Had there been peace, true, vital sanctuary, glorious hallelujahs trumpeting from reposed columns or serene, assuaging hope, Lena would have enjoyed searching with her companions, painting the skies with information, wild, ebullient contemplations, christened, anointed bestowals of wisdom and sages. She would have commented on the Doctor’s daughter, growing Nao, suitably finding a poisonous flower and bending it to her will, seemingly immune to the effects of venom and decay. She would have brandished earnest smiles and whimsical accompaniments to Tangere’s fondness for ingesting their discoveries, would have been enamored by the opulence, the grandeur, the wonder set before them, arching and reaching for the next covenant, the next grail, to send them scattering in spirit and buoyancy. But all she felt were the furtive, restless edges of Imogen, apprehensive and tense, and it simmered along her body until she too was an embroiled, unsettled enigma along the meadow, waiting for the daunting fringe of shadows to hasten them into oblivion, to chase them away from Elysium, to be pulled into the embrace of anarchy. The nurse longed for none of these sentiments brewing in her veins, boiling in her heart, searing her flesh until each sliver of movement, each rub of fronds, each incandescent melody of birds rustling her untamed soul into tyranny. They’d known of horror, of terror, of sinister, nefarious requiems, of laments bursting across the horizon and bestowed upon their mortal souls (and was it wrong to wish it away, again and again), they’d fought, they’d survived, they’d conquered one more slash of the scythe – but this unseen, vile contortions bending into invisible lines, threatening to strangle, to suffocate, to unwind and persevere in the mutinous, hollowed world, left her flickering and bobbing in the unknown.

The threat layered back into her enamel again as alarm spiked through Imogen’s svelte frame; locked on a single silhouette webbed into the autumn wake, frozen, focused, and Lena swung her head towards the source – and had one brief moment of elation. Kahlua’s painted form, another friend saved and preserved through the inky, decadent sheen and veil of mysteries, of callous labyrinths, of roses pricking and plucking, kindled a brilliant, luminescent smile across her features, resonant, bright, and subsequently severed by reality. The deep growls of the kitsune, the painted Glazier’s vocals lacking any melody, lacking any dance, lacking any warmth, stole the grin away from her face, seized her frame into the whirlwind of fortitude and confusion. Delusions chased away, tenderness ebbed, and only sedition remained upon the recognized face, distorted and warped. A hastened spring bubbling over its brook border, its chiseled embankment, it’s fathomed well, postured one mellifluous question barbed from her lips. “Kahlua?” What happened? What made this once wondrous, beautiful, kind, generous being into a crawling monster, a behemoth, a seeker of shadows instead of their woebegone light, their stolen halos? What was she now? How could she strive to repair and mend the broken, brittle pieces of scorpion entrails and sizzling, slinking debauchery? Where did Kahlua begin and end? Where had she been possessed, stolen, and could she repair her? Lena, help me. What has happened to me?; haunting chords stoked and fired from the archaic, atavistic rebellions, prickling a note of fear along the sienna’s spine, yearning for the quiet gestures of repose, of strength and futility, of all the valor and courage she’d concocted in ages past, in seasons spread beneath darkened moons and forgotten suns, of monsters she’d faced before, gestured one warning to her brethren, to her kin in a bellowing strain. “Run!”

Lena backed away, slow, methodical, diligent steps, and as the beast advanced (her heart hurt more, to hasten such a dreadful moniker to a beloved friend), she prayed, she sang, she strung melodies through shaking deliberation, ditties and arias strained into taut harmonies, closing her eyes to the heartless nightmares washing over their grandeur, their solace. Could she be healed? Hums and hymns, invocations for the devoured, for the corrupt, for the swallowed, wishing to be revered and serenaded again, for demons to be vanguished. It’s always darkest before the dawn.

“What a waste, to forget your love.
Your strength,
Your conviction and will.”

Her eyes opened to view the stranger before her, foe after friend, the swing of the tail postured for her cheek, and the stark, pale body of Imogen leaping into the fray, a selfless, desperate, brave and enraged fox feeling the prickle of barbs across her lithe figure. Her ears listened to the murmurs brooding and weaving, laced into the air, and the ghostly tremors of the vixen’s growls, the stoked flames given life in the afternoon haze. Morphed into transient mist, fogged over and intoxicated, like dissonant serenity, an odd combination of hellfire and song, bestowed and proffered across the swaying grasses – Imogen’s burst of embers and infernos sent towards Kahlua, the poignant effusion of mellifluous heartache conjured into singsong malevolence.


[Lena sings in effort to heal/mend/restore Kahlua. Imogen leaps and takes the hit from Kahlua’s tail, sends fire towards Kahlua.]