*put Yygritte cert here*
“After they had overcome the final obstacle in the fight, Ilena ran through the valley seeking out her one true love Ernesto. She didn’t know if he had survived the attack on their herd. She had hoped and prayed that he made it through, there was nothing else she could have done. She’d gone through all the possibilities- so many times. All she had left was hope and the faith that they were meant to be together.
The valley was endless as she ran, her lungs heaving like a bellows. All she could think about was whether or not he’d made it or if she’d….She couldn’t think that way, not this time.
The valley curved around a large formation and there in the pool at the base of a waterfalls two soquili struggled. Both of them with skin of blackest night. She knew one of them was Ernesto, but from this distance she couldn’t tell which. Her whole body ached as she pushed at her last reserves to try to make it to him.
She saw the blow land but she was too far out to see who it was. If he didn’t survive….No, she would not think that. She screamed his name but the roaring of the water ate up all the sound so that she could not even hear herself scream.
A spreading pool of red blossomed out as one of the stallions cast the other off his horrn. He turned wading to the shore, but his head was down and there were no recognizable features.
She thought it was him. Her heart said it was, but her heart had been wrong one hundred and seven times before. She was tired.
Then his face lifted and her heart stopped. She fell shaking to her knees with sobs. Because it was him, it was Ernesto. He was alive! They’d made it through finally. She sobbed uncontrollably as he came to her and buried his face into her neck, saying and making soothing noises to her.
It was a long time before she could speak, before the tears finally stopped long enough. Her throat was raspy and she felt so weak with the adrenaline leaving her body.
My love he said softly, my love. I feared that you were gone. I could barely think but of you. I couldn’t face this world without you. I prayed to the gods that if you were not alive to let his horn strike true, but if you were alive that i would fell him. I cannot believe it my love.
The tears from his eyes dripped down her skin in rivulets.
Ernesto, Ernesto. She paused not sure what to say. The truth was a bit hard to accept. I would come for you a thousand times Ernesto. I came for you one hundred and seven times.
For a moment, her words did not register. But when they did he leaned back from her asking what she meant. What do you mean you came for me one hundred and seven times? He didn’t understand what she meant.
Taking a deep breath, Ilena told him. For one hundred and six times, I came and you died. You were butchered before I came. You died with your head on my shoulder. Or we laid dying together. Each time was worse than the last because I thought I got it right that time.
Ernesto was confused by what she was saying. Got it right? What do you mean, my love?
She pulled the necklace over her head and let it fall on the ground between them. That necklace helped me reverse time after the first time you died in battle. It kept happening, you kept dying and I kept going back to the beginning because of thai necklace. I kept seeing you die over and over again. I did everything I knew how to fix it. I tried changing big actions and little. I changed whole directions down to little seconds. Nothing worked, nothing. But I kept getting to do it again and again. Fifty times, then sixty, seventy, one hundred…and I realized that all the changes I made, nothing worked. There were no more options.
But this last time, all the difference I made was to hold you a little longer, to kiss you a little more and I don’t know if it was only that our timing was off or it just could have gone either way. Whether that kiss changed things or we just had to have a chance to do the same exact thing for a second time–luck or what. But this time, you’re here. You’re alive Ernesto. You’re alive.
They held each other as they wept and cried, glad that this time they’d got it right. That they had this one hundred and seventh chance.
Ygritte smiled at the gawking faces around the vampire. “They knew that the necklace was too powerful and too dangerous to live in the open. So they swam out to the deepest part of the pool, near the falls and dropped the necklace down into the dark depths there. They say if you can find the valley that has that waterfall that at the bottom of the falls that necklace lays still shimmering, still ready to reverse time for whoever finds it next.”