Empyrean oasis sunken against monuments, shifting, swift, ethereal welkin adrift with purpose, enlightened and scorned, ambrosial and absconded, fairy labyrinths and fey carillons, embarked on eternal strife and crusades for ebullience. When she was enraptured, seeking absolution amongst the jungle of caves and pathways, there was only reverie amidst the deities of corruption, mysteries unraveling through gliding fingertips and woven canvases, stories conspired in the depths of brutality and lilting their sanguine twist at the moment of pure, divine glory. When she was besotted, chasing away the cobwebs of the earth, spinning songs from merciful lips, there was only the allure, the beguiling, the spellbound whims of assuaging fathoms, hell chased into Tartarean parades for another day. When she faced misfortune, adversity clawing past sienna hide, into the void of security and sanctuary, she crawled amongst the vacant corridors as a hallowed phantom, fine, unearthly specter, piecing golden columns back upon gilded pedestals. And now, when she was lost, she chased after forgotten dreams, wilted fortitudes, bleak, forsaken creatures withering in the pieces of bracken vestiges, ensuring her strength was molded into another’s, tightly laced and intertwined into their mettle, their spirit, their courage, until the rampant valor of her mellifluous rhapsody faded into decadent, piercing silence. Her eyes glinted off the glowing auras, the traversing spheres, the opulence and glamor of an endless evening, and when she struggled to remember the light, she tilted her cranium towards apertures, gazed in wonder at a land fallen to nefarious iniquities. The nymph didn’t cry, didn’t lament, didn’t derive dirges from the flood of her despair when she remembered the mountains, the peaks, the glaciers beyond the grotto’s grasp, but felt the icy pricks of her soul long for those icicle chambers, the illustrious array of beauty, the spectacles of treachery and danger, the promises and benedictions of bliss. She’d search for their mourning sounds, hear nothing, taste nothing, feel nothing, and tried again, hours, days, nights later, mourn in the callous disregard the world held for them, all of them, poor, desolate fools swept into an abyss. While the stones, the wares, the pebbles and monoliths didn’t harm, didn’t prey, didn’t collapse, she still recalled and yearned for the chilling cliffs, and wondered, in her forsaken ruminations, if that made her ungrateful or wretched.

Lena tried not to dwell on it, to become music again in the house of marble and rock, where the tones of orchestras and symphonies streak across barren walls and leave wondrous tunes streaming from their core. She and Imogen attempted to dance, to leave the melancholy distance behind, to strive for the stars and fleeting glimpses of heaven in the dusky sky, the patchwork windows to a kingdom beyond their reach. But its never the same as waltzing in the Basin, picking up shards of the aurora in her smile, in her stare, floating across the rime chasm as a forgotten sylph or whistling in the severe wind, captured and allured by its fleeting embraces. Her steps couldn’t glide over daggers jutting up from stone soil, jagged, rough and etched, her waltz was forced into a short-strided minuet, a twirl resulted in less than refined movement away from an encroaching wall, and she was ordained into a compact, lithe rhythm of smothered elegance. Any grace gathered spilled over the confinement of their tethered haven, and she was a bird in a cage again, nightingale spirit traversing deep into meadows and sonnets, with nowhere else to go but tremble in the wake of its infernal bars. So she sang and sang, strangled the darkness from her ears, snared the puncturing wiles of malignant spirits, lacerated the woebegone tirades of monsters and behemoths, and drifted into rose doldrums.

Only when she appeared through the hallelujah luminescence of the glowing room, with its radiance, with its beauty, with its luster, was she compelled to cease her idle melancholy; for there, standing amongst the pristine leaves, the swirling, dancing fronds, was a piece of home. Roland, strayed, champagne knight, carrying all the essences of her sovereignty, but without its brutality, without its barbarous nettles, pulsing and beating with life. Her heart swelled and nearly burst for the sheer sight of another being from glaciers and whims, capricious, mercurial opulence, to know they remained, existed, corporeal and real, tangible and distinct. A manifested elation, vibrant and whole, spilling into the netherworld as a bright beacon, a memory, a token, that while they existed, here in boulders and crags, they may be able to escape – back into the fortress, the foundation, of woven snowflakes and valleys. Transfixed upon her appearance, she paused her movements merely to examine and inspect the remnants of his figure; gone were the days of the Threshold and refusals, of changed minds and saving from the clutches of intrusions – but she wished to ensure his safety, his welfare, his heart of steel before branching off into ditties and strains. Queries segmented themselves into her inquisitive mind, stayed there like kindling to a flame, wondering and pondering in their zealous cycle for absolution: had he seen the wraiths too? Had he felt their poison dip into the air, stream off in vicious, sizzling power, portended destruction by hands and claws, gnarled bones and filaments? Had he been turned (and the notion itself poured a raw decibel down her throat, washed over her in a severe chill)? The songbird, and the vixen poking around the corner, silent and pale, stepped nearer, tilted away into furtive shades and shadows, until they could gain closer access, swindle, patient, cautious butterflies, nearer to his form. A whisper, an aria, tiptoed across her lips in a dulcet refrain, tender and hopeful. “Roland?” Another floated thereafter, beneficent gaze reaching past the glowing walls and towards the sanction of his being. “Are you well?”

