Honey and ambrosia didn’t hasten bright sentiments. A twist settled over the layers and lacquer, rancorous and bitter, biting, scathing, and the sylph recognized the touch, the taste, of sharp petulance. It sank against her coat in conspiring, acidic traces, outlined by the nettled burrows and chains sketched along her frame, in the gentle lull exposed and flayed. If any portion of the old Psyche still remained, once proud, once mighty, once haughty, it was this chilling shard, a morose fragment, prickly, unsatisfied, and domineering. The supremacy of her queries, the imperial shield she carried, would have melted a younger nymph, unguarded and left to wither in the woods. Instead, Lena’s smile died away, replaced by a calm, composed being, exuding warmth, but not the bright, cheery effervescence once portrayed – the Empress shied away from its light, and so the sylph dimmed its reach. In the hollows, Lena stared at the torn banner, the frayed pennant, christened by heavy sighs and dissatisfaction, taken into portals and whims of ineptitude and ineffectiveness, a tossed rapier left to rust in the rain. Embers thrown, cinders ignited, the brilliance of her stare fixated upon the bile and wry, sardonic grin, ablaze and courted into the lithe rhapsodies of the tenacious. Her own frustrations seemed to rise with the monsters’ irritation, and undaunted, relentless, persevering, crooning no sympathy for the devil, her voice, audacious, brave, and emboldened, erupted over the cavernous swell, lacerating in its rose convictions. “You let others’ thoughts define you?” Was all her passion, all her glory, a fortuitous collapse, an augured hindrance? If she’d been so shambled, so distorted, so woven by the notions of another, how had she survived? How had she made her way into hierarchy, ruling and commanding, sending troops into battle? If she’d been so weary, so mordant, so trenchant and defeated, how had she managed to rise from any ashes? Was one blow enough to fell a viper? Was one burning tongue enough to strike a cobra? Was one battle enough to wither and whittle away an asp? How far had her promises been? How far had she flung her heart? How many pieces had yet to be picked up and stitched into her wilted seams? Who was the beast before her now, once demon, once beacon, once slithering fortitude and slinking power? Was she caught in her own vices, in her own weaknesses, drowning and floundering? Or was she merely ungrateful, aching for sympathy, for empathy, that even Lena, who had struggled and tore against her childhood, her memories, her past, and armies for her purposes, her pursuits, refused to give or grant. The crisp elegance of her words flowed again, not dipped or entrenched in the same toxin as Psyche’s venom, raking over the coals of veracity and candor. “I thought you were stronger than that.”

Lena healed, mended, and assuaged, but not when the recipient spurned, rebuffed, and dismissed her gift – became scalded and anointed only with the slaughter, the condemnation, of wounds that were not hers to take. She rejected the drowning words or concrete ball wrapping its shroud around her neck, the heavy garrote threatening to choke, annihilate, and persecute, she would sink no further into the creeping haze or nefarious shadows. Instead, she smoothly anointed the regal, noble composure of a nymph drawn to the eaves of the valorous, gazing at her prior leader without the gestures of a sanguine sylph. Altered into satin nerve, courage, daring, and stalwart graces, she refused to carry the Lady’s cumbersome weight, and forced her to pick up the slivers she’d broken in the first place. Compassion and beneficence stirred her into another means of granting the charity of her rectitude. “We’ve all faltered, but you don’t see us fading into the dust.” She tilted her head, an elegant power of quiet, hushed dominion, underestimated and forgotten time and time again, delivering finality to a poisoned vector. “Wallowing in self-pity only feeds weakness.” She paused, whispered across the terrain, across the gallows, across the air of vanquished souls. “Is that how you wish to remain?”