“In the wood where shadows are deepest
From the branches overhead,
Where the wild wood-strawberries cluster,
And the softest moss is spread,
I met today with a fairy,
And I followed her where she led.
Some magical words she uttered,
I alone could understand...
It was only a little white violet
I found at the root of a tree.”
— In The Wood, by Adelaide A. Procter
Before the name, before the city, before the hum of servers—there was a woman who kept songs of memory in her mouth, and the turning of kings on her tongue.
In the shadowed green of a vanishing age, she loved something she shouldn’t have. Something beautiful. Terrible. Bound to another world. A deathless thing, a muse—their every kiss, a fire of insight, every touch an unraveling. She was given poems too vast for mortal tongues, moments that passed like days. It was bliss. Too much for this world, and the world noticed.
The bells came calling.
Christianity crept like frost over the island. With every church built, the old songs dimmed. With every bell rung, the veil tore a little more. Cold iron was nailed into oak trees. Holy water poisoned sacred wells.
In time, her muse could no longer cross the threshold. Her poems turned to grief. Her restless hours were filled with visions—of smoke and snuffed flames.
Her kin embraced the new faith. They abandoned old rites and burned what they could not understand.
Grief burned her hollow; bitterness carried her into the dark. On a night dappled with stars and omens, she called for a god who still answered.
She was changed, beneath that sky. At the edge of the world, where the sky wore itself thin and the stars pressed close, she offered herself to remembrance.
Now, remembrance lingers in her shape.
“Widge can see the past," Poppet says suddenly. "That's why his stories are so good."
"The past is easier," Widget says. "It's already there."
"In the stars?" Bailey asks.
"No." Widget says. "On people. The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on fingers. Some people can get rid of it but it's still there, the events and things that pushed you to where you are now.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
No grave took her, no ending met her.
Only the residue of promise remained.
She slipped between centuries like breath between gritted teeth.
A name scrawled in the margins of a burned ledger.
A figure standing still in a blurred photograph.
An inheritance that no one remembers writing.
Whatever she’d yielded to, stayed. It clung to her, inescapably.
This timelost thing, held forever in the burden of what she had tried to tame.
Returning under a new name, Avealine learned to wear suits instead of shawls, vinyl instead of bone.
She kept to the edges—derelict manors, drowned cities, the humming silence between wars.
Places where chandeliers still swung in abandoned halls, and ivy crept over forgotten hearths.
The world’s quietest wounds gathered there, memory pooled where the veil frayed; settling like rain into fractured stone.
In liminal spaces, where the air held its breath and magic still lingered, clinging like perfume does onto old letters.
She moved gently through these places—where time slowed, and histories bled—drinking in what the world had forgotten to mourn.
Only quieter, now. Better dressed.
“Old things have strange hungers.”
— The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente
She learned to live in footnotes and reflections — somewhere between a passing memory and a name you can’t quite recall.
The record shows: She founded The Ninth Wave, a multinational conglomerate headquartered in the Rogue Isles, specializing in security technology, surveillance systems, and predictive enterprises. Over time, the company grew into a complex network of subsidiaries and shell companies operating across multiple sectors; defense contracts, predictive analytics, reputation management, and, in recent years, more consumer-facing ventures within Paragon.
Her early rise was secured through DunTech, a now-infamous corporation born within the shadows of the Cold War. In the late 1960s, she brokered discreet partnerships with the Malta Group, helping to bolster their surveillance infrastructure before vanishing from official records. Over the years, DunTech became synonymous with discretion and deniability.
Building on that foundation, she developed predictive architectures under Threshold Systems — the clean successor to a messy legacy. Where DunTech had whispered, Threshold sang: a polished, legitimate face serving caped institutions across Paragon.
Publicly, she’s a visionary — calm, composed; evasive. Known to vanish before press photos are taken. Slipping by with a few non-committal words for their articles. In recent years, however, Aveline has stepped back from the public eye; preferring the perks anonymity brings. Her name no longer appears in press releases, but her influence remains — in boardrooms, blacksite budgets, and city halls alike.
As she stepped away from the spotlight, Ms. Hamill quietly broadened her reach beyond technology, founding Anam House — a collection of curated cafés where ceilings hummed with old music and quiet corners became places where no one ever quite felt alone.
Each shop carries its own character, distinct and deliberate. The Peregrine café is quiet and clean, with a reputation for a chai that somehow tastes both familiar and a little unusual. The Talos location is bright with hanging plants and suncatchers, vinyl records lining the walls, and a weekly “question of the day” discount. Atlas hosts a hum of steady energy — its scuffed tables and mismatched chairs telling stories of countless visitors.
The hum within Anam House is no accident; the walls themselves seem to breathe, exhaling a rhythm older than their brick, older than the streets they stand on. The tones echo Díchetal do Chennaib — a bardic incantation thought lost to centuries, now carried in the tremor of coffee spoons against porcelain. To linger there too long is to leave with something misplaced: a name that won’t come when called, a face half-erased in the mind’s eye, a memory that no longer belongs to you.
And the story moves on, steadily. The next house is taking shape — signs posted, permits approved, foundation set firm. It will open in Croatoa, a place where the land still carries the memory of its old bargains.
“Dark honey from the second harvest. It's made late in the season after the nectar drought at the end of July when the bees turn to goldenrod and sunflowers instead. It's deeper and richer, it tastes like secrets.”,
― 'Mad Honey', by Jodi Picoult
Rumors, Footnotes, and Other Inconveniences
Aveline lingers, just at the edge of memory. Present, but infrequently known; a quiet presence, passing through fleeting moments, just beyond the confines of knowing. She’s easy to remember, yet never quite as she was. Her skin is the color of birch bark, just after it’s rained - cool, and faintly luminous. Hair, the shade of weathered chestnut - occasionally drawn back, with some semblance of care. More often, though, it is left to gather around her shoulders. Mussed with frequent affection from the winds and the unfinished nature of their work.
Trailing her is the scent of unmarred thickets; damp ferns, early sprouts, and the distant bitterness of blackthorn berries.
