Lena
I'm buried and covered peaceful under millions of stars

Crooning calamity echoed through her ears, like a whispering, strangling hymn of delusion and debauchery, and she tried to shelter her hums against the bombardment of malicious upheaval. The world was a constant reminder of her own decadent distortions; a victory claimed by rage, by wrath, by ire, the tiny, humble creature resting along her hind, the glorious enchantments and danger of a beautiful world tarnished by fumbling missteps. Her mind was an unforgiving precipice of all her insecurities arriving to the surface, fermenting in the haunting, enigmatic pulse of their darkened haven, and she wished to maintain the simple smile once granted across her lips, pushing through the fog, through the gloaming, through the nocturnal agony crushing and crashing against their thresholds. Violent revelations stinging, stabbing, lacerating until she was an empty shell, collected shambles of all her pursuits, all her convictions torn and maimed – still the nymph searched through the gloom and yearned to make it right, resolution scraping along the vivid pulse of her heart. Eternally tarnished, tainted, beckoning evil and villainy to shatter the remnants of her beneficence, her whims, her fancies and tenderness; if she were to offer her salvation, her sanctuary, her sanctum over and over again, warble infinite arias, would it render forgiveness? Would it bestow clemency, proffer mercy? Or was she forever damned, banished and renounced from the heavens, layered and labored, cumbersome and woven into the entrails of guilt, shame and forbearance? Would one melody invoke the charms relinquished and forgotten? And how, after all these wicked, gnarled, bony corruptions and infernal eruptions, sinners and martyrs united to become the licentious, iniquitous rhythm of shadow and animosity, were they to snare their members back from the misty gallows, the suffocating sands? Her eyes touched upon the distant peaks, the wondrous horizon, and pondered over the worth of her fall, back into the capricious, sinister corridors of yesteryear.

Illynx’s voice drifted into her mind, and the sylph swiftly swerved her noble cranium towards the gilded Lady, dipped her tiara in respect, allowed her gaze to drift over the avenues of torn flesh, sundered sinew, spoiled munitions of a blade downcast and foiled. A sigh melted from her chest, prospered into the midnight air with a heavy, ponderous silence, saddened and burdened all over again to see the arduous requiem molded over the golden creature. Her slow pace, the shift, taut, rigid course of muscles, merely defined the efforts and effects of battle, and said naught of how the spirit was wielded and woven thereafter. Had she won? Had she lost? Did she feel punctured and defeated like Lena, or proud, defiant, still audacious even with the glimmer and splendor of battle had caved in upon their heads? Did she have a plan to snag back those left behind, rubble in the petulant abyss? The laureled laureate took in the concern etched over the other mare’s face, and begged it away, placed the wan, sad smile, worn down and plucked away from the edges of the dais of war, upon the creases of her lips again. She had no aim to have another worry and fret over her ailments, not when there were so many others to heal, so many others to save, mend and assuage, even when her own soul couldn’t be soothed. A simple harmony floated from her throat, a tender warble, like the embrace of an old friend. “Illynx, I’m pleased to see you’ve managed the same.” How many of them hadn’t yet? If she were to search the ruins and scaffolds of their broken pieces, would she find them amidst the rubble, be capable of dragging them to their sanctum? A delicate pause followed, eyes closing, feeling the small, meek presence of Imogen, drawing and absorbing the essence of the earth as she attempted to muster the concoctions of her enchantments. Stare reawakened, she asked one more query before prospering the depth of her allurements. “Shall I sing for you?”