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.