The sylph had enough sense and composure to avoid flinching at the harsh tones, the rough decibels, the levels of rancor and bitterness flowing through the air – she just didn’t quite understand them. They seemed segmented, harpooned, lanced amidst frustration, ruin, and devastation, and it’d been so long since she’d seen Ki’irha, that she’d failed to note, failed to comprehend, the meanings and gestures behind the acerbic lacquer. Her smile faded, for a small moment, dashed away by the snaps and upheaval, drawn into a neutral line, ignoring Imogen’s confused, honest, forthright head tilt (Why…, she asked, and Lena had no answer), and she stared out into the crimson beyond, where the floating waves of red blended into sedition. The Mender didn’t ask why she’d been handed harsh, abrasive commentary, what she’d done to deserve the remarks, but she presumed the frustrations borne by Ki’irha had been many, had been the reason why she leaned over a bloodied precipice, had been the reason she appeared hollow, brittle, and vacant, a forlorn beast waiting for the tide to come take her away. The slight bounced off and away, ricocheting from ethereal armor and a forgiving heart. Lena swallowed something down, a nuance, a sentiment, a way to make things resolved or better, but the unknown was too broad, too uncertain, and the ground too perilous. The once General even claimed to not know her any more, to apologize and muffle, about young Erebos, about the celestial Mesec, her children…and how everything seemed to be gone, forsaken, snatched away. She took a deep breath, pondered over the ways of the earth, the types of perseverance and defiance it took to merely survive on these plains – what she would’ve done, how she would’ve acted, if everything she’d ever known was suddenly vacant, fruitless, deserted, inscrutable, intangible, little pieces of nothing stuck together in a foreign, jumbled mess.
 
So the Songbird gave only kindness, only compassion, only the deepest fathoms of her beneficence, embraced tenderness even when it hadn’t been given to her – because she could be the sun and the stars, the heavens and the earth, the spirit of sanctuary when others only frowned, sneered, or turned away. Her blessings yearned to croon from her throat, from her lungs, from her soul, but she waited, turned and shifted so her stare reflected back upon one of the lost – praying she would be found again. “I’m Lena, a Time Mender from the Basin.” It seemed simple, as if she were just another little speck roaming through the snow and ice, glancing off the mountainside, imploring the chilling wind to stir once more – but she was more than that, and she’d show her, she’d try to mend what’d been broken. “Perhaps I can help you with that.” Her grin enveloped over the length of her calm features, sculpted it into finery, into warmth, into delight, and thereafter she was aglow, varnished in song, parting her mouth so the enchantments wove their way into the air. They were fine, light, gilded things, soft, dulcet croons, symphonies and orchestras cast into the shadows, into the halls, into the vermillion tides, combating the forces plaguing Ki’irha’s cranium. Warbles lapsed into the span of time – a God’s gift – brushing in airy, perfected strokes across the lines of the star maiden’s surface, glossing over constellations, pulsing, pervading, until the atmosphere was alight with sound, with wonder, with bells, with benedictions, fervent, wild, and incandescent. She wasn’t sure it’d be enough, but it was more than doing nothing, than standing by and allowing the world to take one more bright, illustrious soul and snuff their flames.