She speculated, listened, to the rhapsody and tribulations of Alysanne. The pestilence she’d encountered had seemingly conspired in its travels, immersed itself into nests of memories, decay, and withering reveries, until it was naught more than spinning webs of delusion and melancholy. The nymph instantly felt remorse drum within her barrel for her newfound friend, for the dame was undeserving of such bleeding laments poured against her heart, against her mind, framed like clockwork truths and bestial armaments. Lena hadn’t been courted into regrets, rancor, or bitter diatribes (only the slashing fangs of Kahlua, the pressing agony and distress of Psyche, the whistling, whispering tides of claws rasping down columns and throats; destroyed by song, by laurels, by rose snippets and symphonies), but, she didn’t want to leave Alysanne to the depths of mockery either. She drew her lips together in a thin line, stared into the remnants of glowing pools and lustrous leaves, and spoke through the mass of pondering ideals, convictions, maladies and understandings; musing on the layers and lacquer of the world she’d traversed. “In my experiences, they were shells of themselves.” Monsters, ravaging and pillaging – but underneath the ramparts, the munitions, the heavy, heady, overwhelming, sinister displays, the friends I once knew and cherished. She measured the length of her song into melodious overtures, gestured her warm, tender stare back upon the painted figure, glossed over the particles of sage essences. “They only knew how to attack, how to maul, how to devastate.” The mender tilted her head for a moment, but pried no further in the ample curiosity (the other had been wounded somehow, and she dared not reopen bruised lesions or old scars neatly closed over by a smile, a twinkle), grasping at what could have been, what might be. “Perhaps they found a way to pierce you.” Had anyone else been punctured in such a way, not by bites, not by ivories, but the juncture of images, of precious, gilded memories formatted into barbaric pictures, mounted and set into villainy and cloaked into deceit? And if so, how did they combat it? How did they forgo and forget? Was Alysanne forgiving, merciful, lenient, or too haunted by the stature of the affair? If Lena could lend her strength, she divided and quartered it through song, drumming another elegant beat, another proud rhapsody, clamoring for valor and honor through the heartache of bewitched fiends and diseased foes. “Don’t take it to heart. If you allow it, then they’ve succeeded.” If they were driven into the trenches by every weighted word, every singular possession of their soul, mauled, mottled and ruined, then no one would be able to rise from their furrows.

[Sorry this took so long! D:]
@[Alysanne]