She runs.

Through the dark and into oblivion the girl flees, scraped knees screaming and black eyes wild. No thoughts, no reason; she is feral fear, a frightened fire, a burning bush with no dreams of caution or regard for what destruction is left in its wake. Gallop, stumble, gallop again; on gangling legs of red and gold the filly flies, with only one word to guide her path: east.

She does not stop until the grass grows brittle and the smell of sulfur stings her nose: and even then, the stillness is false. Sure, her legs cease their whirling, coming abruptly to a dust-cloud halt, but the girl's heart races in the narrow bronze chest, tha-thump, tha-tha-thump, a thrum in her ears. Steam coils thick into chill winter air, the slender frame glowing with exertion and pain, breaths heaving, hurried, as the lungs work overtime. Even in her exhaustion she is coiled and alert, adrenaline running a frenzied path through sweating cells; rabbit, prey, she trembles still, black eyes soaking in the stain of the Heart.

Is she safe?

A hot tear threads down her gold-slashed cheek. Her eyes sting. She blinks.

She may be safe. But she has never been so alone.

In the calm that settles the images form, crisp and unbidden on the whites of her eyes. Lace. Natraj. Fire and sun. The acrid stench of searing flesh. Monsters and darkness, the flying ground. The gold gaze of her family, freshly found, all she has left. Lace. Natraj. And she runs, like a coward... Trees. Flames, licking the sky. And everywhere black, black of the wraith with the gryphon's head, black like the blood that stains her knees, black black black like her hot, burning tears. Her body shudders in silent sobs, copper skin shaking over slender ribs; she doesn't know that she is crying, but the salt leaves trails down her narrow face, and pools of moisture in the dusty ground.

For the first time, she is well and truly alone, and she finds the experience a punch in the gut, a loss of a limb, the emptiness of an anorexic who has reached the realization that she is ill.

She cries, and in the distance two shrill whistles echo back, piercing her ears and making her jump. Eyes to the sky and she sees them approach, white beasts on white wings, one small and serpentine, one avian and broad. The girl's eyes widen and her jaw hangs lose, disbelief warring with hope in her heart. Warmth washes over her, an emotional wave.

"Kali?" she whispers, unable to believe."Fajira?"

The white gryphon croons and lands awkwardly on down, claws gripped tight on a concealed prize. Behind her, a dragon makes a graceful descent, reaching out to grasp the gold flanks in her claws. Elated at their discovery of the girl, the pair do not see the swift catch of her heart, the emotions that roll as the tide through her mind. Hope, fear, love, loathing, terror, turmoil, worry, wear. Atop it all one rises victorious, and she hiccups her sorrow and stares at the ground, suddenly gripped by the talons of guilt.

"I failed," she whispers, her voice in her shoes. "Lace and Natraj are gone. I ran like a coward. I failed."

And now, more than before, the yearling girl weeps.

[ @[Sohalia], @[Lena], open. Set at the outskirts of the Heart, 200 feet from the Sanctuary entrance. Permission from Chan to play Fajira ]

Tandavi

Freedom fighter of the lilies, of the laurels, of the Daphne sprigs, sprung from the lips and maws of eldritch caves and caverns, wishing for tranquility and attempting to bestow her own. She isn’t lost like so many others, adrift and unfit in the perils and throngs of another world not their own (but she still felt those pangs, her eyes attempting to gloss over nocturnal walls and see mountains through their impenetrable fortifications), because her purpose, her goals, her motivations were Romani regard, valorous and heart-spun. A breath of generosity, a vine of beneficence, a hum, a croon, a murmur of sweet, undying serenity, persistent and obstinate in the coils and snares of reaching claws and snapping jaws, fairy queen and fey monarch whistling through the hedgerows of ebullience and essence, straining to save one more soul before nightfall, before clutching talons flushed heresy over napes and jugulars. A kiss of the cordial, of the divine, a song of the blossoms and the dulcet whims of petals, abandoned for the touch and taste of winter’s carved, cruel endeavors, holly and ichor, bells and sin sketching the stars. Outlined by morals instead of nefarious deeds, traced by the calculating measures of sanctity and Elysium rather than the brooding, brutal marks of hate and malice, dancing and gliding, searching and seeking, shirking warnings and portended snares for the hint, for the notion, of healing and bestowing, of providing and proffering. Like a flare, like an inferno, refined in the light of embers and radiance, sacrificing every etched chord of flesh, for every line of regality, to ensure providence, divinity, in a land swallowed by bedlam. Into danger, into discord, for alms, for promises, for benedictions laid on crisscrossed stones, for the incapable and fumbling, unwinding the bewitching claims of her strides with the eldritch atonement of gentle, curved nuances; the ruminations of a time before, where the only rancor she chose to obtain was her own. Instead, its glorified over the horizon, shoved into splendor, reeling and rolling within the haze of a drowning day, and the decibels of screams, of anguish, topple over regimes and monarchies. The nymph battles through all of it – peace and clarity, hope and joy, aspirations and dreams refusing to suffocate beneath gnarled, crushing hands.

