CIRCUTA

on we march
with a midnight song,
until we meet the dawn
with our lanterns on

Fatigued, enervated, drained— worn to the marrow and afflicted with worrisome thoughts, ideals, troublesome meanderings and querisome lyrics for she alone to hold and gain knowledge of. She is but a wayward, fretful child, upon the far reaching brine, both existing and not existing, born from trepidation and anarchy, a rose draped in prickling thorns and cast into the abyss— indeed, as all children who have strayed from the comforting wing of their sire and dam's embrace, she too, returns to their warmth, promises of sanctuary and healing, of adoration and longing to be sheltered as the mind of a young childe is, away from the harsh cruelties and benign lies of the realm to which they are borne. The woman had forgotten the intriguing and (most peculiar) embarkment given to her by the Lord of the Sun, his brilliance as sharp as his double-edged tongue, and in the midst of quarreling kin and the all seeing eyes of stygian umber, of the dead walking and the living succumbing into rotten flesh and canine headed beasts, it had slipped from her mind as fish in a stream (the rosy scar that scales down her starboard side is a nightmarish remembrance of a frost hearted King and a wolf faced monster that had chased them, slavering maw and glinting fangs into the salvation below).

It had only occurred to the Nightingale to seek the righteous and fiery Lord once more when she had found a gleaming fawn and flame kissed amulet resting upon the dilapidated corpse of a childe in the Labyrinth below what seemed to be sturdy earth and gently taken it from around its foul smelling neck, only when she had buried what remained of its malnourished frame (the stench remains in her minds eye, sickeningly sweet and bitter, pungent to the tongue, enough to cause her to want to vomit what little she had found to eat upon the mossy ground) that she may have found the very item most essential to her, the item the aureate God had demanded she find— but it had only been after salvation had drenched the gloom from the above world and the cerulean of the Veins had appeared once more to her, only after her people were lead to a new eden she had left their side to find the shrine of He whom had instructed her to only speak in his presence when a adornment of his make and kind hung (metaphorically) around her neck.
The Nightingale may have been mad and deranged, indeed, but she was no fool, and she was no disloyal swine to rot upon the earth's crust.

This is where she is found, then, delicate pillars traversing unto a ledge overlooking sapphire capillaries of Loorien itself, a melancholy sense of forlorn draping her as a cloud to hang above her gently swaying frame, the softest of coughs as she clears her throat— and then a pleasant, soothing song to rise as smoke into the early morn air, hushed, as she searches for the shrine in which she must partake prayer with. Silvery as the stars and lathered with honey, mimicry of birdsong, a poem in which she has drawn forth from her memory, a poem in which her mother had once sang.
"Great sire of life, and source of light, thou hast o'er all control; dispeller of the mystic night, of worlds the central soul.." The second shrine in which she finds is obsidian— ash and soot, embers of perhaps a flame, and she swallows down a trembling finger of fear (what if he does not accept her offering? what if he does not come?), but she does not cease in her song as she dances forth, harks raised and twitching to catch the most minuscule of noises.
"The sinless stars, so bright and fair, are offspring born of thee; daughters of heaven, with golden hair, that smile o'er land and sea. A life that never dies— a life that sleeps but to awake in life beyond the skies. And they who worship in thy name, and share thy gifts of fire, still in thy smiling face of flame behold creation's Sire—" as the Nightingale arrives at the stone, pausing before it, she carefully lowers her dome and allows the aureate amulet to slip from her slender neck, to rest in its front, a offering, a gift, if he shall accept a end to her endeavors. "The lofty One, whose outline dim pervades, unseen, the vast; the realm that's sanctified by Him, the mighty First and Last. The pinnacles that gleam on high in that unchanging clime where ne'er is heard an earthly sigh, nor lisp that breathes of time."

Please hear me, my Lord, for I have done what you have asked of me.
A hush settles upon the ledge, the heavy fragrance of morning and smoke entering her lungs and settling as led, a quavering breath released upon the silent hills. She bows her dome—
and she waits.