@[Roland]

Birds were not meant to be kept in a cage, so she flapped, fettered and fluttered, swayed with the idle breeze, the rippling tides, the sultry air until her voice ceased its eternal hum. Sometimes she idled upon thrones and their thorns, crowns and their jewels, enchanted and beguiled for the tender-est of moments before she was hastened away to another regime, another place. Other days were spent scratching at the beams and shafts barring their escape, toying with the warm collection of paradise beyond her touch, beyond her grasp, beyond her understanding and comprehension, wishing for the Siberian oeuvre to take them away, some wintry god, some glacier deity to absolve and abscond the traces of their beings. She confided in walls and temples, in jungles and warrens, spent hours poking at tapestries laden upon thickened corridors, clenching and examining, willing the segments of time to pass before they were free, wild and untamed again, exposed and liberated from labyrinths of shadows and moss. She faced their aviary and crooned against its chains and locks, bells and whistles, sanctum and sanctuary, bloomed and blossomed when it permitted adventure, burst when a song could reach someone’s ears, smooth and harmonic, silken and corporeal, tangibly clawing into their spirit and spreading light throughout the nocturnal haze. Restless and forsaken, she tumbled into the eaves and searched in fervent dreams, seeking absolution where it didn’t enclose her soul, send ordeals and torments to mock their liberations, where she wasn’t forced to witness another martyr stolen into the devil’s open maw. Satin and steel, driven and perplexed, compassionate and glorious, watching immorality drip and drain down the courtyards of their chosen haven, seeking refuge in blight, pestilence and disdain. At times a savior, and other snippets a mere peasant, sinking in the paradigms and fortunes, springing up when a melody was necessary, when her aspirations were wanted, purpose matched and altered to suit nightmares and terrors. Renounced and fleeting, like all sacred text and tomes, built to reign over earthly particles, with naught to hold, to behold, to love, to mend but the caricatures of a life shunted and broken.

Within these hallowed halls, however, she’d found a token of the valleys, the hillsides, the rime and frost, molded and anointed for stalwart excursions. She cherished the instant of discovering Roland again as a blessed, consecrated event, willed it deep into her frame as a divine recollection of seasons past and fleeting, warm to the touch and exalted for its generosity. The songbird held her smile, bold, bright, radiant and smooth, aloft and lilting, poignant and refined, laden for dipping, angled flowers and tangled vines, for the amiable conjecture of a long-lost spirit. It brightened as he proclaimed his health, that it hadn’t fettered and ruptured like others, callous and distorted, convoluted and spiraled into demonic, infidel reveries (she wasn’t sure what she’d do if she had to see another mask upon a face she cared for; barbaric and twisted, stolen from storms and behemoths – maybe the songbird would pierce and puncture instead of sing, sickened and suffering from their altering features). Her gaze dipped from his limber, gilded figure to the floor below, watching the stream babble and murmur, exotic and wild, but without the sky’s reflection upon its elegant, glossy rivulet. She pondered away the wiles of her heart, cajoling and reverent, gleaming and tarnished, queries suffering under the nature of her silent opus: Have you seen what I’ve seen? Devils’ brewing, laughing, cackling under the maddening moon or the sun’s illustrious rays? Have you suffered? Do they make you remember things you don’t wish to recall, touch and taste fragments of horrors and terrors, dream without color, live without mercy? Are they going to change me? Have they altered you? Clinging cobwebs, haunting plumes dazzling the senses, keened away when the gesture of his voice arrived again, circled around the luminescent strands and hushed, unbidden coils of the maze – her stare returned back to his kind, stoic one, lined with strength and fortitude, will and clarity, built for tenacity amongst their honeyed hues. What to proclaim; the visions of her explorations, the wraiths she’d tended, or lock them all away, wilted and withered jasmine, vibrant carnations lush, then dying? Her grin returned with a polished lacquer, carefully kindled, and the rhapsody of her vocals flooded through the terrain, lionhearted and devout. “Fair.” I want mountains, not catacombs. What do you want?

