Lena would have liked to linger in the threads of the past for moments longer, to allow time to stretch and unfold in what she knew, in what she could recollect and remember, but the snippets broke in quick, exotic motions. Confusion cloistered and bound, locked hold of the riddled catacomb with its eerie spells and unknown calculations, swallowing souls only to spit them out seasons later, letting them suffer and simmer in eternal ignorance. Unfortunately, she too was a victim to incomprehension, not understanding the hows, the whys, the reasons beyond thrown coils, indefinite, hour-ed lures and forgotten synapses, the way time, with his sardonic gaze, strangled, choked, smothered some and allowed others to blossom, bloom, and flourish. If Zikar-Sin, the Haruspex, were amongst the confines, perhaps she could conjure and compose all of the unraveling queries assaulting, overwhelming, her thorned crown upon his monocle prowess, but they were alone, adrift, in the swift hands of Gods and idle trances of enigmas, without answers to conundrums and labyrinths. Solutions and responses were without holy rites and intricate decibels, blending into a ricocheted cacophony, befuddlement and bewitching. In truth, even as Larkspur crooned her own questions and the Mender listened to them echo, leap, bound, off the walls, she could only offer, bestow, grant vague notions and sentiments, unsure of when the blue figure had been caught in time’s snare, and when the paralyzing storms of her past had been left in shards and shambles. She didn’t know if she should have been angry, frustrated, at the Gods’ underhanded wiles and whims, or merely helpless, incapable of aiding her friend before she was absconded in reflective glances and sparked electrocution. Her eyes, however, clung to the strength, the grandeur, the opulence of the mare she’d known, she’d trusted, she’d guided into enemy lines with careful composure and resilient fortitude, mustered it into their garden of puzzles; a stroke of Eden’s wrath. “Its currently Tallsun – but I’m unaware of when you were snatched…” Stolen, taken from us. She tried to piece together the threads of Larkspur’s absence and all of their rattled, pernicious fixtures caught along the way – the battles waged on sand and mist, the pestilence driving them into sepulchers and catacombs, trapping them in underground sanctuary, the stolen children of Arah and their flailing armistices towards falls and cliffs, a Regime threatening to topple underneath their might – at least a year lost in the looking glass, if all of her events were catalogued correctly. And while they’d lived on, pressed their daggers into the earth and swarmed to the heavens, what had Larkspur done: suffered, waged, in the clutches of cold ramparts, icicle reveries, rabbit hole exposition? Her whispers, harnessed and revered, stroked in tremulous warbles, tender gaze riveted across the glowing tirades, then back upon her returned companion. “If I were to guess - at least four seasons have passed.” The world had changed, altered, spun on without the spurred flower, clock ambitions and aspirations scaling, faltering, in their ministrations and machinations, spun and whittled, carved and sculpted, into confusing anomalies – and if the maiden asked, could the fairy provide her everything she yearned for? Could she replicate the missing pieces? Did the femme even want her to – or was there a rhyme, a reason, to bask in the grace of yesteryear, to tumble back into the throes of another lifetime? Which would be more painful?