The sun was on her face and in her mane, radiant and obliging, caressing and holding, and for just a few moments, she was at peace. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scents of spring; the little wispy vestiges of blossoms and blooms, the pathways captured and enticed by shoots and saplings, the fluttering of finch wings as they descended and sang. These were moments to cherish, with nothing and no one barbing, pressing a thorn in her heart, in her side, in her ear, where her memories didn’t wash over with tangible, horrifying things, where her aches and pains were varnished over with the nuances of dawn and morning. The nymph wanted for nothing but those pinnacles of serenity, for tranquility to nestle itself down into her shoulders and bones, for horrors and eldritch titans to cease warring themselves over trifles and meaningless pursuits. So she felt them, dancing there on the bend of time and space, drifting in and out of heavenly, garden borders, blessed and blissful in the land of sweetness and song. The Songbird waltzed for no one else, simply dug her toes in sand, in surf, in shoal, in soil, for the taste, the relish, of dreams and benedictions, walking on dulcet lullabies and quiet, enticing hallelujahs, brushing over harpoons and thistles, laying waste to chaos and acrimony. She stood the test of hours, minutes, decades, seasons, layered herself amongst the bracken and folds of shadows, tucked her whims, her mercies, down into the tender nourishing of her soul, and let them be awakened in the tremors of daybreak. The femme might have even rolled in the endless plains of green, composed sonnets about great, glimmering grass and the sparkling essence of their wild, elongated tassels, touched a few melodious notes about sanctuaries and sanctums; but her eyes were drawn to the sun over and over again.
 
She wondered if he was a merciful God. She wondered if she was being tested once more, on her might, on her dedication, on her perseverance and strength – if she was always meant to be so close, be so near, to something, anything, that she cherished, loved, and never be able to truly have it. She wondered if she’d been fated all along to be the token, the winner, of naught, if she’d been enticed by destiny and providence instead of carving her own path to calamity.
 
She wondered if there was something out there for her now – a purpose, a rhyme, a reason for why she always seemed to lose.
 
Was there another road she’d failed to see? Was there another avenue, route, trail she hadn’t noticed, and instead, wound her way around each and every folly until there were only dead ends? Had she been too blind to see anything else but -
 
Imogen chirped, alive and dashing between her legs, and the Songbird followed her through mists and clouds, because the world wasn’t meant for torture and deceit, she was sure of it –
 
She was praying for it.

The brook ran by and she listened to a swallow’s song, eyes closed, basking in the breeze, before opening her eyes, pulling off into grasslands and shoal, soil and sonnets, a poet’s roughened prose made by springtime ease and the pursuit of hope. They ascended to small hills and dulcet outcrops, pondering over the streamline of possibilities, the endless, unwavering hope that still managed to burn, blossom, and bud within her chest (how – when she should’ve lost it all by now), maneuvering past sullen rocks and trying to make them sparkle, make them gleam, with the eternal glory of beautiful, incandescent arias instead of damning laments.

They might’ve danced elsewhere and beyond – towards imagined castles in the distance, with fountains of youth and triumph, where beasts never tied and tethered them like enemies to the floor, where no one was ever squandered, ever broken, had a ripple of noise not interrupted the fluid waltz. The Mender stopped immediately at the echo of words, at the soft, ginger approach of more hooves on grass, turning towards it as an echo of nymph-like posture, ready to dash from satyrs and sadness.

But the unknown femme was full of compliments and smiles, and Lena relaxed, dropped the eager, fervent pose, scattering her own features with an earnest grin and a solidified regality. She bobbed her crown, careful not to let the barbs and thorns fall out, the whisper of damnation to trickle from her brow, paying heed to kindness when it’d been expressed to her (such a fond, fickle thing – to hear generosity and regard in the days of sorrow and melancholy). “Oh, pleased to meet you, Raeden.” She pondered over the information readily available: from the Edge, unknown and unrecognizable, a deer at their side (like so many before her; beautiful, walking glimpses of the forest, pieces of oak and pine and maple, whittled from moss and boughs, twigs and the intricate secrets of rose gardens), and gathered necessities to express her own notions. “I’m Lena, from the Aurora Basin. This is my companion, Imogen,” and the ivory kitsune stepped forward (too keen, too aware), and the lithe, honeyed Songbird couldn’t understand the wariness floating from her bonded, the pieces and sparks of growls growing, simmering below the surface, chiming and echoing across their connection as an incensed, coiled wave. She ignored it, briefly, acknowledging the systematic approach of greetings, not comprehending the nature of foreboding, settling for warm, mellifluous queries, polite and courteous. “What is your lovely companion’s na-,” and she ceased mid-sentence, eyes finally pinpointing on what was unsettling the white vixen.

