More mistakes, more errors - the regrets started pouring immediately into her soul, into her essence, into all the fire and brimstone she’d carved for herself – but she refused to break apart. Strength and fortitude brushed up against her flames and coaxed them to pretty little embers, so as she stared, waiting for the backlash, she didn’t fall to pieces. The Songbird was more than silly ditties and vivid strains; and the sooner he realized it the better. Perhaps all of this had been for naught, she’d been stupid and fanciful, bending to capricious whims and dancing along some string she’d inevitably break. He’d see her for the ridiculous way she lived, trying to fight but sinking, drowning, in the weight of her own mishaps, and any time she attempted, any time she fought against the current, it led her back to the rocks, let her crash against its gnarled, roughened ramparts. But that was all she was – vigilant and enduring, flawed and reverent, always desperately clawing and clenching, grasping and entangling herself down into the roots of the soil or the feathered wings of the canopy, losing her way every single time. She’d choose another path, this one filled with pebbles and music, follow it until the ends of the earth and the world, the stars, the horizon, the constellations, would see her for the measures of her true worth. His voice haunted her, the clenched, tightened jaw irritated her, and she raised her head, defiant until the end only because of tenacity and stubbornness holding her there. Don’t you see me now, she wanted to whisper, to shout, to cry, and to laugh. It’s what I’ve been telling you all along,. But she didn’t give it voice, and she didn’t look at Imogen, and she didn’t waver, obstinate, waiting for the strike of inevitably to fire against her, burn her away, piece by piece, and there’d be nothing left of her but those little worthless pieces her mother had always told her she was. The nymph, the fairy, the fey, had gone too far and the world would leave her again, as it always did, conveying hope and promise, then severing, splintering it away. “Yes,” Lena said, she was done, and stood stock-still, a fury, a fiery remnant of worn away shards and finite glories, stoic, even as she wanted to bite her lip, to apologize, to bow her head against the grain. She’d misunderstood somehow, she’d rushed in when she should’ve backed off, and the inevitable result of her defiance punctured her heart. Her words hadn’t been contrived or dipped in melody, hadn’t swept along the edges of the cliffs, hadn’t favored the hedges with beautiful, tangible harmonies; just one, keen, sharp note of rebellion and insurrection against one who likely hadn’t deserved it (just provoked, just nettled, just waited for her to be torn amongst the bundle of thorns).
 
Perhaps it was best she left, wandered and wound her way through the passages until she found her home again, until she was gone, until she was embraced by ice and snow, locked away in the valleys of her home. She’d done some great disservice in being offended, in being taken for nothing, in being unworthy, but she’d shown him exactly why the words had always haunted her, had always taken her, had always been blunt and painful.
 
But, instead of running away, she stayed. She waited to see the results of her latest blunder, for the ax to fall over her neck, to be encased and enshrouded in foolishness. She faced her errors like a soldier, like a knight, shield on the ground, thrown aside, sword lost in the thorns, stance poetic and contained, firm and regal, not bending, not yielding, not swaying – a pattern continued where it’d been left off.