There is love in your body but you can't hold it in,
It pours from your eyes and spills from your skin,
Tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks,
And the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts



Heartstrings swerved towards a tangible pull, the force of her insecurities melted, corroded, into an elegiac twinge of melancholy and frustration. There were many things she didn’t crave, hunger for in the midnight toil or the morning dew, and yet, one continued to surface again and again along the brink of her youthful mind. When the pulse of ferocity swung into her chest, beating a dreadful din, a haunting, savage decree, she’d fought it, but also embraced it. Instead of chasing away the predator amore, the carnivore reverie, the wolfish, rapacious, ravenous pleasure, she’d taken it into her possession, lacquered the ferocious threads to her plaited soul, allowed the chains of bestial shades to corrupt and devour her compassionate, tender veil. She’d spent all of her short life avoiding the condemnation of her lineage, where mad kings cherished terror, where heedless, merciless adversaries combed the earth for their next sacrilege, where the eaves loomed to paralyze ignorant dwellers, and now, she’d invited it into her being. She’d allowed the ruthless benedictions, irreverent invocations, and barbarous calculations to enter her soul, let them consume, thrive, and swallow the bountiful edges of her once whimsical hide, eat at her divine core until it too was stained and unholy. Was she as iniquitous as they, massacring, bludgeoning, destroying what was once precious? Was she as licentious as they, brutal, bloody and ravaging demons, sullying the earth with their derisive, impertinent blades? Was she to be as wicked and vile as her father? Was she to be as haunted and unhinged as her mother? How many times had she told herself that strength did not come from the trappings of her lineage, those inhumane, sadistic and vicious conjectures, but from the course of her own stalwart, valiant efforts? Her own version of potency, reverberating kindness, tranquil opulence, quiet, ardent optimism, glowing confidence, created in the hollow, hallowed woods where she’d escaped danger and cheated death - had she so readily forgotten it? Had she truly been lost on the fields of battle, incapable and blinded by the violence, that she’d had to trap and unleash it herself? Had it really been so easy for her to fall? How close had she actually been to grace, and was it too late to return?

Disgusted, her eyes failed to leave the tracings of the icicled wall. The nymph’s gaze, cold and aloof, reflected and bounded off the sharpened edge of her horn as it rested against the chilled surface, rigid stare fixated on any stained emblem it’d managed to ensnare from the battlefield. When she noticed nothing, she allowed her countenance to drift elsewhere, focusing on the cold, how it brushed against her coat, savage, threatening, and she allowed the briefest shudder to overwhelm her form. She’d been still too long, caught in the web of frustration and insecurity, and she likely would have conjured another form of self-loathing if the icy sovereign had not made his approach. Lena heard the flap of his owl’s wings first, and gave herself just enough time to scramble on the icy floor, not elegant, not graceful, but foolish, trembling and weary, sinking against the waves of her scorn. Of all the creatures to stumble upon her darkened, mangled soul, he was the last she would have wanted. Who longed to remind their leader of their fragility? Of their weakness, of their failings? Of how, despite always striving to become something useful, they still fell and sunk to perils and tribulations? This was not how she yearned him to see her, scorched and delicate, fragile and feeble, incapable of handling a side of herself she didn’t like. As he came towards her, concern etched in his voice, in his touch, she struggled again to rise from the dank, frigid ground, coercing her form against the wall, appearing capable of motion and movement. The sylph painted a forced smile across her lips, hoped to render it as one of good cheer, of a fanciful edge she used to possess. “Mauja." Even her tones proffered daunting, specious lies, painfully dipped into silken threads that warbled and crooned, but contained no previous, precious luster. “I’m fine.” Terse and brief, they spilled over the cavern walls, echoed in rough shambles, and she poised her eyes elsewhere, anywhere, off the floor and across the crowded parlor, resting upon his own burnt, scarred hide. He was worried, anxious, for her, when his own wellbeing was in crisis. If Lena could have hated herself anymore, it would have been in this agonizing moment, where she didn’t deserve kindness or affection. Perhaps, she was truly wretched. Her words flailed again, old patches of tenderness and benevolence searing through the worn, duplicitous enamel. “How are you? Your wounds?” She tried to carefully maneuver her lithe body around the ailing monarch, twisting away to give him more space, offering something besides her morose guard, her tangled, frail deceptions.