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

A wondrous heart was perhaps the only gift her parents had ever given her. Like blinding opposition, glowing resistance, Lena had formulated the tender embrace of repose and radiance, instead of the chaotic, fraying, unraveling chords of violence and rancor. She immersed herself into doldrums of relaxing dedication, allowing the glimpse of her power of alluring, bewitching, beguiling cordiality to ring aloft when necessary, and otherwise, drifted on the open sea of compassion and generosity. Even now, when the din of resentment and animosity flickered against her composed beneficence, she scarcely swung from her goals, from her aspirations, from her dreams. She discarded and ignored the grumbling barbarity of his voice, listening to the rhythm of the spring as it lavished and lacquered the world into a mesmerizing haze, filtering the coolness of his potency into the warm, tranquil mist and fog. Where he bit and tore into the ethereal air, she courted strings of satin, where he growled and roared, she strung taffeta and lace in ringlets of persevering strands, aloof and indifferent to the toils of his apathy and vitriol. She pressed into the fancies of the water and allowed it to sift into her sanguine spirit, felt the ambrosial qualities of her beneficence prosper, thrive, in the bulrushes of caustic, trenchant facades, cool and collected, lithe and lissome. Honey and lyrical, like a lilting, fluttering bird, she practiced his name across her lips, postured it for the wild thickets and morose mountains, the silent frost and the kindest shades of nocturnal veils. “Déodat.” Fay, complexities and simplicities, she smiled again, allowed the grin to flicker in the empire of morose conjectures and scathing, derisive sentiments, turning inky, sable destruction into gilded treasure. Pressing closer to his form, her eyes inspected the sinuous slashes, the feverish agonies, the ailments lacerated into his warrior physique – and even when he refused to tell her of how he’d acquired such callous wounds, she presumed assaults, sieges and armaments, clattering and screaming, savagery embroiled into another world, another kingdom, but couldn’t forget the din of her own violence.

She stepped back, gave him space, and studied the formulation of her next vocals. She felt the tender slide of her hum echo and vibrate in her throat, gesturing to the impulse of her slender harmony, waiting to be awakened by the clatter of her restless entity. Inspiration, found, locked, and sealed within her chest, began to build its crescendo, a passage of music guiding the steady stream through her vocals, heartfelt hymns and quavering clamors of satin and silk. She conjured, evoked, summoned and enchanted the alluring grasp of mellifluous trills, warbles and arias, invoked the lingering brushstrokes of her artistry into the Stygian resolution of chaos and mayhem; a song to heal, assuage and mend. Closing her eyes and parting her mouth, she caressed the catalyst of her heart and crooned.

“For king and country,
For crown and land,
Into your heart,
I’ll sow a healing hand.”

A pause in the melody, before she sculpted another stanza into the sweet chords of her deliverance, of her salvation, of his suffering, of his misery, destroying, dispelling sorrow by bestowing harmony.

“Chase away the sorrow,
And forget the pain.
Erase the anguish,
And omit the refrain.”

The reverie, the bliss, the incantations, poised in the labyrinthine influences, carved amongst the brooding violence, lightly, softly, touched the barbs of his wounds, and began, all at once, to relieve.