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]