Stars twinkled in the night sky like jewels scattered across a soft blanket of the deepest, darkest blue that Ashlynn had only ever seen in Nyrielle's eyes. All around her, the only sounds were the soft splashing of waves against the sides of a wooden boat, and the creak of the boat itself as the gentle waves rolled beneath it.
When Ashlynn asked Nyrielle to guard her dreams and keep her from harming herself at night, she'd asked her lover to show her the places that she had never been so they could build new memories together in dreams. She had meant it as a way to ensure that she didn't touch on anything that would trigger the hurt and pain of learning what Jocelynn had done to her, and at first, Nyrielle had obliged.
The first night, Nyrielle had taken Ashlynn to a place known as the Thousand Spires, a strange land that seemed to belong to a different world where great columns of stone rose from the earth like spears pointed at the sky.
