It's late in the seasons for the springtime celebration. As if to emphasize this, summertime scents sweep across the beachside without warning. Sweet, sun-warmed grasses, and a young voice calling out across the beach. It's a familiar voice, even though the boy was a rare accompaniment to the dove-god in the time he was alive. Because the lost little soul the gods tossed to them was taken just as swiftly, like so many other children Cupid had cared for.

The island is very empty, very lonely. Cupid keeps his head bowed for a long moment, tells himself it's the imaginings of a weary mortal's heart. He murmurs his way through another line of prayer, asks his mother for nothing more, afraid to seem ungrateful.

Cupid falls silent. The waves lap the shore, and Apollo's breathing remains in his ear, his scent warming the chill of the seabreeze. He tilts his nose toward the boy.

Bragi has been gone since the boy was buried. Cupid has long resigned himself to letting that daughter do as the mysteries of her troubled heart demanded she do. His children have inherited his winged heart, and so he cannot hold them as tightly as his grief wants. Apollo. What does he know? Remember? How disoriented is he? Where is Cupid's child? Where is she? Did you have a good rest?