How long had she been here...?

Jasmine couldn't say. All sense of the coming and going of time had escaped her, standing still as stone in the gilded glow of a crown. 

The crown. 

Were it not for the constant flickering of her moth's wings across the light, Jasmine might have said no time had passed at all. She'd only just come upon it... this jewel-studded thing in a bed of velvet and polished wood, glowing even beneath long-tumbled stones. Who could have left something so beautiful in a place like this? How long had it been lost? She should save it, Jasmine thought, from this hall of rust and rot. Take it back to the surface. There must be a reward... 

Perhaps the crown was a reward of its own.

Slowly, drawn by an unfamiliar yearning, Jasmine bowed her head to touch her muzzle against the cold metal. Her moth danced to a stand-still, clinging to the end of her forelock. Without it there was othing to interrupt that light. The most beautiful... warmest light that Jasmine had ever seen... sweeter even than Melite's laughter... 

With little left of her to think, Jasmine knelt before the chest and slipped her head beneath the crown in its resting place.