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Tam Lin

When Mash was a kid, she read the ballad of Tam Lin.

She read a great many stories, actually. This specific one hadn’t been a favorite, nor had it been a particularly disliked one. It was one of the stories she had access to, and so she has read it. Simply.

It has been many years. The details have eroded from Mash’s mind. But from what she remembers, the story goes like this:

Once upon a time, there was a human knight named Tam Lin, who served the fairy queen. This was fine, mostly, but something Really Bad was going to happen soon, and he knew he would not survive that event. Thankfully, his lover helped him escape- he was forced into different skins for a while, but she refused to let go of him. And so Tam Lin is now free, no longer beholden to the queen, able to live as he pleases.

Tam Lin, Aesc had called her. A different name to survive the Queen’s era. A different skin to survive the shift from dream to reality. Tam Lin. Tam Lin. Tam Lin.

The ice is almost fully encasing her now. Soon, she will lose consciousness, only to be awakened millenia later. 

Tam Lin. Tam Lin. Tam Lin. Did Aesc know? Did she know what that name meant, the history it carried, when she gifted it to Mash? Did she know that she was replaying a history from another world?

Tam Lin, the human knight, Tam Lin, fated for doom, Tam Lin, saved from the queen by his lover. But Mash’s queen and lover are the same person. But Mash’s salvation comes not from being clung on, but by being let go.

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