A chill rankled and riddled over the top of her spine and settled deep into her bones, cutting and chiseling, aching and gnawing; his first words slashed harsher than she’d realized, stinging at the luminescent glow until it all faded away, gone into sands and sun. The fairy almost immediately regretted asking them, but the layered ambience, the cool ambrosia, of ignorance and remaining unaware would have been a cavernous wound, clawing her out from the insides, drawing poison into her veins. A muffled sliver slipped from her mouth, a wisp, a cloud, a dulcet, silvern, wavering chord followed her stare, sinking into the ground, mauling the weeds and reeds with its resonant restrain. “Oh.” They were startlingly different in their approaches to life: she, who’d been isolated, desolate, secluded and cloistered before the reaches of Helovia, who reached and grasped and held her brethren tight, cherished their presence, their existences in her life, and he, who despite all of his seasons within the Basin, still drifted towards the shadows, cut off from the sanguine charades and the precious amities. And because he didn’t know which he preferred, to amble into veils and chicanery, or to wander into the midst of their dreamlike spirals, she realized just how easily she could lose him. Like so many others before him, he could vanish into the Stygian silence, ruffling no more than a few fronds and boughs, chasing after another scorching blade or one more spun secret, only to be swallowed and consumed by the unknown. The realm would never know he was gone until seasons later, when meetings collided or divided, when faces turned and showed, and there was no handsome, gilded Thief looming in their presence; a Cheshire absence, a Machiavellian abyss, a tiny hole in her heart widened and gaping. The notion turned to bile in her throat, corroded and arched, demanded and tarnished, marched into demonic treads and dejected whims. Was she powerless then, as she’d been for all the others, incapable of keeping him amongst their world, content in their kingdom? Was she ineffective and useless, an impuissant radiance only serving to glow, to smile, to charm and delight, but not when it truly mattered? Perhaps she’d been this way all along, and she’d somehow convinced herself each of her steps, each of her smiles, each of her lofting grins were worth something: a wonderful touch of the soul, a healing endeavor soaked and laced in admiration and aspirations, woven in the strong fibers of hope. Maybe she’d been as inadequate as the day she’d been born, left in fields of lavender and clover for crows. What had she been doing with her time, whittling repose and sculpting reveries, chiming and echoing for raptures and reverence, keening lithe invocations and pixie spells?

The silence stretched and her heart became a chaotic frenzy, stirred and animated into strident, rasping, begging alms, tangled and deluded with all of her disdainful ruminations. Even Imogen failed to utter anything but a single hum, letting it fall flat when naught responded. Eternally ardent, everlastingly brave, the sylph suddenly didn’t know what to do, lost and withered all over again, and it tore her apart to be entrenched in the folds of weakness, of the unknown, of blinded, idiotic idiocy. Her eyes were kept upon the ground, too scared, too humiliated, to see where his stare fixated and resonated, too irked at herself and the discordant echo of humiliation and shame, that when his following statement flickered over the charred void, her regal, downcast head rose sharply, swiftly, quickly. Her gaze fixated on his soft smile, on the gentle, subdued features of warmth, as if his world were not built upon sequestering and unveiling, as if his tongue never uttered a single lie, as if she mattered in the space and scope, the stars and constellations. The tender pieces, the honeyed warmth, of her stare widened into rounded spheres, clinging to something lurking in the mist and labyrinths, holding out for benevolent resolution. The sylph searched for answers without prodding, without poking, but a hallowed contortion pierced at her, and she drove courage through her lungs, through her song, through her ditty, and muffled a somber, hushed query. “Why?” Wasn’t she meaningless, superfluous, another swirl of the wind, another twirl of the air? If she couldn’t do anything, if she couldn’t even maintain a reason for anyone to stay in their haven, in their home, drive them away from the cold lacquer of solitude – why would he want her to remain?

[Huzzah! You get Lena's 300th! ;D @[Roland] ]