The Dancer with Moth Wings

Ignacia hears a whisper on the wings of a flock of passing moths:

*The Dancer with Moth Wings*

This is the memory which rises to the surface of the Glasswrought being's mind.

"Tell us about you, flight of moths. Why is your kind here?"

*In this world? Not the Garden? Not your world?*

*We are not moths!* The dusty creatures flutter their wings in a semblance of sad laughter.

*We are...an echo.*

*We have slept for a long time.* The moths reply. *What world is it that you hail from?* *Is it as beautiful as ours?* *Is it as wild?* *Is it a safe world?*

*We did not like the last sun we had the displeasure of knowing. It's probably still there, being proud and arrogant and an all-around pompous jerk.*

*A strange Star you seem to have met! Mine was much more agreeable. Never a casual hunter of the weak.*

"I have questions, so many questions, however the lure of a shred of lost arcane knowledge tempts me greatly."

"I shall ask, and perhaps be damned by my companions, and my future. No, I cannot regret this, no matter the choice."

"Who were you, before?"

*An easy question with a sad answer, visitor.*

*You address the echoes of the Lord and Maker of a world fallen to ruin.*

*A Dancer, with Dusty Wings.*

The moths sigh as something begins to unwind from them and escapes into the air.

"Can you tell me your tale...  You are gone."

*Ask the Drake...Ask the Star..*

"If we could save this garden, it would be incredible, but we should still have a record of this place. What happened here, with the Dancer? What was their intent for these fruits of glass?"

"Longevity...how long do you live, outsider from a young world?" The Drake asks Tetra.

"The Court of the Land of Dust was carved out endless ages ago. It has endured in its broken state for an endless amount of that time.

"And for the rest, it was the seat from which the Dancer with Moth Wings frolicked. It was the garden in which it enacted all it found delightful.

"It was a fragment of another place. The Court was cut off from that realm long before I was created. But in that other place hid an evil danger that the Dancer with Moth Wings sought to escape.

"In the end, it was in futility. The true Dancer with Moth Wings was already tainted. It was thrown down by its own guardians, torn apart in a great battle that laid waste to the Court. The ruins are self-evident.

"The echoes that remain are of the original Dancer with Moth Wings' intent. At least, I hope and believe so.

"I know not what became of the rest. It was not a battle I fought in, lacking both the latitude to interpret a role for myself in the conflict, and the power to make a difference. In the end, it was my binding to the Orchard that preserved it, and me."

"There were other Drakes, you know. They died as if mere rats."

"As for what the glass fruit is for, what more can I say? The Dancer with Moth Wings is reduced to sighing echoes. The magic to use them to make new life, new Drakes, new anything, no longer exists.

"The Court of the Land of Dust will wind down into slow, endless declension as more eons pour down like dust from the upper reaches of the woods."

"I must deal with interlopers. I must save the trees. The fruit that cannot be replaced I must safeguard against those who seek to wield them frivolously - or worse, in contravention of the intended desires of the Dancer with Moth Wings, whose service I remain in, despite its fall..."