======Zhi-Zhu Lin======

=====A Perfect Getaway=====

Here, no one knows who they are. The respect that comes to them is not of a Captain and a Goddess' plaything, but of traditional respect given to Wildborn in this, their spiritual home. While eventually, one day, they will return to the work that calls them. But for now they are people, not legends. Just two people, enjoying a simple adventure together in each other's company.

The outside world is not banished entirely. Letters flit back and forth keeping anxious hearts satiated, and business in abeyance. But for days, weeks at a time, it is forgotten. Replaced instead with something better. The perfect moment. 

One evening shared dumplings on the beach, hot and crisp against the cooling of the night. Another, a secret swim with nothing but the moon and stars to see them. Spending a day together doing nothing but laying in warm sands, looking at the clouds and telling stories of the shapes up there. 

The sea goes on for days, riding with one another from place to place, different trees, different sands. A few days out on the water calmly fishing the nights dinner, then watching the still reflections as the sun fades and the stars shine down, reflecting on calm waves to almost hold you amidst them. New constellations found and named, their patterns and stories different from the ones that came before. 

Horses love the beach. This is a little known fact outside of the Lands of Endless Sky. Soft yielding sand easily giving way under hoof, and cool water to splash through after the sweat of a long and virtuous run. The steam from their backs after a vigorous day of racing across the horizon almost enough to match the smoke of the cuddling fire at night. Sparks lifting into the night sky, joining the stars. The glow on faces shared in a kiss not a fraction as bright as the glow inside shared hearts.

Warm sand, soft waves. A gentle kiss of beloveds, expectant and hopeful for the life that is still to come. Hand in hand they wander, waves occasionally coming up to greet them. At their feet a stone, rosy in hue, smooth and glossy from the crashing of the waves that came before. From now it will find its home in pockets, on desks. A memento forever carried of this beautiful now.

=====HOPE=====

Zhi-Zhu Lin believed in people.

She believed in their collective capacity for goodness. She believed in their right to determine their own destiny. She believed that between them the hands of the meek and many might find the wisdom to hold that which destroyed the great and few.

She believed that they might together throw open the gates of paradise. She believed that by their craft they might free themselves from the burdens of suffering, sickness, infirmity and age that the Gods had decided were their birthright.

And Lin would do all she could to help them.

She had come far enough to know it was possible. She had learned that paradise could be a matter of hope rather than faith. The obstacles were enormous, the road long and painful, success was anything but guaranteed, but at its end was the freedom to choose: the world shaped by Gods and chance or the one shaped by the many for the many.

And that choice was the key. It was one thing to open the gates of paradise, it was quite another to choose to step through. That would be an act of faith. Faith that what you and those like you might choose for yourself was better than what others, even the most wise and good, might choose for you. A faith both in oneself and the fallible many.

For Zhi-Zhu Lin thought that choice would be easy. It was the same choice she had always made. It was the choice she made when she found Miyel trapped in her web all those years ago. It was the choice she made when she learned of Juglans’ crimes, and his quest to escape them. It was the choice she made every time she had been confronted with the question of whether someone deserved her help.

Zhi-Zhu Lin had always believed in people.

//---Written by Conor/Eleanor W.//