The fluttering sparrow, the fervent nightingale, the ardent dove gave no hint of listless, languid contortions; moving with the rock and rubble, combining with the ruins and distorting their silent, melancholy crescendos with the passionate flourish of her own melody. Rhapsody taken from the swell of her lungs and the heat of her vibrant resolution, steadfast determination, swindling and burning with the motion of her dedicated pace, free and swift, quick and unafraid. Enticed and cajoled from the innards and bowels of the unsung caverns, with their molten fortitudes and jungle warrens, their hidden fronds and wayward, tome tombs, pausing to catch a stolen breath, an intake of fine, subtle air, before executing unearthly motions, following the pathways of demands and commands. Dedication, her might, her sword, her commitment, balanced as her sole rapier, gallant and valorous, unwavering and devoted, reveries and raptures grasping for the divine rite of her laced ruminations, tracing and outlining the fortifications of their cause. Thorned and righteous, fairy and nymph, stolen from the sketched fixtures of darkness, journeyed into the bellicose veins to return the soulless, the heartless, the transformed and morphed back into their original figures; became witness to unholy strife and weighted malevolence, threw it across her shoulders and pressed harder into the earth. If they crawled, slithered and chased down the roots of their world, if they bent sinuously in the rampant, predacious slurs, she dreamt of wonder, spun sonnets that conquered demonic, mercurial murmurs. But was it enough? Had she strived to meet the bounty of the evil lurking in the midst and mist, striking into the abyss with mere fingertips spread beneath its dominant heresy? Could she do more, find other faults and weaknesses to chisel away at spells and invocations, to wipe away the rotting fixtures of her companions, her friends, her allies, her brethren, and even strangers, wiped clean of their former natures? Were there other methods to the pestilent madness? Were there other restoratives (like the Earth God’s gift, bubbling in mirth and requiem in the shade of glowing ambiguity)? Had there been other ailments slinking in the distance, claiming lives, heretics, infidels and the virtuous, robbed from their beds?

Her queries remained unanswered as she strove to meet the insistent call, wrapping her strides in rapid, abrupt strides, Imogen close behind, hastened and brisk, until they arrived amongst the gathered and fixated, for one moment, on the vaguely familiar cerulean mare – strong, dominating, and brazen. Given up? - the notion had never struck the courageous femme, and for an instant, she wondered if she had along the way, somehow forgotten a rhyme, a sonnet, an invocation to deliver light upon evil, to shirk away the frame of sinister, nefarious arms – but she was left muddled and rattled by the remnant. A distraction clamored immediately thereafter, a shock of further befuddlement and confusion ran rampantly down her spine and throughout her cranium, for there, muttering, was Mauja. A new spark of inquiries flashed across her crown, and she couldn’t voice a single one (where have you been? are you well? why do you keep leaving? Have we erred somehow? Do we disappoint you?), couldn’t invoke a warm gesture, a fleeting grin for an old friend, abandoned in the dust and dusk. Unsure of how to react, unsure of the meeting itself, of the large gathering of forces she suddenly belonged to, she stoked into barren silence, and searched for what she wished to convey. The barest hint of a smile curved across her lips, and her honeyed gaze settled back upon the fiery Pegasus, unraveling her knowledge, her muse, of her trials and tribulations. “They can be healed.” Kahlua, in a monstrous haze, baring down with savage intent. She paused, caught her breath in the midst of the throng, applied fortitude and spirit beneath the glistening glare of the winged femme. “I’ve done so using my magic, and have witnessed the Earth God give mending powers to a spring.” Then she hushed, Imogen scampering amongst her sienna forelegs, finished with christening the din with her wisdom. Hopefully, she’d be able to gather more as they poured from the reaches of individuals and travels.