It called to them at the stroke of midnight.

A lark, Lasyll presumed, no expert in ornithology. She went to Ignatius for that, weathering the rain in Lake Vundamere during his usual birdwatching tour. Excited by the prospect of his fellow enthusiasts looking to the skies, he explained that no, he had not heard any larks about, and it would furthermore be exceedingly strange for a dawn-going bird to start singing in the dead of night.

The lark, being lark-shaped, did not think itself strange. It had called to those it knew might listen, irrespective of allegiance, age, or any other small differential. From its illuminating place in the beyond, it looked from Overseer to fresh-faced novice and saw in each the same bright glimmer of mortal potential in search of shape and purpose.

The lark sang again, and two among its listeners sang back. Then more. Emboldened, it began to trill every month when the night was deepest.

Its sweet, passerine song could be heard in the solarium of Aster Keep. In the glittering Garden of Moonlight. At an ornate shrine in Cyrene. On Meropis, and upon the world-spanning branches of Yggdrasil, and anywhere else one might hear things and mindfully listen, as spatial reality posed no obstacle to the spectral messenger.

Gradually, through old Hashani habits of theory and exclusion, a disparate group of listeners came together under the auspices of the Lady Sleep, whose fabled time of worship was the midnight hour. They gathered in a tranquil refuge deep in the Vashnar Mountains and slept there reverentially, whereupon they received a clear portent. The lark could also be heard and seen in the shifting tableau of their dreams. By request, a sleeping Nerai tried to reproduce the experiment in Her temple. But her dreams were as they always were, and so it seemed the lark had chosen upon whose shoulders it would next alight.

Now the song refined itself, and each heard it for a reason. Miuryn had faith enduring. Alashi saw the patterns. Lasyll drew them all together. Yilui procured the necessities. Solina had the insight of youth.

Advised by the great seer Apollonia, Fanten Darke served as emissary to Eleusis, conducting herself with the virtue expected of the ancient Obeah Ecstasia. She conveyed that she and the other seekers of the Dream intended to perform a ritual in a hallowed hollow of the Eastern Ithmia, with hopes of opening a way back for the long-lost priests of Valnurana who now wandered the Dreamrealm. Mistrustful of outsiders, the Village was at first divided. Under the leadership of Speaker Sjeng Sarastie and Blackwillow Blackwing, Epopt of Ambertide, the Eleusians eventually came to an uneasy agreement with those who desired to rouse the summering Dream.

Only one task remained. One mortal would have to feed the Dream, and in doing so, their gateway ritual. He would feed it not with candles or prayer, though there were to be plenty of both, but with his own essence. He would resign himself to months of seclusion, shorn of earthly attachments, shivering and on the brink of starvation and madness in the glacial meltwater of the Dreamspear's summit. He would let Sleep take him. Together, the listeners agreed that the honour should be Miuryn's.

"I envy him," confessed Alashi Shiva, "and I profoundly do not."

What transpired between faithful Miuryn and his own mind on that cold mountaintop is for him alone to say. As it is for the High Coven to know what they saw with their own wakeful eyes in the forest one midsummer morning.

A gate was opened. A lark soared out. Two lost souls descended gratefully upon the Prime and wept at touching the earth's solidity. Thereafter, the cleric Dolaron and the priestess Chakmar were escorted to their Lady's temple, the cleric alive but still very much asleep. As Creation exhaled a universal sigh, the world entire was lulled into a gentle rest. All awoke, blinking, to the serene voice of the Goddess of Sleep and Dreams, who promised the unswerving devotion of Her clergy would not go unanswered or unrewarded. Soon, She said, the old faith would be made new.

The Maiden of Dreams, beloved by Night, opened Her jewelled eyes to gaze upon the Wake once more.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Summary: Each seeking the Dream, and guided by a psychopomp, a coterie of adventurers succeeded in retrieving the remnants of Lady Valnurana's Order from the depths of Dreaming itself. In return, the Goddess graced them with Her presence.

Penned by My hand on the 25th of Valnuary, in the year 999 AF.