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]