The Eagle And The Nightingales

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All the world comes to Kingsford Faire, the Midsummer Faire of Kings....

A Gypsy known only as Nightingale sat on a riverside rock on the edge of the Faire grounds, with the tune of "Faire of the Kings" running through her head. Not that she liked that particular piece of doggerel, but it did have one of those annoying tunes that would stick in one's mind for hours or days.

A light mist hung over the Kanar River, and a meadowlark nearby added his song to the growing chorus of birds singing from every tree and bush along the riverbank. The morning air was still, cool, and smelled of river water with a faint addition of smoke. Sunlight touched the pounded earth that lately had held a small city made of tents and temporary booths, then gilded the grey stone of the Cathedral and Cloister walls behind the area that had been home to the Kingsford Faire for the past several weeks. Nightingale didn't particularly admire the fortress-like cloister, but examining it was better than looking across the river. She kept her eyes purposefully averted from the ruins of Kingsford on the opposite bank, although she was still painfully aware of the devastation that ended only where the river itself began. There was no avoiding the fact that Kingsford, as she had known it, was no more. That inescapable fact had lent a heaviness to her heart that was equally inescapable.

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