it stunned him. So they pulled the swath of emptiness he had trailed and they harrowed him into its depth. At the bottom of his emptiness they forced a paradox and built a great tomb and forced him into it. In with him went the evilest of the Lords of Darkness to contend and battle with it for all eternity. This tomb is the Tomb of the Ancestors of Darkness."

"Around the tomb a million lords of darkness slew themselves to enact death curses foul and fell. And it made lands in the gash that were the lands of all torment. This gash was the Abyss and it floated in Chaos for many eons as the Great Houses of Chaos rose and the Courts of Chaos were formed. Many things fell and fair lived in Chaos and their tales are beyond our ken."

"I tell you this because those in Chaos had many forms and many who enjoyed similar forms made common lives and these became races of beings. Of the many races...were beings..that became the Fae.  We all Fae began in the vast reaches of boundless chaos.I am old, but i did not live in this time. "
 
"In time a mighty lord of great Chaos made the Great Pattern of Amber by blood and lyre and lovemaking. He was Dworkin Bariman and his paramour was the Unicorn, a great [[primal beast]]. Amber shook great Chaos and as the shadowlands grew they stayed on one side of the abyss and endless Chaos stayed on the other. '

She pauses, thinking hard what to say.

"Now....peoples were sundered. Peoples of many races.. Sprites of great power. I tell you this because the fae were sundered. Ours became many things. Some stayed in Chaos. Some where caught in the Abyss among the horrors. Some were on the side of Amber in the Shadowlands. We were not the only ones.. 

"In those days we stunned Fae on the shadowland side were aided by a race also sundered, the Dufiro. They healed our damaged Fae and set us on a course to wander east. Remember always, that we Arden Fae owe them a debt. It has been many years but the debt is still owed. Their people stayed close to Chaos in order to slowly gather their peoples from the Abyss and from Great Chaos. I feel the time the debt may be paid comes near.  In the last 70 years many Dufiro have come to Amber.  Bound in artifacts and serving as warrior guards.  Their echos reach the Queen's Court and we prepare to pay our debt."

"Oberon found us and he and Titania fell in love. He knew where Amber was and he led our people here. As we traveled the shadowlands to get here many of our people fell aside. So as you travel shadow and find fae, know many of them began the great diaspora east with us only to find other realms. "

"In time we came to Amber and Titania established her Court here. Oberon was married to Cymnea. She is no friend of we fae. She hates us because Oberon loved Titania who bore him a daughter, Orsolla. In time Oberon left the greensward for Cymnea, leaving Titania in despair. Then time went on"

"One more thing must I tell you. In time Oberon was friends with a woman named Verna. She was Adask. Of the race of Adask.. and that race was bound to the Fae in that place. She and Oberon went deep into the abyss there to find the Fae that were sundered there from us. They led them out of the depths of hell and took them to the great realm of Adagalask. In the Abyss he met a fae queen whom he loved and in the Abyss she bore him two daughters. Nina and Emile are the names they use now. I tell you this because it is this Nina, the Daughter of Oberon and a Fae queen of the Abyss, that your father married in the 440th year of the kingdom of Amber, over 1700 Amber years after we arrived here, And 4800 years before your father and I joined in love to conceive you. While i detest Nina for Julian loving her more then I, i must admit he was true in his love when he could give it."

She sheds a tear

"Titania and I fear there may be hard times when the Adask Fae and the Arden fae meet. We have much in common but the sundered fae bred into the abyssal race of the Adask have a tinge of madness among them that we must either heal or slay. This is important to you because as an Amberite, you will see these Adask Fae when you see your father. And they will know you for what you are; Arden fae. With Julian, and his brother Caine, now with Nina and Emile, they may come to Amber. When they do..i do not know how they will treat us or expect us to treat them. I suspect it will mean war.".


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