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The summer air was balmy and humid -- mosquitoes would be out and biting again. Hvergelmir walked through the park, citronella candles and matchbook stacked in one hand, A Coney Island of the Mind tucked under the other. It had been a terrible week, after everything that had recently happened, and she'd been afraid to come back -- but she had appointments to keep, whether or not anyone came. Routine could be its own kind of soothing balm.

As she usually did, Hvergelmir paid close attention to the auric energy around her, trying to sight out any possible auras she could approach and hope to talk to. There was nothing nearby on the order of a Negaverse officer or a youma, which meant her night might be fairly quiet -- but there was something else. A weird, powerful pulsing sort of aura, something she'd never felt before: friendly, but blipping like a bead on a radar screen.

Odder still, it was coming from Hvergelmir's bench.

She approached with trepidation. The last time she'd been here, her cozy little spot had been thick with powerful people and strange deeds -- attempted purification and attempted murder, and failures by all people and in all things. To come back only to find this weird auric aberration was worrying, and she wondered if something had happened, if maybe some of the discharged energy from Iris's failed attempt had infected something in the ground where Bischofite had lain, fallen. The only way of knowing, though, was to look.

As she got closer, she saw someone curled up on the bench, tucked in tight around themselves in a little ball as though it were late autumn and not sticky July. The aura beneath the signal pulse was just a little one -- a page, like so many of the pages she'd met, wearing the worked device of crossed arms in a circle as decoration on her costume -- the coat of arms of an Earth knight.

She looked familiar, but folded up small as she was, it was hard to tell.

"Are you awake?" she said, brushing the backs of her fingers along the page's arm as gently as she could, not wanting to startle her. "You need to wake up, miss, it's not safe to rest here."

There was a childlike innocence to the way the page slept that had made her seem younger than she was, folded into a gangly little ball. Seeing her better, she was a woman grown, lean as a whippet, pale as a dove.

And Hvergelmir knew that face.

I am beautiful, and proud, and complete.

"You're very, very beautiful," she murmured, like she had once before. Gone was the doubt in Avalon's eyes -- replaced now with an empty, but somehow less heavy, confusion. Reforged were the shattered sigils of her old uniform.

She held out her hand for the medallion, her eyes already recognizing the sigil inscribed on it. It was the same as the one scarred into her palm where she extended it to Avalon, though less crudely cut. Cosmos.

At a touch, a strange kaleidoscope of scenes began to flash through her mind. The beginning of the story was apparently missing -- it began with Avalon, encased in crystal -- but the rest, she'd seen as Cosmos had seen it.

"It has your story," she clarified. "But just a little tiny piece of it. What . . . what do you know? Do you remember being a knight -- like this? Or do you remember being a regular person -- going to work, taking showers, sleeping in a bed?"

Which of her memories had she kept? It had to be her civilian memories, right, from the way she was acting?

Hvergelmir didn't understand most of what Avalon was saying. None of what she was describing had ever happened. Evidently, she'd lost all her memories in the cataclysm that had rebuilt her from crystal and corruption -- which was a horrifying prospect, whatever the end result. But she did understand I'm scared -- and she felt her gut wrench with the sincerity of it.

"That's okay," Hvergelmir soothed. She sat down on the bench next to Avalon, carefully moving to put an arm around her shoulders. "Shhh, it's alright. It's okay. I know who you are. We'll work it out together, alright?"

It hurt to see Avalon brought low like this. As she was, Avalon wouldn't really know that, of course -- but as a human being who'd seen a part of someone that they themselves had now lost, Hvergelmir felt a sympathetic sense of wounded pride. It was the pain a person felt when losing a family member to Alzheimer's or dementia, the second-hand embarrassment: Avalon had been capable and independent once, if half-whole from the memories she'd already lost when Hvergelmir had met her.

Now, she was wandering blind in the world, completely at Hvergelmir's mercy, and Hvergelmir felt keenly aware of it, aware of the responsibility not to abuse the vulnerability of the other woman's position. She'd do her best.

"You're called Avalon," she said. "It's one of your names. Does it sound familiar at all?"

Sure fingers curled closer around Avalon's shoulder, pulling her in closer to be able to rest a little more comfortably. With her other hand -- having discarded her candles and book on the bench beside them -- she ran her fingers through Avalon's hair. Withholding physical affection had never come naturally to her, even with strangers and distant acquaintances. Laney's mother had always told her she was going to get kidnapped one day. (She hadn't, though if she had, she'd been hoping as a child that it would be by fairies, which had seemed like a good kind of kidnapping at the time.)

"I'm Hvergelmir. A squire of the Cosmos. And this is North End Park in Destiny City."

Avalon's questions didn't distress her -- but she imagined there were things it might be more useful for her to know, things she might not think to ask. "Something bad happened to you, and it was really hard to fix. That's why you can't remember anything -- Princess Cosmos had to take a lot away to save your life. Do you believe magic exists?"