The threat of fear reared its head once or twice, and that sentiment was allowed to be strangled, cut off and asphyxiated through carols, bells and carillons, not warranted to ripple over her spine or trickle through her blood. Beast and maiden are infidels of the heretical regime, pariahs against the devil, and continue corroding its efforts through the bastions of melody and rapture, even when reverie seems ultimately lost and frayed. The gleam of her eyes, stolen honeysuckle hues, captured wandering bodies, some already captured, ravaged, torn away from originality, dispersed back into the masses as hollowed shells and shackled tools, and another, small, forsaken form, lost among the treacherous battlefield. Imogen and Lena plucked and picked their war anthem, a rhythm, a rhapsody, a dainty aria that soothed and mended rather than ripped seams apart, following the tiny voice, the terror unbidden and set free, seeking to abolish horror from the gaze of children. No mistress of the night, no entangled heathen seeking a further fall into destitution, but the wake of heavens’ foretold outreach, ghosting and coasting with the shrunken spells of old; struggling to piece together the remains of virtue burst and exposed. The ivory vixen ruminates first, clucking and chirping to the companions nestled beside the lost girl, one winged, one draconic, asking, cajoling, while Lena’s stare fixated upon the babe, the weary stance, the withered outlook, the touch of this unholy world flailing and writhing upon her. Scorned and marked, tenderly absconded, from the reaches of safety she should have been anointed. Drawing herself closer, but not further into the hold of dragon and griffin (they’re her protectors, she can see, shielding the youth from the strongest of storms), grace and composure, softness and regality, nobility and praise, selflessness and serenity, layered from the mellifluous parting of her lips. “Can we help?” A smile followed, without the questions, without the quandaries, of the child’s appearance into the war-torn world, curiosity rendered and fallen to the floor. Sanctuary was yards away, and time marched the steady beat of haunting lullabies and Pan delusions. Neither sylph nor fox, twirling at their feet, dared sink further away from the bulrushes of safety, not when ghosts wailed beyond the fortitude of their lungs.

Breathing heavy, the girl flickers between alert and asleep, weary and worn by the force of the torment she has endured- emotional and physical, recent and old. From behind her tears she sees the world, dark and muddied and so very imperfect. There is a dragon on her back, chirping sweet concern; there is a gryphon to her front, tying something bright into her mane. The smell of her mother is strong on Kali, and it is all the girl can do to keep from sobbing harder, sobbing her realization as a black talon delicately secures the familiar purple flower behind her ear.

No no no nonononoNO

Refusal. Denial. Beneath the tears and snot is a terrible anger, a refusal to accept the truth in the sad blue eyes in the avian face. In the sympathetic chirp. In the flower she now wears. They tell a story that the filly can't read, won't read, because reading it would make it true.

She looks away, her sobs now hiccups laced with bright, pointless rage- and finds another clouding her line of sight, a tall brown mare and... and....

