Have you ever heard the tale of the Labyrinth, my dear?
For this is what the woman of the Nightingale is entrapped within, ensnared within a dozen murderous corridors, a trillion doors in which to lead her to her demise, a catacomb of the living and a entomb of that which struggles to hold unto the mortal strings of life with frail wings as a butterflies heartbeat, the mortal damnation of eternal Hell (and although she is called forth into salvation, she is far from heaven's grasps). It is not beyond the Nightingale to regard and conclude upon her predicaments as a incited delusion upon a fractured and crippled cranium; the whispers of a sleeping conscious amidst the dead of the swamp, a realm in which the dead do not rise from the slumber and the diseased are medicated with the simplest of enchantments (where is she whom has sung the very sinew of her frame together with but a lyrical chorus?).

Within the confines of a writhing stomach cries the pit of her agonies; for the titles and lists stretch unto infinity as time meanders on, the constant snarls and cruelties murmured into a neurotic skull, saffron and onyx, all clown faced grins and claret stained robes— ghoulish crevices between caked teeth and raucous guffawing in the midst of her slumbers (what little the Nightingale has had is protested among periorbital puffiness and the bleary emptiness of once twinkling pearls and the sluggish movements of her trembling steps). She is told of the deficiencies she has reposed upon during her rule, the inadequacy of her reign in comparison to one whom is blessed among Jester's and the meagerness of her speech, the (ruin) carnage she call bring upon those whom she holds dearest (and every word comes from the lips of a vermilion stained mug, honey depths decayed into hideous milky moons upon a once lovely face, pearlescent crown twirling and rising as the north star to which she has loathed and missed quite so much). She queries and denies these caws, these claims to her histories and her future, to her civilization and her (lawless) right to climb amidst her betters unto the top of the ladder; to stand in the darkness of the shade of the bloodied Princess and her cerulean gaze (she is perfectly fine to allow the duties of leadership to fall among her Queen's shoulders, for she is truly and utterly exhausted, and the croaking hoarseness of her lyrics speaks testimonies to her lack of self-care).

She is well aware that the Queen in which she served (what seems like) so many decades ago is not writing silvery whispers among a rotten apple's core— she is accursed to the diseases of the realm above, lost among the hordes and masses of those unlucky enough to fall into temptation, to not rise among with their King's and Queen's and sprout wings into the golden gates of a (long) forgotten civilization beneath the crusts of Loorien itself.
And so she descends, deeper and deeper into the onyx decline of Hades; forwards into eternal punishment for her sins (she is not certain how much longer she must bare the burden of this metaphorical crown)— and forwards into the same disease ridden darkness that has taken so many of her brethren. The Nightingale merely pauses but mere seconds among the last tendrils of light, the delicacies of the living (how long will it be before all those whom she loves fades into the epiphany of His grasp?), tremulous breath and shuddering sides, and then she fades, too, into the umbra that has swallowed whole her race.

It is not certain as to how long the Nightingale travels— it is not certain as to how far she comes before the tip of a obsidian and poisoned crown is grazed upon the solidity of a wall, and she is not certain as to how (far) deep she has come into the realm of Hades, for she can no longer remember the warmth of the light above, and she can no longer feel the writhing of hunger in the depths of her stomach.
She merely exists, and she does not exist, a paradoxical meandering of both realms.

She wonders, as well— she wonders as to if she may ever find salvation again. She wonders if she deserves salvation.
She wonders if she wants to return, at all.

And she wonders how long it will be, until she, too, vanishes into the shadows of another damned mind. Even in death, it would be known she would curse another to the same Hell in which she vanishes, no?

@[Somnus]



"meandering speech"