Frenetic again, intense and turbulent, like a flame extinguishing in the chill and searching, clawing for oxygen, for fulfillment, she gathered her motions and roamed deeper into the morass of massive blades and sparkling, pixie lights, Imogen joining beneath boughs of ribbon and lace, tendrils curling in the humid expanse. If Lena were to be confined, she’d manage a way to make-do, triumph and conquer fair-weather fiends. Restless and abandoned they may have been, chosen to reside in grottos, crypts and dungeons, but inept, incapable and ignorant they were not; she emulated the fastened, nettled stars, the effervescent chords and melodies, twisting fairy form into rapier rapture, sinking into the depths and fathoms of tender trees and forgotten limbs. Ducking under their charms, she widened her eyes to the sets of rainforest mass, temperate grandeur, pieced together heartache into bleeding curiosity, stare riveted and glowing for the reverie of knowledge, for the musing of tethering a companion to her plots and motives, for keeping company when it was granted. Swallowed by the woods for a scarce matter of seconds, she reappeared beneath a grand leaf enveloping her entire features, a nymph masque, erupting in a voice deepened for ebullient, entertaining measures, determination flooding through the gaps of entangled snares and ruses, diving into trenchant spheres and arriving on the other side as blighted divinity. “Let us explore!” Devoured by the sets of vines again, into grove and mystery, enigma and brambles, she backed away into the humid, sultry midst, with only laughter dominating the echoes and leaps of gentle reverie, the encouraging chirps of Imogen presiding close to Roland’s feet; the sparrow flown to the back of her oubliette, uttering strains, ditties, arias of liberation and wisdom.


@[Roland]

Exploration at its most childish: unbound, cage broken at her feet, wild, untamed, hunting and waltzing, crooning and humming, a cherub in the vacant breeze or the listless labyrinth, listening to murmuring wraiths and haunting disciples. Her whimsical antics were accepted with his telltale grin, playing along with her dovetails, sprite upheavals and spinning petals, unfurling and uncoiling like they’d seen the sun rise beneath the depths of the Stygian, stone altars. His compliance only encouraged her. All soft curves, undulations and arches in the wake of marbled absolution, invisible, transient, fleeting, ephemeral threads of her ebullience sprung from composed columns and spilled laughter, bursting in the reverie, an outcast heart allowed to thrive. If it were the ocean, she would have dove into its depths, swallowed the sea and skipped in its surge, if it were their precious Siberia, she would have hastened up rime valleys and down frosty hills, and if it were the meadows she would have sunk into its flowery arms and giggled in contentment, merry and liberated. Bird unfurled, once wound too tight, sanctioned, anointed and empowered by the rise of a smile or the fluttering of curiosity, exposed from the shackles and tethered struggling to bring her back into their gnarled hands. Eventually, she’d be buried in her armor, careful and concealed, forgotten and absconded, but for now it was shed, and the nymph danced in its absence and Roland’s consent, opulence blooming instead of sacrificed into archaic arms and alms. No covers, no grim looks, no knives fanned against rigid throats, no final strike of a trenchant wind; kissed by elation and finessed into enthusiasm, refined into the dignity of proud, elegant spirits, the beat, the flutter, of the fanciful. Without the clutches of deception pressing against her lungs, without the layers of violence smothering her tone, without the manifestation of specters tracing the midnight foils of their glowing regime, she became untangled and unraveled, vehement and ardent, glorified and seeking deliverance through the short, swift snippets of freedom. She made a map of each treasure, finding her way back to tangled vines, suddenly their essence, their entity, before leaping and bounding from their hold and into another painting of leaves and fronds, a beast, a fairy, amongst the blades. A carved marionette mottled in sienna and honey, bursting from the seams of verdant boughs, rich ambrosia and sanguine eaves, polished, stern and stubborn, a harpsichord bliss and rapture rippling throughout the hollowed vault; at ease with the triumphant air, with the singsong sway of Roland’s lack of judgment or disapproval. The sylph remained victorious, bellowing arias and skipping over stones, inviting him one thousand times over in the curl of her buoyant smile.