She has never seen another kitsune before, but she recognizes it instantly, both for its painful similarities and aching differences from her own brother, her dear Natraj. Anger battles with renewed sorrow, and the surge of it all shocks the filly into still, makes her oblivious of the mare's kind words- though Kali turns her head up in response, and unleashes a series of concerned, questioning clicks and whistles. The girl's knees are bleeding, and her ribs stand strong against her orange side. She needs to get inside, but the gryphon is small and unable to lift her- will this mare help?

And the other, another, winged and white. Rescue has come, and the hybrid rejoices; Help us she begs through the sounds of her kind, though she knows these two cannot hear. Help her.

As for Tandavi: her shock is set, deep into her bones. Eyes flicker with pale recognition of Sohalia, who she met but once before the dark, but aside from that, outside of that, nothing stirs, merely a weary, whispered word.

"No"

[ @[Sohalia], @[Lena] Sorry for the wait D: ]

Tandavi

The child before them, for now another joined their ranks (perhaps a descended angel – ivory and taffeta, winged and opulent), became a canvas of sorrow, and the sylph felt her heart tear away at the seams for the tiny youth’s life etched, scorned, burnt and scarred. No creature deserved the decadence, the ruin, the abomination of despondency, misery sketched into their skin like a tapestry of webbed, mottled livelihoods, scars littering where their lives could have waltzed, primrose paths sticking their nettles and thorns along the ghosts and specters of possibilities. Without the reach of her companions, these lively, loving animals, there were only segmented dreams and severed wishes – too many demons left in the brim, in the foam, in the mouths of hollowed sectors. She gazed deep into the eyes of the bird – and couldn’t read its calculations, couldn’t perceive its notions, its ancient, archaic language she was far too ignorant to understand. Imogen, bright and brilliant, stirred the passing words, the blinding phrases, the bleeding bulrushes of a life sanctioned, saved, by earnest valor. We must help; an idea duly noted and conspired with, and the nymph grew closer, advanced within inches of bloodied knees and turbulent sobs, dipped her head into the swindled sun and the daunting morning, the aching afternoon and indulgent evening, pressed into the effervescence of a swindled cherub and all that she’d lost. While she pondered, wondered, speculated and examined the reasons beyond a girl’s sobs, a babe’s wails, she asked not a single query over their circumstances, lightly ruminating, humming, crooning the soft, dulcet strings of a lullaby. Songs of the valley, songs of the hills, songs of the mountains, songs of the ice, songs of oracles after they’d danced with poppy seeds and laurels, songs of rhythm and rime, sculpted and molded, laced and plaited. Lilting, arching, scaling walls and hallowed voids, a timeless piece she’d captured long ago from a nurturing world beyond their hold, boughs nestling tiny snippets of life beneath their airy, earthen christening. She blessed and murmured, anointed and crowned, sang into the furthest reaches of her divinity, of her virtue, of her morality until they sprung with heavenly glows and ethereal grandeur, an aria blooming and blossoming from her exposed heart. “I’m Lena, and this is Imogen.”

She shifted, lightly, delicately, like a small, minute disturbance of the wind, like a twisting plumage of a feather, molten refinery as she stared upon the pale Pegasus, another beacon, another fortitude destined for guidance and support. Quick and swift, honeyed eyes marbled into ambrosia, tenderness, compassion and some burning creed of defiance (for the sickening plunge of a youth nearly spent and wasted, stumbled, faltered, decayed and left forsaken), a smooth voice resounding towards the femme. “Shall we lift her?” Would she mind being carried into further darkness, where sanctuary and havens loomed, instead of a swindling nightmare, a catastrophic den of demons and fiends lurked beyond their cool fixtures? And would this makeshift saint offer her hand as well, guide the waif with a sturdy, soft wing, friendly and cajoling, sympathetic and willing?

Lena. Sohalia. The names may well be gibberish to the girl, though her hungry mind stores them away, tucking them neatly into the categorical stacks, the shelves which hold her worldly knowledge. There is a brief shift of the light behind her black eyes, a flicker of something resembling recognition, but clouds of remorse quickly return to their place, and the girl is caught again in the maze of her own thoughts, her fears and denials as to what Kali's visit means.

