She stands in the hands of the morning dew, shivers as the chill permeates around her. Her mother merely stares at her quivering flesh, coils a slinking, serpentine smile across her lips, breathes the fumes of cold air and extinguishes them into a cloud of malice.

“Why are you still alive?”

The child has no reply. She doesn’t know how she comes to live and breathe each day, rising with the sun and settling into the shade of the trees at dusk. She doesn’t know how she survives, only that she does.

Instead, she asks, pleads the one burning question that has haunted her in the passing hours of silence and strife. “Why don’t you want me, Mother?”

“Because you’re weak.”

The mare laughs, quick, sudden, like the hiss of the forest in a violent gale. The girl shudders again, and later, in the midst and mist of the earth, she remembers, recalls, the lies the witch spoke.

“I am not weak,” she mutters to the horizon, she croons to the flowers, she serenades to the birds, she cries to the wind.

Lena faced the hour of his idle tempest, watched as it brewed, loomed, threatened, washed over in a monstrous torrent of rage, wrath and ire. Steadfast in the ardor of a consuming storm, fluid in the passion, the zeal, the feverish fervency of his malignant menace, cool and composed in the ferocity of his savage, severe squall. She met the clamor of his callous crescendo, the timbre of his temper, with the mellifluous beat of her fluttering, heartfelt wings, because that was how she’d remained, endured and persevered, stubborn and solidified into the rapture of resolution. She’d lived with the tangled cords of vehemence wrapped around her nape, she’d scattered her soul to bits and pieces at the slightest voice, she’d steeled herself for cages, damnations and massacres, she’d withered until she was naught more than ashes, then risen from the cold embers to triumph again. She’d stayed warm in the bitter winds, blossomed, and flourished in the desolate, forlorn agony of abandonment. She’d clawed at adversity and drew it across her lips like a sonnet, dulcet hallelujahs, sweet arias, orchestrated lyrics to melodies of heartache and feats to the air, to the sky, to the leaves and glades. Amongst his hideous contortions, along his sinuous, viperous distortions, against the fire and agony of his twisted features, she was still, sturdy and serene. The cadence of her disposition awaited the moment of his eruption, the pique of his destruction, the wake of his annihilation to obliterate the harpsichord raptures she’d so carefully maintained, the reverie she’d once beheld, offered, and bestowed to those that shoved them aside. She’d overcome this too, the vigor, the force, the intensity and urgency of his contempt, of his derision, of his abhorrence and loathing (but it hurt to be hated again), because she’d accomplished it before, mauled and molded her hurt, her pain, her anguish, into the fiber of her being, for growth, for renewal, for another shard to fasten upon her defenses. This too, would be tucked away, sipped and slipped into her seraphic veins, into her nymph traces and trances.

Yet, it never came.

He didn’t boil over, he didn’t singe her flesh, he didn’t discard her to the halls, to the corridors, to the masses of ancient, archaic bones beneath their feet. He didn’t embalm her with further vitriol, with extended venom or toxins. Her bravery, her audacity, her boldness, was received with the change of his features, a sad, simple, broken melancholy varnished over demon, monster and majesty. Had she struck him so severely that he’d morphed again, into some other unknown being? How many faces, how many masks did he wear? How many times would she have to encounter history, the past, the memories, the lucid, vivid, sharp poignant hauntings of a world she didn’t want to visit again? The weight of his despondency shifted her heart into taut strings of veiled armaments, assailments and assaults that struck against the billowing air, the essence, the entity of her barbed soul. His words echoed over the chambers of her mind, recalled and recollected snippets of moments passed. I am not weak. I am not weak. A warbling command, a distinct demand, a force of compelling oeuvres and sonatas that whimpered along the foundation of a durable, strong soul. Ushered, offered and bestowed to the world so that the rest of the earth may hear of their caliber, of their resolve, of their distinction to survive all the atrocities, all the animosities, all the hostilities, the torments, the tortures, thrown upon their primrose path. She understood the unspoken stories, the unsung laments, the untold hymns, and silently, fiercely, recited it to him in the sharp, piercing juncture of her ardent stare.

But then he spoke of choice, of no alternatives, of the brooding, twitching, intertwining limbs that gave him everything and nothing all at once. Had he left himself to the alms of destiny, to the broken balms of providence, luck, and fortune? Had he thrust his blade into predetermined folly? Had he given his problems, his quandaries, over to another beast, another world, another creature, no longer tangled in responsibility of his own life? Her words echoed her confusion, the croons still stern, still steadfast, still bleeding from the thorns of her perseverance. “Do you leave yourself to the hands of fate?” If she’d committed the same actions, followed the same trail, left herself bared to the fleeting winds, to the heightened will, to the arches of kismet, demise would have crept upon her suddenly, quickly, stolen by the forces that wished her ill. The fey and fairy, drawn from the chords of wildness, brutality and barbarity, had conquered her demons through strength, endurance and eternal, everlasting faith in herself. So why was this creature before her, so capable, so formidable, unqualified to slash at his own flaws, his own imperfections, the weight of the chains dragging him into the depths of this brimming concoction of madness and peril? Softer now, mingling with the quelling growls of Imogen, she captivated, transfixed, beguiled the essence of her relentless, implacable mind, words springing from the deep well of her being, from the core of her journey, from the idle, tracing memories of her odyssey, the beginning of his. “I thought you possessed more power than that.”