Determined to coax a laugh from his mouth, she flew into pathways and curled deep into their layers of shade, a veiled goddess with her crown of needles, before attempting to dive into his pathway, brush her maw against a shoulder, a knee, a raw bundling of muscle, and darting away thereafter. Even if she couldn’t enamor and twist his jaw, his lips, into merriment, hers echoed over the glowing rubble, scurrying across trails and plains of luminescent strands, billowing across the pebbled surface, the walled ruins. A game with no name, simple and mercurial, without the rush of volatility, without the fortitude and might of a tempest, stars and butterflies hastened in rhapsody’s time. Now and again she’d bestow a conspiring wink from the cave laurels, chuckle and give herself away, wait to get caught and pursue the shadows again – Imogen launching in front of her, roaming through the hourglass rhythms, lost to the grandeur and wonder. Only when Roland’s voice stretched over the laughter did she cease the enchantment, the allure, the beguiling of her rose nature, with its thorns and beauty, with its wit and quick brevity, turning her cranium to watch and listen, breathless and defiant in the center of their haphazard lane.

Her eyes touched over his in a warm, ambient glow, fire and persistence, radiance and strength, wondered which depths he’d sifted through, if they matched hers or if he’d whittled his hours away combining courage and fortitude into stalwart knots. Were there many other twists and turns amongst their sanctum, their labyrinth? Were some avenues blocked, locked, cast aside, dead-ends, suddenly not a heaven but a cemetery, a tomb, a sepulcher, a pyre? Were some pathways littered with diamonds, stones meant to glisten and bloom beneath a watchful eye? She caught torrents of air and hoisted them into her lungs, cajoled remnants of her ditties and melodies for his query. “Some. One area contains a spring the Earth God blessed to heal the wraiths, and strange carvings in the wall.” Lena pursed her lips thoughtfully for a moment, for a balanced chord, riveted her stare to the ground until she’d solidified another answer, waited for disappointment to filter – to be heralded as foolish when all she wanted to be was valorous, beneficial. “I’ve been outside several times too, to retrieve and mend.” The fey said no more over the subject of specters, with their haunting masks and poignant snares, sharpened fangs and guises of friends, their faces bearing cruel fiends and heathens, not the companions she’d known so well – no sense in destroying the flickering flames of her jubilance (for what happened if he’d witnessed them too, and was left torn to bits and pieces by their spellbinding stares, molten and contorted?). In one collected motion, she was movement and glory again, smooth, silken, and unabated by the schemes of monsters, swinging along the flowers nestled upon the floor, catching the luminescent beams, maw lowered, inspecting the soft, spongy moss. Her gaze snapped back towards his though, postured the same notion back upon the phantom, waiting to be regaled, not anguished. “What have you seen?”

@[Roland]

Ghosts plaited and intertwined amongst the loose wisps of her mane, like collected finery and melancholy blues, striking, poignant filaments of the sprig buds and winter crescendos. Specter requiems floated amongst her head, wrapped around the vibrant tiara, the noble brow, gathered and convened in a massive, fervent whisper, springing wraith stanzas, lurking and shirking glass castles and gilded oubliettes. She requested them over and over again to dance along the enshrined glow, the passionate, ardent twigs and soulful plumes, a fey monarch nestled in the hillside caves, waiting for the nymph puissance to beckon them deeper into the foray. A lure, a siren, without the violence, without the lies, without the specious blood pooling beneath pits and pendulums, laced and woven into the slits of rose hips and gardenias, affectionate harpsichords and elegant arches – a fleeting glimpse into the beneficent. Enriched enchantment, radiant and glowing, ablaze, aglow, cinders captured into smoldering into bright, vivid, intense incandescence, prayers formed and sculpted, molded into electric bliss. Where sin fell away, divinity stole its pedestal, virtue and enigmas twisted into searing elation, and where morality distorted, nocturne regalia molted into torrential, turbulent licentiousness, eating away at the core until she remembered, recollected, the silken, dulcet murmurs of her ethereal essence. Ambience and beguilement, reflecting croons of the warm, of the tender, of the euphoric amongst ruined columns, waltzing to crisp minuets, hearts aflutter across stone monuments and rubble altars, jungle kings and queens, dragging knees and daggers across pebbles and the undone, encompassing the space between anthems and iron bars with the might, the stalwart, the staunch declaration of pride, strength, and audacity. Emboldened, christened, anointed, drinking monolith hymns and absolution’s laments, slinking amongst petals and fronds, immersed in the labors of their satin dew, each wanton breath a zealous cling to life, a feverish tip, a vehement, consuming alteration of captured caprice into wild whims; a muse of misfits. Her twirls, her pirouettes, sought accompaniment afresh, anew, a beautiful grin dragging, coaxing, cajoling the phantom, the impersonator, the knight, from the sectors and sanctions of midnight driftwood – she continued their entanglement into the water’s babbling mirth, swaying into its midst, splashing into the wake of its hold and mercy.

