There is love in your body but you can't hold it in,
It pours from your eyes and spills from your skin,
Tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks,
And the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts

Lena bloomed in adversity. A flower of misfortune, a floret of calamity, desolate, alone, she’d sculpted resilience from fragments of her life, collected and weaved, laced, the calamities she’d seen into morality, into benevolence and hope, shorn the frayed ends until they too became dedicated taffeta of virtue. From these whimsical tides she embodied the grandeur, the radiance, the reverie, of considerate, tender, warm-hearted bliss, hope taut with arrows of deliverance. From the cold, chilling winds she captured the soothing rhapsody of might, from the glacial greetings of others she embraced daydreams, from the tremulous, turbulent wake of enemies she fastened perseverance to her helm and charged into frays of wickedness and malice, confirmed and conformed her dignity and honor to menacing damnation. She opened her petals to the wake of the world and allowed herself to be drowned in the weight of darkness, in the shades of evening nightmares and light of dawn’s enlightened cretins, soaked them in the looming presence of her magnificent ardor. She led herself to slaughter, to annihilation, and retained the wholesome fibers of her warmth and dedication, the elegancy of her finery, the ambitious aria. She waited and coasted on the waters of abhorrence and loathing, contempt and villainy, walked through fire to retrieve a wavering soul, protected and illuminated. Her power, her brawn, her distinction, came from the raw tides of insurrection, the binding, blinding effort to discard the trembling inadequacies of another time and place, to replace the dying, withering mantles of sorrow, of anarchy, with twisting, winsome desires and hallowed spirits. It was a barely noticeable prowess, sliding as an assuaging balm, the arch of a smile, the curve of a grin, forgotten in the trace of monstrous contortions, lost in the seditious claims of her brethren. A hum, a hymn, quiet and mellifluous, slinking into the wicked arches of shade and nocturne malice, tranquil and serene, tracing the ruminations of distorted souls, unraveling their infidel claims, the devil’s sketches, letting the wings of her chirps, her warbles, to soak into their entities. Is this where muse traces the hollows of the mind, in tumultuous dins and lawless outcries, inspiration and influence sparked by catastrophes?

She was not surprised when the stag concocted the same wires of so many others, pushing, slashing, her away, the snap of his voice, the treacherous slate of his temper, the inferno that laced the contours of his frame uttered the barb, the promise, of his sword, the weight of his menace. Yet, she remained, that unruffled augur in the eaves of formidable designs, tossed from heaven, allowed to join the webs of corruption, composed, regal, firm. The delicacies of her puissance echoed in the silent stretch of compassion, she watched as his body suffered, as his structure melted into the spring, entangled in the haunting onslaught of pain, of fever, of infection that stretched over the sulfur and bled into her eyes. The slyph ignored his words, unperturbed by their menace, a likely formation of agony and discomfort, and slid her body into the righteous clamor of might and petulance. Light, airy, soft, dignified and poised, her lissome limbs courted the bank, infused with the heat and warmth of the fount, dipping her hooves into its tender assurance. He ran his eyes over her, and she did the same to him, unabashed and undaunted, honeyed stare fixating on the portal of wounds wound around a muscled figure, a warrior in the mist, not broken, not burdened, but in a stitch of time that required recovery; her fellow companions had been the same after the invasion, somber and bleeding. His words cut across the air, but didn’t damage her heart or hinder her ambitions; they sliced nothingness, shifted naught. His sneer, his growl, his gruff complexity only further traced the traversing of her aspiration, heightening her enigmatic, intrepid, valiant prowess. Her grin never strayed, blossoming again, and the dulcet tide of her voice surfaced, glimmered from an amused mouth. “You don’t know what I can do.” She’d made Korra the savage play, she’d made Mauja the Frostheart smile, she’d pervaded the earth with the tones of her rhapsody, her consonance, her elegant ministrations, and she’d make this stallion whole.

Sunshine and roses, she plunged into the water, felt the warmth grace her hide, lift her spirit, shuffle her peaceful entity into endless exultation; it was no wonder he’d made his way into its depths, desperate to be consumed by something painless, something assuaging, something carefree. It was an overwhelming elation, whispering over her shoulders, crooning and murmuring sweet nothings in her ears, a ridiculous sense of enjoyment she couldn’t savor – there was someone suffering, and she was not so wicked, so vile, to wax poetical while another ached. She drew her frame close to his, heartbeat’s brushstroke away, stare fixating on the lacerations, not wincing, not shying, guiding a steady crescendo of airy, ethereal sentiments. Her lips conjured a query while attentions were demanded elsewhere, perusing the scope of his needs, how far she’d have to push her influence, her impulses, her catalyst. “What is your name?” Then, another melody pushed past her cordial mouth, muted harmony, faint, indistinct, an unwritten song waiting in the corridors. Her heart, a silken clamor, stirred the restless tidings, allowed the hum, the hymn, to disperse further, until she felt the pull of her power, rustling, fluttering, eager for the right words to flow across her mind, her soul, her tender nuances to embrace the whims and mercies, the violence and harshness of his essence. It floated, quivering wisps of air and vapor, across the spring’s haze, full of promises, full of hope, slinking over the enmity of his wounds, pausing, lingering, loitering, eager to mend and end suffering, until she’d conjured lyrics from the canvas of his influence. Just one more segment of information to summon the rhythm, the sonnet to grace the realm, and while the trill enchanted her throat, she postured another solemn inquisition. “How did you acquire these wounds?”