There’s a hollow empty sound coiled around her veins, and it drummed endlessly against her mind - too late, too late, too late - as she stretched her limbs and raced across the scenery. The rain dampened her sights, but not her head, because she knew the sad, somber wail of death, the way it drowned out the jovial serenades and just left a morose, heavy curtain across one’s membrane; an ache never quite fading away. Her healing endeavors would have no purpose here, and still, she came anyway, incapable of staying away when creatures were hurting, when the worst was unfolding, struggling to become anything more than a voice in prayer, a shelter in the storm.
 
Lena’s eyes adjusted to the scene and her pace slowed, trying to decipher all the figures, all the frames, nestled against the fallen beast. She saw the Laurelin (from where?), Johnny’s fleeing body in the cool mist, beautiful Enna murmuring to the dark prince, Mortuus and his reverence, and then finally to the collapsed form of their King. For a moment, she could only stand there in utter disbelief – he was a constant, a presiding figure, something she’d hold akin to the mountains, to the valleys, to the summits. As long as he stood, so did the Basin, protective, potent, and deadly, wiling away his hours across the vast snow, a moving piece of desolation, but someone, something one could count on – and in the weight and wake of so much chaos, so much destruction, he’d been a beacon, a pillar, to guide them towards safety and shores.
 
Another part of her understood that a piece of the auroras had been lost there, in the abyss of his last breaths and his vacant eyes – they’d all been a portion of the once-Edge, the original martyrs clinging to the steppe, to the frozen caves, to the wilderness as bitter, rancorous refugees. There’d been so few of them left in these parts – some, like Mauja, had gone back to the cliffs and the sea, some, like Psyche, had flickered away in torment and disgust, only to be found seasons later, gone but not forgotten. Deimos had been a piece of those lifelines, of those memories, of those hours that had long since drifted away. Hardly anyone there knew the stories, the agonies, the defeats, and she’d tried to pass them on as best she could with a crowd and a song, but it wasn’t the same without the enduring tenacity, the persevering pride. The Songbird realized she was one of the last ones to comprehend the stages of the Qian, Mirage’s blackbird desires, Kri’s vengeance and requital, and it was a sickening feeling, to be alone.
 
But she would honor him, for leading them, for cherishing them, for believing in them even as the days became more arduous, more demanding. She traced forward, quiet, incapable of saying anything worth the measure of the man before them, and bowed her head, offered silent prayers for his grace, for his homage, for his stature in heaven (because he deserved it, no matter the viciousness coiled within his frame). Then, she twisted her head to the snapping charm nestled amidst her tresses, only recently placed in the Giving Tree, taken back when the lights had dimmed, and placed it within a cord of his mane, next to the withered petals of Enna’s beautiful flower crown. It was a small gesture in a legion of faith and sadness, but she had nothing else to give.


Fault lines tremble underneath my glass house
But I put it out of my mind long enough to call it courage
To live without a lifeline