They hastened over spring air and songbird delight, trying to become something they no longer felt. The pair roamed as wayfaring fractures of a greater good, desperate for virtue, for solace, for sanctuary against the rippling hands of fate and ill fortune, wondering when it was that the latter always favored the bold. The sienna maiden, with her honeysuckle dreams and her daffodil heart, bordered the trenches of melted ice and chiseled rocks, rummaging past folded lines of old and new soil, digging for another passage to promised land, to blessed bits of flora and fauna. When she found some pieces of wealth, she shuffled and roamed closer to the healers’ cave, placing them in the back to dry, collecting nuggets of sagacity and tenacity, things she always wanted, always craved, but ultimately couldn’t grasp – before venturing back out into the open again, just as same as before, diversion after diversion, motion after motion.

On the third interval, they traversed along another route, bordering past lakes and springs, watching the gentle rise and fall of steam and delusion, rekindling the ways of hope and the armor of yielding. They breathed as one, fox and Songbird, kindling and incensing the runes of the past and the follies of the future, shaking their head from time to time or matching bird tunes; casting one aria after another until they all became requiems or summer sonnets. Eventually, the sun faded away into bursts of clouds and spring promises of showers, grows convictions from blossoms and blooms, but neither turned away. The femme, the nymph, the fairy, in fact, lifted her crown to the sky and tasted the first speckle of drops upon her mouth, laughing at how the earth changed so rapidly, and how she’d never be able to keep up with its constant shifts and turns. Her head reclined, shook, the droplets cascading down her face, and the singsong trills and twirls emerged from her mouth again, if only to distract her from the harsh conjectures of life.

Then, she saw her, ivory and gray on a backdrop of dull blue. Imogen chirped to the fae on the intricacies of familiarity, but Lena stared, noticing, pondering, studying as they drew closer and closer, inclining towards the embankment, the sand, the shoal, the ripples of the lake and its chosen inhabitant. She knew Tangere well – they were fellow healers, called and crafted and sculpted for the same vocation of saving lives and mending broken bones (incapable of assuaging their own, of course, as if it were a given that they too would be as fractured and splintered). They’d assisted each other time and time before, either through gathering herbs or scraping up the framework for the incoming greenhouse, support through endless struggles.

But she’d never glimpsed upon her like this – beaten, soaked, scarred, bludgeoned by fire and brimstone. The sylph didn’t ask, didn’t inquire, as to how she’d received the shocking wounds – she rarely did to anyone or anything, because there was no sense in reliving horrors, terrors, and treachery. Instead, she merely stood before her, a smile, a grin, on the wilds of the unknown. “Goodness. Let's see what we can do for you.” she proffered, shaking her cranium again at the ridiculousness of the matter, and then closing her eyes, entangling the heart of her invocations.

They rushed, sublime and gilded and perfect all at once – intertwining and audacious, splendid and effervescent. They coiled and rippled over the layers of depraved skin and rattled scars, stitching together barbaric seams and open, bleeding, maimed lacerations, treating each with radiant, coaxing enticements, searing flesh and bone back together, marrow and sinew over sinuous designs. She sang again too, as if the mellifluous tunes were needed for something to hold onto, a tether, a line, so neither sank into hysteria or haunting, devilish poignancy. Her ditties and strains were beautiful and melodious, blending into the misty, foggy air like they belonged to the finer droplets and gentle symphonies, composing an orchestra for only Tangere and her white raven. When it was all over, magic gleaming and flowing back into its hours, its minutes, its seconds and snippets of carefully mastered time, the fairy’s eyes reopened, the tender grin there again. “Do you feel better?”