Bulb and blossom of the chained exultation, the exotic gleam of her eyes followed his movements, his motions, invited in kindred allures, traced smiles along the dignified stature of his lips, and she laughed for the sake of laughing – listening for bells in the cacophony, in the symphony, in the orchestra, instead of trenchant cries and rancorous wails. The seraph and sylph prospered beneath his gaze, for he permitted the art of her finery without corruption sinking and slinking into their boughs, without disgruntlement, without a furrowed brow or hastened retreat. He established mercy and grace, dignity and regality, as she pranced alongside, twittering and chirping. When he didn’t flee from her touch, from her teasing, from her fairy torment or righteous giggles, she finally ceased and basked in the lull of the waterfall, dyed and dappled in its dabbling haze, stroked and stoked by tendrils of droplets and showers. Imogen, ever present, an eternal shift of wilderness, beast, and valor, remained undaunted and unfettered by each situation, made herself at home upon damp rocks, batting at the lapping, lull of the trickling water. The three figures presented a yearning tapestry, a canvas seemingly unsullied, a sonnet perfectly written, when beneath the labors of love and rapture were the secrets, the mysteries, the quandaries, rippling, stifling, and maddening.

Roland cracked the first tome, found the specters, regaled his own adventures and mythos, then intricately planted the seed of sorrows; home. The words beat against her chest, heavy staccatos and heady elegies, slashed ribbons into the reverie, and she felt the picture fall away in one innocent query – witnessed the image float away into the ruins, as desolate as they’d been before. She didn’t feel her smile descend, she didn’t feel her features collapse, and in its place tiny snippets of regret and desolation were crafted, the shame and humiliation, the wonder and despondency left in the wake of retreating, fleeing, and shambles of defeat. Caged again, oubliettes and dungeons, stare falling to watch the foam and froth build around her immersed stature (is it always the darkest before the dawn?), the regal cranium filled with flickering, cherished memories; a towering summit, unshaken, unstirred, relentless and terrifying, glorious and supreme. Caves, warmer than these, familiar and mystifying, reflecting glass revealing abysses and oblivion, hot springs mending and assuaging, lakes never quite chilled, immortal and immoral. The heaven’s breath cooled and frosted, a rime’s concoction of beauty and danger, enticing, fascinating, tempting, lost to the storms, the brutality, the devils and schemes. She longed for every inch of the terrain, the writhing sting of pine needles, the maddening, infinite trace of countless stars, the ventures beneath snow and sleet, the unrepentant, irreverent ice and the lives chiseled into its enamel; portraits and children of Siberia. Catching her glow, she struggled to capture its former spirit, sprite inheritance of prior boldness, hoping that she was not so fallen, not so shattered, in the presence of the companion who bestowed her liberation from the haunting contrasts, silk and steel coveted, undermined, rerouted. Her stare shifted back upon his corporeal, glowing form, wondered, pondered, and struggled, piecing and stitching back the seams of an fierce, fiery, avid being, restoring and rescuing the salvaged peace and benediction. Her words, however, couldn’t help but convey the cumbersome load of loss they’d experienced, trapped and plagued with rooted, rotted misery. “Yes.” Even blooming in the midst of Roland’s token Basin shield, she felt herself sinking and slipping again, saved the faltering with a query of her own (do you suffer too? I can taste every memory, every moment, and I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse.), building and brewing in the stem of melodies, a quiet spring, a gentle, hushed lull. “Do you?”


