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]