The faintest blush, the ghostly entanglements of morning’s first lush light powdered and patterned the flickering horizon, awakening the belles, the charms, the carillons, the virtuous benedictions of the nymph’s beatific flight – Daphne with her laurel crown, liberation and release, fleeting, whimsical caresses and ensorcell croons. Thatched fields, candied violets and sanguine thistles, widened perceptions and ambits, flowering vines sprouting on labyrinthine compasses, pockets of warbling tunes, pure and clear, reigned against the valley’s skyline. Rich with life, affixed with rose armor and lavender shields, she christened and anointed, embarked on the bright candor, the resolute vows, the tender armaments, the harkening symphony of deliverance, whimsical shades, hues, and honeyed tones, through the mystical bounty of her blooming haste. Lion hearted and affixed amongst the streamlines of determination, she intertwined her radiance with the calamity of desolation, marauded the surface of its abhorrent incantations, melted it into singsong chords and mellifluous cadence, lavished and sweet, dulcet and clinging, stringing it along the rebellious reveries and silken, wraith murmurs. She couldn’t shake away the knots of stark, dismal requiems and platitudes corroding the tenor of a lonely Thief, and though perhaps a vile, unwanted imposition, she grasped hold of her opus strokes and sketched a pliant, malleable cajoling of glee, of merriment, of joviality for the swindler. The maiden imagined slinking boughs and furtive measures, harsh, callous calculations, evenings lost in a solo bolero, yearnings swept away by the rash, unforgiving nature of his quests, the calamitous poignancy of each momentous escapade and escape – and remembered the grinding, fractious follies of her own youth, spend amongst the veils and shrouds, clawing, rasping, grasping for anyone and everything. The strange, foreign feeling of loathing crept into her throat and up her spine, and the distant immoralities bubbled and brewed beneath the surface; she’d hated to be alone, discarded, abandoned – left to sanction livelihood from nothingness – and each rancorous snippet caused her to curl back into the leaves and gain another segment of strength and prowess. She’d filled her world with song instead of emptiness, golden voices and rapturous plumes - but what of Roland? Did he deign to falter and frolic in the tenebrous oils for eternity, held by naught, bound by naught, mustered and coiled in villainous distortions, brooding in the unearthly quiet?

Would he balk at her wishes? Would he pause at her minuet? Would he sway away from the fanciful efforts, from the serenading interludes, from the hallowed entanglement of her silly, untamed aspirations? Maybe she dared, pressed, ventured, challenged, and defied too much; he may have cherished the moments alone, cloistered and locked away, driven into the glimpsing, unwinding shadows and the unrelenting storms of bedlamic circumstance, forked tongues and effortless silence, lingering in the void to extinguish pieces of himself. Was he a creature who wanted mere trifles and tokens, who placed the world upon his shoulders and never looked back from those idle, restless canopies? And if so – should she let him?

The fey, the fairy, the sprite, the nightingale, the enchantress, whistled along the grass with a torrent of honeysuckle spun in her gallant heart, and it fluttered, it beat, with an impressive, wanton edge to soothe, to assuage, the vile unknown. She whispered sweet tidings as she swept across the meadows, pursued molten palisades and glistening, plaited clover, resilient and proud, regal and elegant, ethereal in all of her endeavors and diversions. Imogen joined her in zealous, fervent bounty, calling for the gilded stag behind them, with no hint of her maiden’s dreams, intentions and objectives, tucked them into her foxy grins and waving tails. With swan affluence and aria strains, Lena bid the Thief a constant barrage of coiled calls and trumpets, breathless felicity, inviting him along the satin lea, euphoria mingling in the light, graceful air, vivacity and trebles of whimsy, the shifting kisses of ardent, feverish fervor, emblazoned and blessed with her eternal grandeur. Set to the fires of vigor and liberation, the lithe, resplendent heart chased after sonnets and revelry, envisioned a world without the dissolution of loneliness and all of its withering, listless edges.

@[Roland]