@[Roland]

Another ruin, a precarious balance, a tenuous fall, a stirred, shaken crescendo waiting for the moment to drop, bold, unwinding, sinuous edges touching, ghosting, caressing and stroking the chaotic tempo – once a flickering reverie, now a frayed requiem – she held her breath, awaited the heady storm. She pictured a fierce gale rupturing precious sanctums, she imagined cordial hums bleeding into harsh nocturnes, she envisioned rhapsody blinded and blurred, burned into searing, scorching fringes, and thought she was perhaps the bringer, the caster, of the sudden stillness. Instead of enchantment, she’d harbored disappointment, spoiled tranquility, instead of allure and beguiling whirls, twirls, twists and turns, she’d murmured a horrendous spell, binding and tethering them to the decaying strands of the archaic ruins, of blistering memories and worlds once touched, once renowned, gone to devils’ advocates. She’d allowed the harmonious void to slip past her grasp and into corrosion, perishing, deteriorating in rapid, hollowed threads. No seraph, no enchantress, no queen of the valleys or thorns, miserable and contrary as the rest, pursuing smiles instead of ichor, until she couldn’t even avoid the shedding of blood, felt it between her teeth and over her tongue. Her eyes didn’t settle back over his frame, tied to the water’s lapping bounds, too ashamed and despondent to glance along his gilded hide; remaining a forger of grins, then a serenade of rue and remorse. Stars hastened back to their constellations, bright, vibrant essences disappeared, evaporated into pixie dust, and she offered no more, listening to the falls babble behind her, like a mocking beat of suns, moons, darkness, light, anointed, consecrated, hallow spheres sharpened to pick out the hollowed souls. She strayed and stayed within the visible hold of the reflecting pool, casting shades of manifested hearts and silk on steel, tattered and bending, a mirror, a juxtaposition of conquered anomalies, secrets spurned and yearned, rules cracked and webbed again, yesteryear’s chasm opening to play a fiend’s fiddle, a demonic duet.

The nostalgic, yearning, longing, pensive slate of his sigh, of his voice, mustered her courage, following the path of his voice back along his golden figure, trapped by the elegiac fixture and the reel of truth poised from it. Kindred spirits chained in the noxious haze, teetering into the abyss, standing, audacious and emboldened, along the line of destruction or compassion, seasons’ unwinding fibers and heathen fortitude – he missed their icy rime just as much as she, and she felt her breath pulse back into the labyrinth, a circlet of enigmas. But we will return to it soon, I’m sure. Like a brilliant presage, specter regime, blackguard gambles and cavalier tenderness, he formed hope on the segment of words, not teetering into the brink of failure, not poised across a hapless void, but beneficence, aspirations, desires, wishes proclaimed through fog, mist, flowers, and vines. The nymph felt the remnants scatter across her form, mold sienna into honey, fasten whimsy along her limbs, a laugh dance along her lungs, a smile hasten back to her lips. If she’d lost her senses, her ambitions, he coaxed them back to life, a phantom stoking coals and embers until they were a roaring, dancing, harkening flame, and she played the serene, the angelic, the ethereal, the beneficent again. The grin enveloped back into a singular rhapsody, flowing off of the painted walls and the blossom tapestries, sketching over tainted coils and stained particles, a spectacular varnish of carols, trills, and thrills. “I’m sure you’re right.” She winked, nodded, moved in time to the rushing current, as Imogen chirped the same harmonic tune, blended into the symphony. “Soon.”

Chiseled garden walls held no visible match for the mysterious Roland, for no sooner had she bade motions and movements back into fanciful, lithe, limber steps, he joined the segment. She wondered, for the slightest moments, if he spun impulses, urges, to distract her, to court her away from the corruption, the brutality, covering, surrounding, piercing beyond the warren confines. Beneath the fronds, the falls, the lights, he was a siren in his own right, and she was inveigled back into the soiree, seduced into foolishness, into antics, into merriment and jubilation. She dared not slip again, throwing away the gnarled snippets and knotted wires snagging over her sentiments. For what was better: to forget or become mired, dampened, doused, and suffocated under the weight of horrific quandaries and possibilities? Lena waltzed alongside and chose the former, forelegs extending towards the water, strides becoming splashes, smiles becoming loud, harmonic laughter, encompassing, trimming, over their silly, vivacious hold. Once or twice she aimed a cascading shroud of water towards his frame, giggled conspiratorially and swiveled amongst the jungle castle, aloof, exultant, triumphant, reigning fairy and fey over the cracked courtyards and sunken, drenched mirrors. Her vocals, her tunes, captured again in the nestled harpsichord, fanned and pervaded the wallowing, lapping swell. “Wonderful!”

