Did you think she'd been lost when the Deserts turned to ocean?

It's easy to understand why you might have thought so. Surely she'd gone under when the waters had come rushing in. You knew – she'd called out to you, little more than your name, but you must have heard it. And perhaps you'd even felt it when she slipped below the sand like a tomb, plugged into something much more grand and cosmic than even she could dream, deactivated like a Roomba in reverse charge, being drained and replenished in some eldritch cycle at the pleasure of the gods of the Desert. It had not been unpleasant, and it had certainly been nothing less than she had deserved. She had tried to be good, tried to be responsible, tried to do right by the Deserts, and naturally it had all imploded.

Camrynn excels at one thing: doing exactly as she pleases.

And if there's one thing that's impossible to do while maintaining a kingdom, it's doing exactly as one pleases.

It was really just not meant to be. And in the divorce, the Deserts got her soul.

But only for a little while. When the magic had faded and the waters had come rushing in, she'd escaped easy as breathing. She'd been lingering, semi-corporeal (like you do), gathering her strength and waiting for the moment she felt like re-entering polite society. Or her version of it, at any rate.

When the time comes, it's nearly midnight. The moon is full and heavy in the winter chill. She materializes with a snap, and there was never any doubt where she was going. The Valley is all around her, and there's not a hint of the tang of sand from the Deserts.

When she first appears, she appears for just a moment as she would be were she in her natural form. She looks slightly old, slightly worn thin, like a mare with too many years to her. There are hollows of age, her coat is missing its customary sheen, and her mane and tail, while lovely and long, are more limp and less shiny. In this form, a strange slash crosses her chest, right below the crook-and-flail that speaks to her once-queenship of the Deserts. Her eyes are the only remarkable thing about her in that moment, and they shift like nebulas against the night sky, ranging through every color of the rainbow. Her eyes – and the thin line of diamonds that traces its way across her left cheek.

But this form lasts no more than a heartbeat before she closes her eyes, gathering her magic to her like a cloak. Her skin twitches as though she's trying to dislodge a fly, and in that moment, Camrynn returns in full force.

She is radiant, beautiful, her skin a glistening black in the moonlight. Her mane and tail fall like cascades, catching the light. Her form is perfect, every inch of her body lithe and young. From her back spring two oversize wings, feathered black but fading to a deep, dark red at the tips. The red is iridescent, and seems to vary between deep blood-red, maroon, and crimson as the light plays across it. Her eyes are a deep maroon, incandescent to match.

But the diamonds across her cheek are unchanged.

They've never been changed, not in any form she's taken, not anywhere she's been.

She is not much of one for promises of fidelity. She is not much of one for happily ever after – and she's certainly not one to come crawling back or wait by the phone. But when she returned to the world, when she found herself once more, there was no question where she would go. There was no question she would come to him.

Come to him, but never call for him. She knows what's gone on in her absence, knows it as easily as opening a book and skimming the pages, and she knows that if he's to be found, it will be here. And if he'll come to her, come find her here in his own lands, then they'll talk. He must feel her, like she's always felt him, ever since that moment when they traded some small part of themselves in a cave so many years ago. Surely he's already felt the tug. Surely he's already had to consider whether he'll come to her, to take the final steps across the distance she's just started to breach.

No matter, the ball is in his court. And she's perfectly content to wait, small smile playing across her lips, as beautiful in the moonlight as she's ever been.