Seasons to cycles, déjà vu in constant, perennial waves; like the flowers and petals upon nurtured blossoms, heady from crisp autumns and cumbersome winters, arriving again and again, a familiar scent returned to her nares. A ghostly, intertwining specter, roaming and brimming, pervading and infusing the woods she occupied, composing the junctures of curiosity, tenderness and warmth once more. A thousand queries bobbed within her mind, permeating through the benevolence, through the compassion, through the distortions of wavering elements, all the same, never voiced and given note, rote, but still apparent, riddled and painted across her nymph contortions. Where had he been? What stories did he hold? What brought him to leave the icy walls (was there something enticing, pulling, alluring and beguiling his soldiers’ soul)? Was he well? Was there something she could do for him, another lilting bundle of sonnets, another lyrical reverie and rapture to entangle and assuage the precarious weight upon his shoulders? For a few moments, she considered the length of her motion, the edges and fringes of her movements – to stay, to go, to chase him down into the whirlwind of spectral dances again; if he was a mirage, a hallucination, destined to smite and strike her. Was he another delusion conjured from her loneliness? Or was it another momentous occasion to rejoice, stoke ebullience instead of sorrow? Was he like Faelene, dragged from the mountains, sand, dunes and shore, to come back to them? Imogen chirped amidst all of the inquiries and doubts, swarmed through her head with a steady hand, an ivory veil, a strong, valorous curtain. Follow! Wind around the trail, billow into the courtyard again, hum and hymn, be the songbird, the swallow, the finch, the nightingale for the wayfaring warrior. Steadfast, triumphant, persistent, the two creatures bounded deep into the lanes, drifted through copse and glade, waltzed a fine minuet, a finessed bolero, across hand-brushed leaves and chilling air, fairies in the haze of the unknown. Taffeta webs and harpsichord dreams, entangled and emboldened by the rush of a companion’s return. They streamlined onward, extinguishing the distance, the gap, between painted blackguard and whimsical rhapsody, until his form came into view, and she slowed, hesitant to bombard him with the resurgence of her exuberance. Instead, sylph and fox angled themselves along the wind, inclined and undaunted, springing a few yards away from his side, a bountiful melody uncurling from her mouth. “Welcome back!”