They were drenched in darkness, tainted, looming, consuming, painting the trails of old into Stygian shades, sable oil, inky, tenebrous mysteries, ghosts and wraiths, specters and shifters. No matter how many times she tossed her head to the sky, she met an empty horizon; no sun touched upon her face, no stars billowed, twinkled in the twilight glow, no auroras gleamed and streamed across the vast wilderness. An exhausting nothingness, chained and clambering to the frayed edges of their strange world, where control seemed imminent until the dusky, haunting glow of weighted kingdoms sought destruction, where malice crooned persecution, where sanctuary, safety and shelter seemed apparent until midnight became an everlasting covenant, until the glowing firelight of the kingdom was shattered and cast into cryptic, incomprehensible ruin. She traced the shadows and couldn’t find her way outside them, shaded and veiled by memories of yesterdays, the high, perilous branches, the guardians of forests slinking boughs closer, grasping, nettling, murmuring of emptiness, of lost tranquility, of confusion, chaos and torment. There was no light to guide her way, no pathway lined with sweet nothings, no tranquility whispering, brushing, stroking the wayward breeze, the smiling convictions, the hapless whims of tender babes. Was this what their world had come to, devoured by dimness, corroded and clouded into the calamity, the callousness, of void, abyss and writhing, withering vessels? If she were to pry deeper into the cavity, the chasm, the gaping hole of iniquity, what would she find there? Serenity trapped and flailing, reaching for the heavens, the stars, the rapture of its earth to find, hear its outcries? Brewing invocations and intoxications, snared created to lure, trap, inveigle the remains of the staunch, the stalwart, the valorous? Devilry cast into starlight, blinding and opulent, decadence draped and dressed as benevolence? More enigmas, more quandaries, more riddles traipsing across wider plains, greater expanses, broader kingdoms and empires? She stepped into the unknown, of past wanderings that tied her to companions, friends, loved ones she held near and dear to her heart, wondered if they’d been thrust into catastrophe, into ruin, into chaos so that they could find purpose again. No hums, no trills, no warbles or song thrummed or echoed from her chest, and only the light chatter of Imogen’s vocals rustled in the brooding, sinful silence. She was ethereal in her waltz, in her movements, in her wandering across the Meadow, but startlingly incomplete without her chosen enchantments, thrust into an element she knew so much about, but never yearned to touch. Her honeyed stare raised its alms to the sky again, but her prayers, her benedictions and convictions remained wholly unanswered, alone in the nullity, stolen by the thieves of the eternal night.

[Open for anyone and everyone. <3]