Is her mother truly dead? Her uncles? Her aunt? What of her cousins, of Semira and Amaris and the others she loves?

But Kali is here, and perhaps even well. Somehow through her tears and snot, the girl knows that Rishima's death would lead to the gryphon falling as well, or at least more hurt, more devastated than the white feline's eyes could ever hide. She thinks about this as the adults speak, mind slow and fuzzy with simple shock, gears turning slowly to form a conclusion, a thought. No, she decides, her mother must not be dead, merely lost, or perhaps found, safe somewhere on the other side of the night. Otherwise Kali would be sick. Otherwise the flower would be dead. Otherwise...

Otherwise, what delicately maintained stability she still clung to would shatter into a million pieces, and she would be forced to watch as her world came crumbling down.

With the tenacity of a wolfhound she clings to this newfound reassurance, this bright beacon of hope in a miserable, dark, world, and feels her stupor slowly ebb. Tears still threaten to soak her skin, but no longer has she lost control, a broken puppet in the ash and dust. Black eyes blink and the girl shifts, a subtle movement too loud in the dark; she moves slightly, rolls to rest on her knees, moon-slashed face downturned and determined. Around her they speak of moving ans lifting, of names and aid, and though she knows it will ache, will sting with the weight of a thousand lashes, the girl lifts her leg and pushes up, rising to stand between the mares.

Except it does not hurt, does not sting, for Lena's magic has worked its wonders, soothing the girl through her pain and woe. Surprised, she stumbles, head light from exhaustion- "Oh," she gasps, struggling to resist the pull of the ground, falling toward Sohalia as Kali laughs relief, an odd excuse for a grin plastered upon her avian face.

Tandavi

Fallen petals, murmurs on the streamlines of beating, swift hearts, swirled in the turbulent tirade of the dim sky; she carried her soul aloft to light and guide their way. Through the waves of song, through the fleeting hands and brushstrokes of stanzas, essences shifted, from the sorrowful, to the triumphant, glowing, gilded, for the snippets where they stayed amongst the aria’s careful strands. Coaxed into vibrancy, tilted and stoked, fine, perfected, sculpted for agony and desperation, carried into the brief, tender lacquer of compassion and benevolence, a calm amongst the bracken storm. She couldn’t piece together every sullen remnant, every cast away piece or shard, the sad, broken filaments of stories untouched, untold, but she attempted to thread and lace the tresses of a melancholy web. Amidst the halcyon haze, she heard the drifting of movement, the ivory Pegasus eager, ready, bolstering her strength in the tides and mettle of better days (where the sun shone without guilt, where the wind didn’t bite and chide, where the toxic doldrums were fulfilled, satisfied), murmuring over the horizon. The child built her own tenacity, honed and rough, valorous and obstinate, and the music died in her throat, no longer necessary for their task. Instead, the beneficent smile returned over her lips, an undying emblem of her heart’s desires, finessed and indomitable, unfailing in the hazardous mist, in the vitriol plague and pestilence corroding their minds, their paths, their trails. The girl hastens a stumble, a faltering, but not a full collapse into the heathen reaches of armaments or scorn, not under their constant watch and supervision, shelter and sanctuary in the sinister wake of darkness, in the apathetic abyss of trenchant, mordant concoctions. Sohalia, the other introduced her namesake, and finally Lena had a calling to enamel towards a fellow creature, gentle and firm in the plight and madness outside their walls. She’s taken back into the throng, the silence, the regards of shields, swords, scythes, and refuges, wondering and pondering, the able nymph, the capable fairy, of where the babe intended to go, adrift in the runes and ruins of their hell thickets. Was there a world she had traversed towards, aching and bleeding, holding a sanction of promises, ambitions, aspirations? Were there others searching for her, their beloved child, longing to hold her in their arms? The healer directed the finale of her queries towards the filly, regarded tranquil laurels through the heartless dunes. Someone, somewhere, was missing their precious brethren, and she had every intention of returning it. Calm, clear, distinct and harmonic, touching upon mellifluous strands over and over again, the words ruminated and collected, dovetailed and spiraled towards each creature. “Where would you like to go?”