@[Roland]

Not enough sky or heaven; they pressed, molded, concealed and remained, solid, staunch, stalwart beasts of the hills and caves, children of the ice, the glaciers, the snow, the rime, locked out of Siberia. Lines were drawn in the jungle, glassy reflections and ebullience driven to the shoal and shore; nefarious qualities ignored, scorned, disregarded. While she begged for naught but absolution, defiance of the darker threads, of the blooming nightshade or daunting ghosts tapping at their windowpanes, he conjured restoratives, plunged headlong into elation and rhapsody, fine-tuned the piccolos and harps through sullen, murky forces. She joined with each rising note, built reverie from columns of earth and stone, obstinate chords and reverent peals, finery and rebellion coated in joviality. The sylph played her part with cordial euphoria: like the lady of the lake, granting heroes a serene smile, a proffered sword, before showing her own rapier and armor; a fairy draped in chainmail. She delved deep into the fathoms and plucked smiles from the cascading droplets or the sinuous, snaking rivulet, stuck her enamored, besotted, enchanted essence to the walls, to the patchwork wiles, consecrating, anointing, and clamoring over the midnight coils and Stygian screams. She plaited, twisted, wove their plumes together, gilded knight and beguiling fey, into a crystal melody, theme, anthem, crooned for the moon, the stars, the sun, left naught for the darkness to swallow or consume (not the bleeding vows of her memories, the soiled memories of her beloved home, the pestilent march of cursed boughs). Ecstatic movements and motions, lithe, limber, willowy laurels of a homespun sprig, driven through shallow serpentines and hallowed grounds, brushing against his golden figure like the hint of a whisper, the dulcet murmur of a caress, a furtive, secretive, ethereal blessing. Enigmatic throngs and pulls, entranced and led down primrose paths, light, airy, flickering from limb to limb, a splash, a crash, pawing into the catacombs and rejoicing at the water soaking them both – lacing a crown of merriment over their thorns of heady doldrums. She wasn’t heavy in his presence, weighed down by the wails, the screeches, the terror or horror, slipping delicately into the embrace of his ruminations, seeking deeper absolution through the clouded fabric, the flaxen core.

And all the while, as Roland aided her melancholy, as he filled in the empty, hollowed void of her sentiments – did she grant anything to him? It would’ve been selfish, inconsiderate, and thoughtless to continue plucking the feathers of his grace without rendering him anything in return, without providing aid, wisdom, or an advantage of her soul, trading her benevolence for his generosity. But as they pulled and tangled into lissome, easygoing grace, Lena pondered over the hushed undulations, the masked, lacquered treaties she’d bend and grant, what he required through the fleeting fragments of shadows and schemes. She had no specious armaments to arm the Impersonator, no enemy wounds to salt, no withering decibels of a pestilent force to undermine or contort. She had no trinkets gathered in her calculations, only perseverance and persistence, layers of strength meant to soothe, meant to assuage (and hadn’t he done that already?). Her bestowals were simple, smiles, triumphant gleams, patterns of honeysuckle laughter, unending grins, beneficence in the loathsome darkness - but were these wanted baubles and ornaments, or useless trifles easily discarded once they left the dungeons and oubliettes? Were they puffs of air and smoke, disappearing through the ages, lofting, lilting harmonies restoring naught but singular moments, forgotten in time thereafter, ruined and mauled by trenchant disasters? Caught in the waves, in the wanton, yearning press to please, delight, charm and oblige, she swiveled into the ripples of his mauled deluge, giggled as the spray washed over her form, rippled and congealed into a darker mass of sienna and ambrosia. Her eyes cast a faithful stare, tilting in its curious provocations, jaw clenched tightly, struggling not to pry, but simply gleam over the surface, exude glimpses, sights, of where a heart rested in the gallows, how she could sustain its cavalier exuberances. She glided closer, touched her shoulder to his, conducted and composed a soulful harmony through the rise and fall of the sparkling chute, a chuckle, a tease, drawing closer, a silly ruse playing in truthful bounces and desires. “Is there anything I can do for you, Roland?” Then, a subsequent, swift chase, through the sparkle of her gaze and the fleeting ambience of her vicinity, she rose for a few, slender moments, then came plunging down into the water, diving and scraping at the pool, enjoying the feel, the touch, the cool kiss of the shower scraping over her frame, tumbling towards the obliging stag. If need be, he could hide the answer through the wall of waves, tuck it away so that only her ears could capture the tiny snare.

@[Roland]