The child before them, for now another joined their ranks (perhaps a descended angel – ivory and taffeta, winged and opulent), became a canvas of sorrow, and the sylph felt her heart tear away at the seams for the tiny youth’s life etched, scorned, burnt and scarred. No creature deserved the decadence, the ruin, the abomination of despondency, misery sketched into their skin like a tapestry of webbed, mottled livelihoods, scars littering where their lives could have waltzed, primrose paths sticking their nettles and thorns along the ghosts and specters of possibilities. Without the reach of her companions, these lively, loving animals, there were only segmented dreams and severed wishes – too many demons left in the brim, in the foam, in the mouths of hollowed sectors. She gazed deep into the eyes of the bird – and couldn’t read its calculations, couldn’t perceive its notions, its ancient, archaic language she was far too ignorant to understand. Imogen, bright and brilliant, stirred the passing words, the blinding phrases, the bleeding bulrushes of a life sanctioned, saved, by earnest valor. We must help; an idea duly noted and conspired with, and the nymph grew closer, advanced within inches of bloodied knees and turbulent sobs, dipped her head into the swindled sun and the daunting morning, the aching afternoon and indulgent evening, pressed into the effervescence of a swindled cherub and all that she’d lost. While she pondered, wondered, speculated and examined the reasons beyond a girl’s sobs, a babe’s wails, she asked not a single query over their circumstances, lightly ruminating, humming, crooning the soft, dulcet strings of a lullaby. Songs of the valley, songs of the hills, songs of the mountains, songs of the ice, songs of oracles after they’d danced with poppy seeds and laurels, songs of rhythm and rime, sculpted and molded, laced and plaited. Lilting, arching, scaling walls and hallowed voids, a timeless piece she’d captured long ago from a nurturing world beyond their hold, boughs nestling tiny snippets of life beneath their airy, earthen christening. She blessed and murmured, anointed and crowned, sang into the furthest reaches of her divinity, of her virtue, of her morality until they sprung with heavenly glows and ethereal grandeur, an aria blooming and blossoming from her exposed heart. “I’m Lena, and this is Imogen.”

She shifted, lightly, delicately, like a small, minute disturbance of the wind, like a twisting plumage of a feather, molten refinery as she stared upon the pale Pegasus, another beacon, another fortitude destined for guidance and support. Quick and swift, honeyed eyes marbled into ambrosia, tenderness, compassion and some burning creed of defiance (for the sickening plunge of a youth nearly spent and wasted, stumbled, faltered, decayed and left forsaken), a smooth voice resounding towards the femme. “Shall we lift her?” Would she mind being carried into further darkness, where sanctuary and havens loomed, instead of a swindling nightmare, a catastrophic den of demons and fiends lurked beyond their cool fixtures? And would this makeshift saint offer her hand as well, guide the waif with a sturdy, soft wing, friendly and cajoling, sympathetic and willing?