The world was cruel, waiting for the strong to trip before they were pushed headlong into the dirt and sand, waiting for the weak to notice so that they may chisel the fallens’ bones into the grime. Lofty weights ground above the viper’s sullen crown, a heady, cumbersome shift of knotted vines and gnarled roots, pine boughs and crimson pebbles, slipping, tumbling, and Lena wondered what else she held so tightly wound over her skull, needling and nettled, poised and precarious. Seemingly gone were the days of the asp curves and cobra helixes, where her haughty smirk balanced along a Siberian throne, where they bowed and stared, where they adhered and danced to the demands of her hisses and croons. The nymph hadn’t known either creature, this poor, suffering one bent to the swinging pendulum, or the high queen resting along icy summits and peaks; shirked and fled when serpent eyes meandered to her corner, tended to consul duties and watched them fester away into nothingness. She’d avoided the serpentine tongue and the sibilated vows, the den of snakes and ophidians, smiled, grinned, fed flowers their basking glow, ruminated and reflected on her cretin exploits and how she continued to tumble further into the iniquitous plain. She’d waltzed beneath Psyche’s banner, flag and ensign, flocked and shepherded newcomers from the grove gates, sheltered and proffered nuances of generosity, gathered and listened to them fall by the wayside. She’d cringed and felt fear trickle up her spine at the inclination of war, at the twisted phrases and serpentine syllables, witnessed as her world spiraled deeper into anarchy, tyranny, and violence – and none of these things were placed upon the Medusa. Lena had ventured forth, loyal to the stars, the sun, the earth, the sky, light and candid mercy, tripped, stumbled and faltered along the way to renewal and reverie. Perhaps she’d been worthless in the Empress’ eyes, another ghost lost in the battle hymns, another frame, another body added to the abacus, but Psyche had represented something in the slyph’s stare, and the fairy found it so odd, so heartbreaking, to fixate upon a winter monarch begging for a home. Roles reversed, ranks shed and outfitted, simpering and destitution knocking along a cavern door, wasted away to bits of naught. The healer nearly asked her to awaken, to breathe in the icy air and remember who she was, what she’d become, what she reigned over (hadn’t they been supreme, mighty, stalwart and staunch in the chilling winds, in the vibrant tenors of glory?), but the words were lost in the jackal’s repose.

The ambrosia gaze fixed back along the intertwining lengths of healed frame, not wholly repaired, fully mended, past the broken, crumbling fixtures of a proud woman. A sad, somber sigh drifted past her nares, unwinding in brief puffs of warm air before they’re sullied by the nefarious cold, stretching the lengths of fortitude and valor into deep-rooted silence. Does it protect everyone? A heartbreaking juncture split across the seams, and the nymph realized Psyche had prepared herself a tombstone, marked, etched and scored the words across its tablet, and merely waited for the act to fall. Like a piercing, puncturing blade, scabbard and sheath vanished, shield distorted and discarded in the dust, forsaken, abandoned, renounced. Lena’s stare hardened for slender, lacerating moments, imagined the desolation, the despair, hovering in scarred plumes, harbored and harpooned in callous copses over the other mare’s chaotic figure (would someone truly dig her grave, with her form like this, scraping and toiling and rasping) – then her halo glided forth, and the warmth pulsed back into its outset. Melodies, rhapsodies, harmonies invoked, for a simple gesture, for an outpouring of faith she wished Psyche could cling to again. “Yes.” Then, the curl of a smile, an indentation of her lips, handed to the morose, the melancholy, the despondent.