The other’s story, enlightening, pressing, intriguing, ushered the wayward scathing, rancor, and bitterness away from the nymph’s mind – she scraped at the pathways of Alysanne’s family monikers, the fleeting glimpses of scattered remnants of heritage and resemblances, pondered over what made family beyond the reaches of blood. She’d fastened herself so readily to emblems, crests, and creeds, mountains towering over blossoms, to cretins and creatures who presided over her heart as meticulous bouts of devotion, forthright fidelity, adherence, and allegiance to cretins, vagabonds, and blackguards, each one a wonderful sight in her eyes. She’d sang to them in the darkest reaches of their innermost voids, she’d bled and torn for their renounced vows, she’d chased down demons in hollowed, hallowed corridors, daggers reaching and howling for their souls to be safe and warm, from the smirking, strong Deodat, to the wily, cunning Faelene, the poisonous Doctor, to the charitable, charismatic Roland – just as cursed, just as consumed as they. An embrace of the wickedness, and then a loathing of all her wretchedness, forever followed, but she knew, deep in the fathoms of her quiet, refined essence, when all the secrets ended and all the confessions were stained red, they’d do the same for her. She’d tended to far more war hymns, to far more ichor campaigns and crusades for them, for the peaks, for the valleys, then the bloodline running rampant through her frame, unruly and unholy. But Alysanne had not yet encountered that, hadn’t been forced to endure plagues, pestilence (except this new one, forcing them into holes, refuges, and havoc), and it was a welcoming whim to discover such facts. While she admitted the notion of wandering, the close binds of the mist and abyss hadn’t yet molded into her movements, into her motions, it would be nice to imagine they’d eventually carve and sculpt their way into her elegance – without bloodshed, without upheaval, without anarchy breathing and fusing into her regality. Lena’s thoughts clamored, and through the echoes, through the arias, through the ditties, a strain sprang, bounding and joyous, along her throat, tumbling into the chamber. “I have no doubt you’ll find and create more kindred spirits.” She laughed for a moment, remembering ways she’d crossed lines and trails of her fused comrades and companions, from wounded soldiers to petulant threshold wanderers, weary and confused. “Sometimes we find our closest friends and family in the most uncanny of ways.” A pause, another rumination, and she fastened a wink in front of it, a sage and fairy hastened into bright, brilliant chords. “Hold onto them.”

The following subject, however, forced the giggles to die and decay along the walls, and she was sorry she’d brought up the queries at all, forcing the mare to relive one of the many debacles and catastrophes lined in their memories. All at once, Lena remembered the monsters beating, breathing down her neck too, pieces of familiar faces twisted and distorted, misshappened, misaligned, tainted and stained by the poisonous vectors brewing and brooding outside their cloister. Kahlua, once gentle, then fanged, Imogen rampaging with her eternal, glorious fire, and the healer doing naught to stop the inferno, trickling ghostly songs through the smoky haze, Psyche, broken and malformed, beasts craving hearts instead of stalwart fancies. Alysanne had her own devils to fight against, friends forged into fiends, lost souls reaching for sanctity and only finding flesh. Her face fell into an obvious frown, and Imogen, from the corners of her amusement, chirped a sullen call. The painted femme’s mare was a familiar tale, bounding across the sanctuary’s grounds, a constant anomaly chosen to plague and haunt them into eternal damnation. “I’m sorry.” She was, for many reasons, and her eyes wandered over the reaches of their glowing sector, wondering how to mold further assistance into the rancorous regards. “Is all well now? Is there anything I could do?”


@[Alysanne]