"Yes," Hvergelmir agreed. "Princess Cosmos is the lady in white who helped you."

I know what fresh blood looks like too, she thought. Most of us do, these days. She didn't say so, though. From Avalon, the strange topic diversion was understandable, in a way. From Hvergelmir, it would've been weirdly morbid, and she didn't want to normalize that kind of conversation for someone who was maybe having a really formative time of it right now.

"That was a foundational question," Hvergelmir told her. "There's a lot of magic in your story, as it happens -- so in order to tell it to you, I have to make sure you're on board with that." She kept stroking the section of hair that Avalon wasn't playing with. "Do you want to hear? Or would you rather rest somewhere, with someone who can take care of you for a while? It's up to you, if you're tired."

"Alright. But I can only tell you the parts I know." She thought of Babylon -- she was going to have to call him soon. "Others may know more."

Hvergelmir settled back against the bench a little more comfortably, taking Avalon with her. It was nice to get to hold someone, she thought, even if it was under such strange, eerie, sad circumstances.

"Once, very long ago, a thousand years or more, there lived a young girl -- not you, another girl -- who was a princess in a large castle on the moon. There also lived a young boy -- not you either -- who was a prince down here on Earth. He was a very happy prince, and he and his people had a great academy on Earth where knights from all across the galaxy came to study and train. And one of the knights of Earth who studied at this academy was called Avalon -- just like you. The universe flourished, and all the planets and stars were alive, if not all happily -- as these things go." It was sort of interesting to tell it as a storybook. She took a breath and went on.

"One day, the young prince of Earth met the young princess of the moon -- and although they came from two different kingdoms, the two fell in love -- as these things also go. But there was another young girl, named Beryl -- a young sorceress from Earth -- and she had been promised to the prince. Heartbroken and spiteful, she used her magic to call up a powerful, dark force -- something we call Chaos -- and made a compact with it, to serve its desires in exchange for vast, incomprehensible power. She denounced the prince and declared herself queen of Earth.

"Queen Beryl hated the princess of the moon, and so, too, she hated all things that reminded her of her young enemy. She turned her sights on the knights' academy, declaring it a haven for outside invaders looking to take over Earth, and using her great power, she destroyed the academy and all its inhabitants, turning it into a great, dark place called the Rift, where no true life flourished, and all those who'd lived in the academy were condemned to live out eternity as horrible, monstrous beasts."

Here there was a gap in her knowledge, one she was still seeking answers to, so she went on without it.

"Some time not long after that, there was a great cataclysm -- and all the flourishing human life and civilizations was wiped out over a short period of time. Knights and other soldiers -- sailor soldiers -- disappeared from the face of history. Only on Earth were there still thriving groups of people, but by then, magic had largely gone out of the world. For a thousand years, everything was quiet -- and all the brightness of the galaxy, and all the war and strife between the Earth and the moon faded from human history, unbelieved and all but forgotten."

Hvergelmir stretched out a hand to link her fingers with Avalon's, to tap idly on her knuckles in rhythm. "One day, somehow, magic came back to the Earth. People from a thousand years ago began to be born again, here in Destiny City -- and soon enough, the old war started up again. Beryl's Negaverse army fought against knights and sailor soldiers of old. And one of these knights was called Avalon -- just like you. And she had friends who cared about her -- but war is hard. And one day, when Avalon felt alone and frightened and lost, she let a soldier from Beryl's army put a little piece of Chaos, like a single chip of ice, into her heart. And she agreed to fight for them, and they gave her a sword."

Hvergelmir remembered that sword, black and cold, held out toward her. She'd nearly died at its strike -- if not for the oath she swore.

"And the Chaos in her heart made it harder for Avalon to want to be all the good in the world, so in time, she became dark and cruel and violent, and she lost all memory of the young girl she had been before becoming Avalon, or taking Chaos into her heart.

"Something terrible happened to Avalon, something I don't know -- but when Princess Cosmos found her, she was encased in crystal, and the only way to get her free of it, to save her life, was to exact a difficult, painful price to undo what had been done. Avalon was saved -- and a knight again, just as she always ought to have been -- but she couldn't remember anything at all." She sighed. "And one day, a squire called by Hvergelmir came to the park and found Avalon there, sitting on her bench, looking so very tired. And she told Avalon her story. But just the parts she knew, of course."

"I'll tell you a story any time you like," she promised. "I told you once that you could always find me here -- and you finally did. I'm here for you, okay?"

Hvergelmir smiled wearily, her heart pained by Avalon's innocent question. Do I still have friends who care about me?

She knew so little about Avalon, in truth, so little about her life before her corruption, or even after it. But she knew at least enough to answer this one question.

"You always have. You always, always will." She picked up her book, with a little guilt over what she was about to do to Ferlinghetti. "Can I introduce you to one? Would that be okay with you?"