In the silence after her speech, something stirs.

A heat haze slides across the ground, distorting the air around it.

Distorting the ground under it, sand shifting to glass shifting to flowers and back to sand almost faster than the eye can stand.

It casts a winged shadow.

Lurking at the fringes of Blodwen's mind, Raven-that-was (Raven-that-is) is still laughing, bright and wild and -- warm?

There's a rush as that heat-haze climbs higher, swirling around her ankles, then her knees, heat brushing against her face, against her mouth.

*!*

And then the haze and the power and the laughter are gone.

The sun is beating down on the snow, bright and clear despite the cold.

And Blodwen is dressed in brilliant scarlet, clothes clean and pressed and impeccable.

Call it a gift, repaid in kind.

But not, perhaps, repaid in full.