"Who is the veiled lady?" Penelope spoke from the light flooding my everlasting darkness in the emerald. Time had lost all resolution, and reality was only a memory.

The entire moment seemed to happen again, immediately after it occurred. Then, during the advent of the third time I smiled, I think, and said:

"Good morning. Thanks for the feathers!" Entirely in Corvin, of course, or at least I think that's the language I was in at the time.

"No time for your lame attempt to be some kind of dad. My husband will be home soon, and I won't have him seeing the emerald, he'd sell it to pay off his debts to the village's priest." Penelope said. I barely recognized her or her demeanor. I had so many questions for her.

"The veiled lady?" I mused. I thought of Aureus. There was a moment, in my first memories of the House of Wisdom, where I thought Aureus might be a man. Aureus was neither and never was either. Aureus was just Aureus, not exactly a hermaphrodite, sorta the opposite, in fact, at least that was my understanding. Aureus as the veiled lady? I wasn't sure.

"Quickly, father, what do you know of her? I know you know this one!" Penelope urged me to speak.

"Perhaps you should keep me around for this adventure, daughter. We could catch up along the way, perhaps?" I said.

"Not a chance!" Penelope glared at me and then I saw she was still herself, somewhere beneath her cottage maid's outfit and her tight locks and hardened face, aged quickly in a hard life. Then I was back into whatever silent dark nook she had me interred in, hidden for all time.

When I was found again it was perhaps at the end of that aeon. Hopefully my daughter had renamed her prince, her soulmate, by then. I hoped everything had worked out. I had no way to ask how long I was buried, but the village I had seen in glimpse was long gone, leaving but one single cottage, and a crypt of auld stone stood before it.

"See what is?" the goblin spoke, then looked inside the emerald for me, seeing nothing.

"Can you hear me?" I asked. The goblin gave no sign it could hear or see me in the emerald.

The goblin gently placed the emerald upon the headstone over the crypt of auld stone. Then the goblin kept searching the area, in plain view of the emerald, so that I witnessed its fate. I am not sure of the creature's intention, or what species of goblin it was. It had green wrinkled skin, much jewelry and pouches and scrolls and trinkets and a long curvy dagger smeared in poisons and an empty carseat for a baby on its back, almost the same size as it. It wore a long pointy cap of deep crimson, so perhaps it was a Red Cap.

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The door of the old hut opened and the goblin walked towards the entrance. When the goblin was too close, examining the pumpkin pie on the doorstep - what appeared in shadow like a long broomstick emerged.

The goblin stuck its finger into the pumpkin pie while the broomstick turned out to be a metal gun barrel. It was aimed carefully and slowly at the distracted creature, with cold calculating precision. As the goblin licked the pumpkin pie from its claws, the barrel erupted with a blast of gunsmoke. The head of the goblin was gone, and the creature fell dead, with its head exploded from the gunshot. Then the door of the little cottage slowly closed, leaving the pie there uneaten.

I saw Stormcrow descend and eat some of the pie. Either my crow was immortal, or time was not as long as I thought. Then Stormcrow came and peered into the emerald and asked:

"Lord, is that you, old boss?" Stormcrow asked. "Only thousands of years, why not?"

And then the crows all flew away, as the door of the cottage slowly began to open again. When the birds were gone, it closed back up. I stared at the place all around, that I could see from my perch from within the emerald. I could whisper from there, so attuned to my prison had I become.

I lost nothing, but rather became quite sick of myself. Strangely enough I forgot my self-loathing as soon as there were other living things to observe. I could focus my attention, for better or worse, on them. Sometimes they triumphed and sometimes they died. The vines grew and obscured my vision, died, and secured my position.

I was the emerald eye, watching over an unknown grave. Except it was not a grave. Within, Penelope slept, I just did not know yet. Later on I found out, when the stones were removed and a man stood over her, a bug-eyed, frilly and wimpy looking man, but a man, never-the-less.

"Edrien." Penelope said to him, as her eyes opened. She grabbed him and kissed him real good, making the boy blush furiously. "Prince Edrien. I've watched you all this time, you were a good king to the Folk of the Shaded Places, and now you are mine, you'll be my king. I am so tired of sleeping, I might pass a law against it!'

"I do." Prince Edrien stammered.

Penelope leapt onto his horse with equestrian grace and helped her prince up into the saddle in front of her. Then they rode off and left me there. If the emerald had permitted it, I'd have cried.

Stormcrow came again and spoke to me of all the time I had missed.

"Only in this world, Lord, for in the world you left behind, not one second has altered its course. It is a world that might not exist, say if my own beak assassinated you by freeing you to fall and shatter on those very stones. What say my Lord, to such a fate? Nothing? Perhaps my Lord finds this amusing, this thought of being slain now, after witnessing this fate. Maybe my Lord wishes to see more, see from where there is no escape from knowing all the outcomes, all the things that happened here, some good some quite terrible. See your daughter's life? Be able to do nothing but observe?

I assure you it does not end well, she dies in the end, and she is not given some sort of special consideration, after a life of violent adventures, making enemies of the most depraved and vicious villains. You see how your daughter dies sometimes, in some fate? Why you see this? No, my Lord, you choose the darkness, that is how I blessed thee. Now sleep again, and I will tell thee another story."