For one moment, the frigid junctures and vestiges of Frostfall were but a vivid, beautiful dream: crystallized, glacial prints conforming to chill and ice in one manifested crescendo, one sublime movement and moment; and then they fell, quickly, swiftly, into chaotic shambles.

Ear-splitting screeches, unwinding wails, laments and dirges escaping from the lungs of her cadre bellowed and echoed, wild, frenzied, panicked and adrift, careening in all directions as she bit, clawed, and tore across the scene. Her heart burst at their melancholies, her chest and sides heaved at their worries, and the pictures painted across her eyes were streaked with apprehension, with loss, with forlorn realities, with the piercing guilt of not being fast enough –

They were sirens across the horizon, she and Imogen, Songbird and fox, racing against the pinnacles and treachery of time, off-kilter and seething amongst the deep snow. Vivid streaks along the valleys, pervading, surrounding, the world with song, with hope, with benevolence, opening her mouth wide and granting arias of the humble, of the beneficent, of the hopeful and sublime – guiding them in everlasting conviction, struggling to shroud them over the howls, the weeps, the cries. Perhaps it wouldn’t be enough, melodies springing and infusing, saturating the grounds with their honeyed enchantments and serene manifestations, but they could buy her precious moments, sanctified beats of the drum she, they, didn’t have. The scene they came upon, blood, blood, blood dashed across pelts, across frames, across a mourning mother and her fallen babe, was another galvanizing fixture; together, the arriving forms holstered their determination across brows, against chests, falling into an age-old rhythm, crossing wires and strangers, traipsing closer and closer until they stood before the tiny child with her slashed, maimed form. They were silent, quiet, tranquil, except for the fluttering of the Mender’s anthem, the soft harmony she cajoled, the crooning strain she harbored and divided against the plain. She shut her eyes against the world, against the gut-wrenching dirge of a dame and her lost daughter, against a worried companion, loosened her hold on sanctity and sanctuary, and drummed a beatific beat.

Time flowed, trickling from her frame in bits, pieces, fragments, drawn from a God’s power, bright, brilliant, vibrant essences of glory and wickedness, and like a loom, like a tapestry, they fortified and wove, stitched, laced back perilous wounds and grave lacerations. They varnished and gleamed, washed away, undid wrong from right, combated tempests of destruction and gales of disaster, kissed and caressed the damaging venues, diving headstrong into valleys of nonexistence. She breathed and unleashed an inferno of assuaging supremacy, unfurled and uncoiled the remains of her tenacity, held steadfast through the bewitching storm, and only opened her gaze to the sight when she thought the perils over, finished.

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