Senses invigorated from the lack of light, her nares widened to breathe in the flora, the fauna and the strange alterations amongst the foreign patterns of eternal night. It was melancholy and mystery, encasing the rock and rubble of meadow and bliss, shuddering and wailing in the dissonant silence of an otherworldly force. She didn’t know how to combat it, this bizarre, ethereal conjecture of warped delusions and decadence, shrouded and veiled, corroded and resolute, ink streaking across a once beautiful dawn, a once magnificent evening. Were it a charred, frayed, broken and weary soul, she’d have smiled, queried, laughed and giggled, delighted until the world felt itself shattered into something anew. Were it a grumbling ogre, she would have shown it beauty, elegance, finery, beneficence christened and anointed from the stars, blessed from the heavens. Were it a demonic spirit, restless, entangled in brutality, she would have reminded the earth that they didn’t all belong there, dampening the sovereignty of virtue, wretchedly demeaned from the caliber of its mighty wiles. But this juncture is something else altogether, and for a few moments she was drawn to fear, a damaging instrument of emotions sparking, coiling, wrapping around her chest as a gilded cage, binding and tapping her into locked positions, anxious, fretting. What is she to do in this world of constant twilight, of frozen oubliettes, of forgotten spells and wandering invocations? What is she to offer the wake of her sovereignty without the gift of song, without the delicacy of her muse? What can she bestow upon her kingdom when even the luminous, beaming shards of her nymph prowess begin to dim in the thickening haze?

Imogen grew worried of the brimming, overflowing apprehension; swinging ivory tails exuded puffs of smoke, threatened the clamor of intimidating brows, longed to rid the vices that plagued her companion. But in the lulled, listless, languid hush Lena shook her head, dissuading the kitsune from her noxious, disastrous plunge – there was nothing to fight against here, in the threads of darkness and nocturne. Gentled, Imogen meandered closer, trickled amongst the icicled blades of grass, chirped and trilled where the sylph could not. Was it always to be such a saddening thing, this silent gloaming, this intimidating pinnacle, this wandering twilight? Before she’s permitted to drift further into her thoughts, sounds recoiled across the gloom, unfamiliar, ghostly entrails of hallelujahs, greetings passed in the midnight oils. She answered, carefully, a brief call of silken tones formulated along her mouth, not daring to bear a smile. “Hello!” The two creatures followed thereafter, into the dusk and hollow, poised to catch the voice, now two, that lingered in the threshold of Meadow and somberness. Were they too trapped in the perplexing, in the baffling, hymns and whims of the unshakeable blackness? Upon her approach, she gestured in a mild bow, honeyed gaze flickering across the forms silhouetted merely by the glow of lights from extended branches, alms in the storm. An icicle blue stag, like a tundra’s wild, wicked blessing, an ebon Pegasus, dressed as a raven’s beloved, destined to be companions for the extended evening. Imogen danced between her feet, pressed her face along her right knee, guarded in the halting serenity. The nymph chased away her misgivings, her tensions, her keenness, for the dulcet decibels blooming from her throat. “I’m Lena. Who are you?”