"Fragment and Song" by Kate "Silverfish" Jennings

Alondra was a small and unlovely girl resplendent in a gown of pale blue wool with white vines at the wrists and hem, her red hair combed back close to her skull and braided into a long, rusty cord that hung down between sharp shoulder blades to the small of her back. She sat beside her mother, staring out on the hall with marble-blue eyes dark and wide in her blunt face.
The minstrel looked to the main table and saw, as few but he had ever done, as few but he could ever do, how very much like her mother the daughter was. He had seen the same expression, years before, on Ciela's face, and although Ciela was tall, black-haired, delicate and beautiful, he knew that beneath her carefully studied manners and graceful courtesies had once burned the same flame that now kindled Alondra's spirit. And Falcongreen, Lord Falcongreen, sat there solemn and respected, and blind, blind to the fire, and unaware of how easily he had quenched it, how carelessly he would do it again.
Later, when all had eaten and drunk their fill, the minstrel would be called to sing the light-hearted ballads and bawdy songs of the drinking hall, the rough dances beloved of a rough people, but now as the guestss sat and ate and spoke earnestly and long of treaties and weddings and long voyages to lands in the Colonies, lands which were but fearsome pictures on a map to most gathered there, he was free to sing as he pleased - love songs in honour of the betrothal, new, cultured songs from the court in Tzeran, little rhymes of life and heartbreak.
So he sang, largely ignored, barely touching his mind to the words of the songs, for they were neither complicated nor overly meaningful, gazing to the head of the hall and to the two families, Falcongreen and Gierlon. The Lord Gierlon sat in close conversation with Falcongreen as his lady spoke animatedly to Ciela. Ciela, pale and lovely, replied quietly, glancing from time to time at her daughter. The eldest of Gierlon's brood sat with his brothers and the other young men of Gierlon, and did not seem at all effected by his impending marriage.
The minstrel gathered his courage slowly, and turned from a merry "Song of Doves" to a sadder note, and an ancient song. It was one he had learned years before, from a girl who had journeyed far from the mountains of the West, and brought the song with her. It was a song of love, of loss, of time, a song like the welling of a sorrow for which there could never be comfort. It was not a song sung often at betrothal-feasts, but he played it now.

"Red are the trees that sleep above the river,
The age-old river that's flowing out for ever,
Never returning to your autumn's forest,
Going before us.

All down the river autumn's leaves are fading,
Where the old willows deep in tears are wading,
Down the brown waters, leave the hills behind us,
Still your songs find us.

Far from the mountains flows the ancient river,
And we must follow, leaving you forever,
Out through the lowlands, till we reach tomorrow,
Waking in sorrow.

Soon we'll be sailing over the horizon,
Out to the east where the young sun is rising,
Though he is setting where your children left you,
They'll not forget you." .