The demonic interlude fused into fragmented pieces; a traipsing heathen besotted and lusting for flesh, a billowing, serpentine hold of carnivore heartlessness, a ferocious, plunging abhorrence, a gaping maw stretched over the sanction of her features, one snap away from sudden onslaught and peril. But where she sang, where she crooned, where she chanted and trilled, came the merciful serenade, and she stared, gazed, into the void of the beast’s jaws as they disintegrated from infidel and monster to lad and boy. There’d been no time to panic, no time to foster apprehension, no amount of moments to collect the tangled threads of her past instances, junctures, and seasons, and so her regal, gallant heart pierced through the dangling folds of nightmares and crusades, laid another cretin to rest. Amidst the delicate silence, the change, the morphing, the slide of devils into the unknown, she stood stalwart, deliberately poised, concocted, into a nymph silhouette, like an unmoving laurel, cast into boughs of pine and fir, persistent and endurable. The Mender witnessed the alteration, the beginning sculpture and structure of the colt, where wolf ended and child began all over again, stretched into the quiet, shed of pestilent avarice, left to the facets of his own persona and character. The sylph guard permitted one breath to slide through the air in a swift turn, watched the puff of tenacity linger and curl into the strange world with terrible creatures who ensnared babes, youths, the innocent and blameless, pulled her lips apart again to bestow a graceful hymn. Meant to soothe rather than scald, meant to assuage rather than bend him again into something else altogether, it dipped and swirled into the atmosphere, light, delicate, airy, a midnight breeze, a virtuous crescendo as she bent towards his form, nodded towards Imogen. The kitsune settled closer to the once-behemoth, waving her long, ivory tails, puffing out pockets of heat from the radiant texture of her heat, of her magic, of her incantations, as Lena composed her dulcet lullaby.

She paid careful restraint, his awakened stare rendered her flanked and at a distance, and she allowed him this necessity, bowing into the cross of snow and ice, smiling and peeking at the youth with her gentle, honeysuckle eyes and tender grin. “Can you walk?” His need for sustenance, and warmth judging by his shivers, the damp pull of Frostfall’s vestiges, required movement and motion; they would find no tender shoots laden and bestowed by the borders – only the silent, dangerous opus of the metal sentinels and chilling wind. The Songbird’s intentions were clarified as her cranium swung in the direction of the hot springs, wild, ghostly tendrils of dissipating heat coiling above the frozen sheen, hoping he’d be able to march over the length of snow and ice. If he was incapable she could provide assistance too, and generously kneeled, brushing her knees into the grasping rime, offering a shoulder if he couldn’t muster the strength to wander any farther. The compassionate regime continued as she turned to meet his eyes again, hoped not to see titanic exploits or molten, macabre desires, but innocence, somehow renewed amidst the loss of depravity. The lull, the lilt, of her mellifluous tunes sprung in amiability and affinity. “I’m Lena. What’s your name?”