The world was eerie, poignant, haunting and looming; a beckoning hand from the folds of glass, from the veneer of nothingness. She stepped and glided, dared and conquered, courted and lilted, stared and witnessed, bearing silence in the finite traces of anarchy. She could feel it bellowing deep inside her, a massive squall of deliverance and apprehension, praying, begging, hoping for absolution – and taking it within her teeth, gnawing against the grain, gnashing upon cold ghosts and chilling phantoms. The fairy paid diligence for her quiet platitudes, wove determination through each and every one of her veins, carved strength, concentration, and confidence in the yearning pulls and tugs of acrimony: following Roland down the halls, searching and seeking out the riddles of the corridors. None were provided to her but the constant slam of queries, of images, building a flaring crescendo behind her eyes as she watched the gilded’s frame twist and turn into a variety of pictures: drenched in sable, cloaked in cerulean, chiseled in so many altering facets (wings, stone, marble, plain, crisp), she was unsure where to look, which to believe, hers never losing its quality, singular, same. Were they different identities, stories lost in the rime, in the mist, in the abyss? Were they part of puzzles and venues? Were they secrets and confessions, daggers and scythes, times and throngs of a thief predisposed to duplicity, to conniving, to furtive, specious ramparts? Were they mythos she’d never heard? Were they all Roland, all fixtures, all dynamics, she’d never seen, never known? And how much did she know of him beyond their adventures together: the one who’d granted her freedom and liberation, but may have never had his own? And why was hers nothing else: plain and unassuming, never flagged, never wavering, from its identical position (because surely she had many parts and pasts as well, all hidden beneath the smiles, the grins, the dances)? Her gaze simply locked back onto him, the golden frame she knew, following faithfully, pushing down all the questions, pulsing and racing and forgoing all the intrigue floating across her tongue. When they returned, back from this world of magic and mystery, perhaps then she could ask, she could inquire –

But then he disappeared, and she strived to enter the same mirror, flinching back as her maw struck solid glass.

Confusion and bewilderment ran rampant down her spine, and she tried again and again to release herself from the sprawl of uncertainty. Seized and possessed by the flurry of dread, agitation, and hysteria, the nymph thrust her frame towards the glass, rammed her shoulder into the corporeal force, and thrust her forelegs, her hooves, her strength into the void, shuddered when naught happened, when none of the walls came crashing down, when no one came and she was left with just mirrors, endless mirrors, shining their same, plain, brown vision (and to see her eyes, to see her features, were a cast, a silhouette, a portrait of utter terror – widened eyes, flared nostrils, no grin, no smile; only fear, only pandemonium). Why? Why can’t I go?

Had she erred somehow? Had she made another mistake? Was Roland safe? Panic crawled down her spine, harsh and vibrant, blistering and scorching, and she could feel her heart beat rapidly in her chest, scald her innards, barrel through her throat until all she wanted to do was let loose a rapid, dying scream – admitting she was scared, she was terrified, of being caught, of being trapped, of being left alone. She couldn’t hear anything, anyone, not the feline’s Cheshire paradoxes and tunes, not the stallion’s demands behind the crystal, not the promises left unsaid. But she wouldn’t call for Roland, uncertain of what happened to him beyond the reflective door (locked for her, another framework of uselessness, of worthlessness). Why couldn’t she do anything correctly? Why did she always fail to help? Why did all her assurances, her guidance, her creeds, always go awry?

Her thoughts flagged, images procured, anger rising, frustration brewing and brimming a cauldron of rancorous incantations. Canopies and leaves and trunks bruised by the pelting rain; a nest of shackles, a grove of chains - like she was back in the Falls, listless and drained, tied and tethered to imprisonment; and the Mender had no intention of letting that happen to her ever again. Alarm and anxiety gave way to absolute rage, burning and stoking the fibers of her being, lacing and lancing over the wayward cries of determination, forging and incensing until all of her essence, her entity, was a coiled spring of animosity, of wrath, of contempt, for the days, for the hours, for the minutes she’d wasted away in the ardent halls of consternation. A plaguing growl slipped past her lips, flared and unleashed, and she tried again to ram into the outer walls, battering her shoulder, twisting her body, desperate for annihilation, for deliverance, for freedom (what she’d always had until it was snatched, until it was stolen, and she wasn’t going to wait for it to swing around again for her; she’d clamber for it all on her own). When it still didn’t grant her entry, when it still didn’t give way, her face contorted and distorted away from any heavenly bounty, any virtuous depth.

Monstrous and savage, she stilled, a haunting, visual, vigilant piece of her past, a scarred spirit, building a mighty crescendo, a dangerous, agonizing soliloquy, harmonizing with brutal rhapsodies, with feverish, ferocious reveries, with paralyzing animosities, giving life to flame, giving life to infernos. The fairy, the fey, refusing to be the damsel in distress, opened her mouth to unleash vicious, vehement havoc, bearing embers and flames throughout the glass fortress, singing a song of wickedness, a song of desperation, a song of bedlam; threatening to burn down the entire abyss in one contemptuous shade if she wasn’t released from the hellbound kingdom.

She didn’t know how long she sang. She didn’t know how long the wrathful aria went on. Only when she finally crumbled to her knees, exhausted, enervated, drained, did the bestial march, did the flames, finally flicker and cease.