There, resting upon the mare’s brow, was Roland’s ruby circlet.

Lena knew it instantly. She remembered diving amidst the stream of mermaid lagoons to grab it. She recalled fixing it with seashells and adorning it with bright, wonderful sentiments (love, she’d known it to be, all the love and adoration she’d held for the blue-eyed brigand). They’d polished it with seawater and laid it along his cave in hopes he’d find it, understand it for its worth; all those unspoken, merry things she’d been too afraid to proffer, so she’d bestowed this instead. She’d been sure she’d laced it with her heart, with her soul, with her essence, but there it remained, not on his horn, somewhere off in the distance, but there, on Raeden’s.

Something in her chest dropped and a layer of absolute apprehension rolled over her frame, curling and foaming and gripping her lungs, her ribs, her bones like a vice. There was panic for where’d he gone and why he’d lost something she’d thought as precious (but maybe he hadn’t?), if he was dead and she’d found it on a scavenging expedition, knowing full well he wouldn’t ask for it again, or if he’d tossed it aside, like it was nothing (like she was nothing). The question resounded off her mouth instantly, and she forgot to pull back the mask, to do anything other than round her eyes in disbelief, in shock, in despair, for another memory tarnished, withered, and decayed. “What a beautiful circlet – may I ask where you found it?”

  I feel like you just saw a ghost.
 
Perhaps she had. Maybe she waltzed in and amongst phantoms, as ethereal as the rest, blending through foggy fingertips and forgotten glimpses of what it was to be alive. Her heart felt wretched, tied and knotted and gnarled by the ashen taste in her mouth, by the tangible particles of aches and pains clustered around her lungs, her throat, her mind. She was nothing again, one more flower withering amidst the soil, lost without the sun, the soil, the earth to mind its tenderness, with naught but its own perseverance to rely upon – and when that too was gone, its little leaves and blooms curled in amongst itself, wilted, forgotten, forlorn. Abandoned again, an endless, desolate tune, if not in body, then also in spirit, because even small trinkets, ripened and glossed with symbols and adoration, blessings and benedictions, couldn’t make it past the wraiths and specters, shadows and ruins. The Songbird seemingly wilted there, without arias and melodies, without sonnets and refrains, tossed out into the wilderness, the void, just as she’d been so many times before (and each time hurt, each one more painful than the last, because she kept feeling, she kept dreaming, she kept hoping that someday the world wouldn’t be so brutal). He’d just left it, by a stream, cradled in the tides and tales of their ventures – with no meaning, with no reasoning, with no motivation but the stars and horizon. No more need to turn his ears towards a gentle trill or a harmonious whistle; no more need to follow whimsical notes or mellifluous keys, fancies and thrills and silliness gone. She tried to swallow the rush of emotions lingering upon her soul, to push and brush and forget just as easily as everyone else seemed to do – but the tears still stung behind her eyes, and the wishes, the dreams, the fantasies she’d once conjured died so swiftly, so quickly, that it was all she could do to simply stoic, composed, regal and defined even as the earth consumed one more of her aspirations. “You haven’t offended me,” the fairy proffered from the midst of her sorrow, quiet and serene, tucked against all the blossoms flickering and faltering their way. Imogen brushed against her legs, offering silent encouragement and dedication, while Lena polished away at her veneer, desperately scraping over the tarnished fabric and the salted wounds.
 
