Aching hearts and winter isolation: children of the stone and rubble, like martyred pebbles and laureled monuments, cordial monoliths and befuddled muses, continued to fray amongst the hollow corridors, the sanctified columns of earth and enigmas. Entombed, moving gravestones beneath the surface, shrouded and beguiled into the denizens of Tartarus, Hades’ hands aloft for a divine outreach, Persephones’ brooding hums extending relief and sanctuary in her lovers’ land. Lena bounded from marble to menhir, ebullience in the gloom, luminescent strands in the nocturnal eaves, spreading the vivid trail of beneficence, resisting the layers and lacquer of stained quandaries. Swift and furtive, a flutter of ethereal intrigues and effervescent refinement, extinguishing blight and pestilence through determination, perseverance and sacrifice, reaching deep in the columns of her lungs and exposing strains for the masses. Bestowing her boundaries for absolution, and finding naught but the glossy filaments of twisted chords, distorted, contorted, worn and unraveled, and chasing dreams through the cobwebs and borders of the forsaken, renouncing specious malice for resolute renewal – grinning at ghosts and smiling at specters. Upon withered wraiths she chimed the echoing bells of carillons and minarets, upon malevolent maelstroms she spun the clambering sonnets of her lyrical prestige, and upon vehement villainy she clothed a innocent guise, exchanged anger for repose. Shifting oasis, perfumed and laced with ambrosia, imperfect and flawed, but a paragon for pieces of shards and second chances, drinking the essence of foibles and replacing them with the restless beat of iambic stanzas and honeyed lyrics, satin and taffeta, silk and satin. Light, airy, lithe and limber, willowy conjectures through the spread of confusion and poison, devouring toxins and garnishing them with the gentle fabric of tenderness, refusing the pervasion of shadow and darkness, delivering divinity with the garden, the blossoms, the petals of her dulcet ditties. If she were as forlorn as the rest of the earth, she gave no hint of her ire, of her frustration, of her vexation; innocence lost in the shambles, ruins, and desolation of gods and monsters.

Life imitated art; brushstrokes firm and elegant, motions enhanced by the stream of vibrant action, hymns christened from the rhapsody, the reverie, of her hope-spun glory. Gaze dappled and flew over the reaches of light, through the pinnacles of cave mouths and crypt opulence, placed back in poetry, swindled and swerving through intertwined fingers and gnarled claws of gloaming fortitude. Songbird and beast, fairy and fox, only became more propelled, ignited, incensed and aflame, by the increasing decibels leaping from the hardened walls, tremulous, wanton concern floating through the barbaric requiems. Are you well? and the banter, echoing in unsung travesty, in desperate murmurs she is weak, like a newborn, the capturing and enticement, the allure and drowning lengths of guidance that pounded against the nymph’s cranium. Was there another broken being, lying in the dust and decay of their foreign confinement? Was there another monster foaming in the dusk, smirking and snickering, stretching daggers for the next individual to fall apart at their gleaming, fiend hands? Stalwart indignation led her further, following, attending, the pitfall whispers and sympathetic calls, until the honeyed set of her eyes trapped segments of bodies amidst the strangled sun – one fallen form, like glass, like porcelain, hard and delicate all at once, and two other beacons, all unfamiliar, all foreign. In another life, the situation may have forced the sylph to flee, to hide, to shirk and quiver in the shade of unknown labyrinths and rose hips, be secure in the boughs and arms of glades, but the world beyond them, the hardened Basin, the frozen kingdom, had taught her many things, sculpted her lionheart. With an emboldened smile, with a kind, charitable glow, grace and nobility, she announced her presence, a soft lilt of an aria, beginning to take hold of each breath. “I’m sorry to have overheard, but it seems you are in need of a mender?” Imogen and Lena followed suit with the strokes of formality, a touch of her chin to her chest, a chirp from a five-tailed vixen, before proceeding with regal melodies, rhapsody at the touch, at the command, of their etched concern, stare poised to the doves and ravens nestled in twilight and apprehension. “I’m Lena, a healer from the Aurora Basin. Would you mind if I tended to your companion?”

[Posting at Abba's request. <3]