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Castle Butterfly
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There was this woman... Ruive, he calls her (and somehow, Saulanna recognizes that word as meaning "blade of grass"). She was a BEAST-BLOODED, like he thought you were, but who cared about that any more? She was unusual, he says: she was from far away, she lived up at the spring where the stream came from, she made strange mixtures of strange ingredients, people said that she spoke to spirits... and she had a collection of books and CURIOS, the supply of which was occasionally replenished by a brief excursion or the arrival of a mysterious visitor.
This box, he explains, was one of those. Ruive had seemed excited by the thing, and whenever he visited to drop off wood or food she would be poking at it, trying to get it to work. But she never got it to play... and as time went by, she got more and more frustrated, as if she'd put great hopes in there that weren't answered. Eventually, she threw it out.
Getting a little more hesitant in his retelling, the ghost goes on to tell how he took it himself, and thought maybe he could figure out why it didn't work; the inside was all little golden gears and systems. He hid it away at the base of the small waterfall, and whenever he was free he would go and try to puzzle it out. It took him years, but although some parts were still strange he eventually found that the actual problem was just one simple mechanical piece. He had to go out on a long trip to the nearest city, and what he got wasn't anything like the quality of of the original, but it worked...
A wistful look passes over his face as he describes hearing the music play the first time, in the dark of the forest, the water rushing nearby; he had stayed out all night finally fixing it. And when it was done, he grabbed the box and ran right away to bring it to Ruive...
...
... Then he died...
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