The truth, however, came across her tongue like the spring – gentle and wavering, kind and altruistic, delivering absolution when no one else had bothered to do the same for her. “I’d given that circlet to a friend.” She raised her head, gaze filled with tears, blinked away moments later, staring at the other maiden, then the horizon, knowing full well it had no more answers than she. Her questions had ceased anyway, locked away in the chasm of knowledge, in the bricks of sagacity that piled amongst her chest – she was nothing and no one to him, and while the notion was brutal, harsh, and tormenting, she wouldn’t be the same to another. “Though it seems he had no need of it anymore.”

  Kindness and compassion had the ability to be materialized simply out of nothing, nothing at all but the whisper of wind and the ongoing sorrow of yesteryear. Lena should’ve known it, should’ve understood it, because she administered the same tenderness, the same gentleness, the same, affectionate regard each and every day, but when it was gilded, proffered, and bestowed back to her, she was often without words. Her heart clenched and coiled, distorted and contorted, in utter shambles and slivers while Raeden talked, and proposed she take it back.
 
Maybe he just lost it and he could be looking for it? It’d been a wonderful thought, and at first all Lena wanted to do was shake her head in dismay, in disagreement, for he’d been gone for almost a year, maybe more – traversing, ghosting, coasting along somewhere she couldn’t see, where she didn’t belong, and it’d taken her this long to finally understand that. His silence, his disappearance, had been deafening, a constant ringing in her ears, a din of mockery and defiance for all the things she’d thought and felt. Yet, as soon as the considerate femme extended the invitation to take it back, she was struck with confusion. What would she do with it? Would she wear it like a fallen emblem, a symbol of her lost love? Would she throw it into the unfreezing lake, where she’d first given it to him, and watch it sink to the bottom (on fields of anger, on yielding croons of defiance)? Would she simply toss it aside somewhere, let it collect dust and ash as the seasons churned, lose its sheen, its glimmer, its gloss? Her jaw clenched and uncertainty quelled, brimming and overflowing her mind with its capricious, mercurial tendencies; a part of her refused, because it’d be of better use with someone else, beautiful and incandescent, hitting the sun with its charismatic flecks and ruby stone. Then another portion of her caved, still incapable of letting go. “Would you -,” she stopped there, glancing back at the mare with ambivalence and unease; she surely didn’t deserve this warmth and concern. “Only if you wouldn’t mind.” Her smile quivered back into place, confused, perplexed, befuddled by generosity and what to do with it. A final lie clutched and clawed its way past her jaw, full of forced, forged merriment, hope, and delight. “Perhaps you’re right - I’ll find him one day and he may have it back.”

  The beautiful amount of compassion shown almost had the maiden drawn into tears, but she quietly blinked them away as Raeden proffered what had once been hers – watching the trinket fall gracefully to the ground, then to the little deer’s maw, still gilded, still shining, still as radiant as the day it’d been found. She looked at it, the opulent splendor, the wondrous gold, everything she’d imagined Roland to be, contained in the threads of sewn metal and varnished wealth, and wondered, for the thousandth time, why and how and when she hadn’t been enough for him. “Thank you so much,” the nymph granted and obliged, uncertain as to how she could repay the femme, eyes glancing towards the pale mare, listening to all her statements, all her proclamations. The smile returned to her features, no longer so haunted, so melancholy, restored and renewed by the passions shown by another; she laughed a little, trying to wear away the stiffness, the regrets, the rancor that had been staining and tarnishing her features. “Is there anything I can do for you in return?”  Her gaze flicked back and forth, from the fawn to the mare, Imogen kindly reaching for the circlet and taking it from the outstretched wiles of the radiant buck, enclosing it between her teeth in safekeeping. The fox even gave the other companion a firm nod, stalwart and protective, ensuring valor, intrepidity, and security through embers and blood; the jewels wouldn’t be lost or taken again under her watch. Where they’d go, where they’d land, where they’d be taken to was another matter entirely – and the kitsune could feel her bonded’s mind whirling with the possibilities, with the anguish, of the ultimate decision. Her hopes were no longer encased in butterfly wings or flickers of the sun; she’d seen them cast aside far too many times. Perhaps the hour, the instant, the moment would come where she could answer the cumbersome question, but for now, she just swallowed the choices for another day.