OURELIA

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Written by Priscilla Wong

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In the long stretch of time where myths breathe like wind through valley grass, there lives Ourelia, in a land no different from Eden except that men remember it with cleaner hearts. It's the kind of place that needs no poet's flourish - its truth lives in the marrow of things, in the way morning dew catches light just so, in the silent understanding between creatures that have no business knowing each other's souls.

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Here walks a soldier, trail-worn and carrying his wars like old coins in his pocket, and here too is Ourelia, half-horse, half-heaven, all wildness. She moves through the meadows like summer lightning, her freedom singing in every hoof-beat against the sweet earth.

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The bargain comes as such things do, over a shared moment when the world holds its breath. The soldier, who knows something about promises and the weight they carry, offers her a devil's trade with an angel's smile. Her freedom - that wild, untamed thing she loves better than her own heartbeat - for a life of following shadows, tracking his unseen path across the world's face until time brings their stories back together in the winter of their days.

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It's the kind of deal men make with dreams, and dreams make with those foolish enough to believe in them. But then again, maybe that's what true affection is - the willingness to chase a ghost across all the long years, trusting that somewhere ahead, the path leads home.