Brushed aside again, a light feather blown upon, floating off into the air to land where another wouldn’t see the frayed edges or unraveled ends. A passed over face within meetings, a worthless, useless entanglement of emotions and sentiments, offering guidance, humility, tenderness and warmth, and watching as it was steadily ignored. Another disregarded moment passing over the valorous touches of her willing soul, varnished, polished for its beauty, for its regality, for its incandescence, allowed to fall to the dusty floor, cracked, splintered and smashed. A slap in the face of her spirit, obliging, proffering, eternally convinced in salvation, absolution, forgotten and slighted, spurned and shunned. Often it was by her own herd, the garden of power, prestige and danger, and perhaps for good reason – her heart was not made for their villainy, for their deceit, for their treachery, but she’d always managed to sequester her songs and melodies for their ailing bodies, their fatigued souls, their nefarious, sinister minds. But now, it was by Kiro again, and deep in the vessel of her merciful essence, a brewing frustration gathered. Amongst gods and monsters, she’d maintained her nymph status, burned her rapturous cadence into the rhythm of the blighted, petulant labyrinths, innocence lost into the reveries of their heathen boleros, and she’d willingly followed, gave chase to the hymn of their war drums. Yet, the creatures still maddeningly refused her gifts, her assistance, her immolations, and she didn’t know how much more to extend before her exasperations became fuel for darker order, for her demands, for her commands, for her pleas, whispers, and songs to be heard, from their dingy corridors, from their callous parlors, from their secretive, clandestine hallways. Lena didn’t ask for secrets to be shared, she carried her own burden of them locked against her chest, she didn’t pry open clasps, bolts or chains, and she didn’t explore into the realm of their haunted pathways, their decadent trails, and still she was refused. What would it take for the world to understand she didn’t wander to see them suffer, she didn’t traverse to witness them blinded and submerged in the rancor of their immoral longing; she existed to mend, to heal, to soothe the broken, restore, raise them up so that they could witness the stars, the horizons, the heavens again.

So what was she to do when they declined, rebuffed and dismissed the wholesome whims she longed to share? Remain a nameless piece of loam, crawl into the gloaming foyers, suffer and simper in the reeling gesture of another banishment, another rejection? Her blood burned, ire invoked and christened by Kiro’s curt denial, and she tried to not let it soak into her skin, into her face, where it’d dance a merry waltz of sin and irony. Was he so blinded by his own assertions? By his own declarations and pronouncements? Had he forgotten the way his body shirked the press, the touch, the sensation of the moon? Did he live in the outer reaches of denial, a shimmer of contradictions, conflict and opposition, merging with the distorted shambles of truth and lies? She took in a sharp breath, allowed it to drift over her in sharp brambles, nettles ghosting along the courtship of her sienna frame and the luminary sanction of the horizon’s tendrils, and shifted her eyes to stare upon him. Fixated, hardened, narrowed, suddenly pointed to a blunt edge, fierce and enigmatic, not holding the kindled warmth from before, distinct vexation ignited in the light behind their honeyed hue. For beneath the radiance of her grin or the light of her grandeur, she could still ignite, she could still bellow, she could still fight the canvas of misery. Her words, remaining graceful, poised, armed her sentiments with the wild candor of her audacity, persistent, persevering, the refined point of a beneficent creature. “Your actions prove otherwise.” You lie. Daring, she moved closer, and Imogen chirped on in bold encouragement, dancing across the untamed blades of grass swindled and swayed by the errant breeze. She wanted the stag to know she could see beyond the realm of his falsehoods, but no further – she knew naught of what specious, haunting requiems filtered into his frame, into his body, into his heart, but she’d try, she’d listen, she’d mend, if he only allowed her. What did he hide in the ire of his magnificence, and how many masks did he wear?

The sylph danced a fine line, and permitted Kiro to alter the subject. Would Fawkes pretend too, to forgo the rigid moments of a strong beast quivering in the ethereal dusk? To morph into a strange nuance of pretenses, masquerades and swallowed condemnation? She changed her appearance thereafter, fought the edges of her discontent until they molded into the calm raptures of former composure, drew a smile to both individuals before coiling her stare towards the distant mountains. Her home, an easy question to answer, and she proceeded with the same airy, distinct call of feys and fairies, harboring and harpooning the desires to say more, to indulge in the curiosities of Kiro’s rebuttals, Fawkes’s stony silence. “I’m from the Aurora Basin.”

[Feel free to jump back in Sica! I know you're busy. <3]