Gradually, the apprehension wore away, settled back into its crawling, creeping, slithering compartments, tracing back over forlorn fibers, to rear its sadistic head again another day, another time, another place. She drank and consumed the airs, the wiles, the venues of simplicity and affability, poised aloft for all the world to see as beckoning, welcoming, amiable and delightful, hoping the realm could see a nightingale’s song and a swallow’s endeavors. She wanted to sear over Ashamin’s potent nerves, smother and alight them away, cast them into darker patches, heal and scorch and soothe all at once, when all she could do was smile, radiate, revere, the oaken forest and the clawing mountains, remain regal, fair, and majestic. So the nymph did just that, stood beneath the trembling spheres and the aurora’s moon, a sword, a shield, an awakening, blooming floret constantly damned, constantly shrouded, but stretching past the veil, past the cloak, past the daggers, to reclaim her happiness, her enlightenment, her purpose – whatever it was in that hour, in that echo. The gentleness, the fragility, the delicacy in which they all stepped caused her earnest heart to stomp and dismay the passages and rites of slivers and fragments, and while she listened at the pleasantries, at all the unspoken words and whims, her heart pressed and thudded into fervent, ardent reverie and rapture. She tilted her head in the slightest towards the newcomer Rexanna, the most minute of impish candor, suddenly delighted and enlightened by the intrigue dabbling over her notions, her sentiments, her rationale. “Not necessarily. Perhaps it was you all along.” The nymph winked again, imparted more of her warmth, her tenderness, along the gallows, the doldrums, the swarming, suffocating melancholy, unwilling to be trapped and smothered in its clenching, gnawing fist. Neither of them should be ensnared in the corridors of contempt either. Neither of them should be weary. Neither of them should be lost, driven down strange, altering paths, routes they never wanted to take. So what did they want? What did they crave? What did they yearn to see in the snow-covered lands? What was here for Ashamin? What kept Rexanna in its wake?

Lena always knew what kept her tied and tethered in bouts of devotion, because she loved, she loved, she loved, and would so until it split her apart.

Therein, her beneficent soul kindled, danced, waltzed, in pure apparitions, in whimsical cavalcades, in pure, luminescent visions. As Ashamin finished his introductions, as he settled back into nerves, as Rexanna gestured with blunt, blinding curiosity, Lena molded and fastened her ideas back into place, laced and wove them with charismatic ribbon, folded them over and over in beautiful, colorful taffeta until all they could do was listen, and become part of the melody. “Since you’re both new – and I’m sure infinitely intrigued – would you like a tour of the Basin?” There were so many things to be shared, proffered, and bestowed in the glistening facets of the chilling, wide-open world. Did they want to taste power? Did they want to see damnation? Did they want to be savored and relished by the beauty, by the dominance, by the supremacy reigning within? Or did they want to dabble within the surroundings, only look, only gleam, only polish upon what could have been, what could be seen – or live, away from the boundaries and into the flesh, awaken in the midnight valleys, in the Stygian springs, in the caverns, in the warrens, suddenly alive, fresh, renewed? She presided closer, away from the machines, from the watchful eyes of the sentinels and their cold, metallic embraces, into the shadowed bits of glamor and decadence, as if she’d been born into its threshold, and not a refugee of its wake so many seasons ago. Imogen maneuvered beside her, a beckoning chirp bubbling and brewing across her foxy presence, and they both suddenly loomed like sirens, promising serenity, offering tranquility, in the apertures of the frigid earth.


@[Ashamin] @[Rexanna]