The day they laid her to rest no birds sang in the forest; how painful, how silent was the acolytes' long journey to the center, wending past the glorious profusion of verdance to the last vestige of desert, the sandy soil reminding them all it had all begun once and again with a red-haired child soldier, a frog knight, and a princess of a far-a-when land came clambering out of the desert dirt and gifted their Lady with a mechanical man of uncertain provenance and boundless wisdom.

Even birds had sung in the desert, sometimes, filling the barren, dead air with hopeful song when all such had seemed lost, but now the forest arced over them and the wind was still, the air cool and soft and silent against their dry and solemn eyes as they spread in a silent circle around that same metal man now taking Fiona back to the earth she'd caused to grow lush and rich with new life.

No birds sang now; yet as Robo carefully placed the last rocks misted with mossy lichen over their Lady's rest, a bright hope sang in the birds' place for the forest to last long beyond them all, to bring their shared dream of flourishing green and peaceful silence for many generations still to come.