The capricious weather sulked and brooded outside the greenhouse walls, dark, cloudy, moody, shifting in mercurial efforts, giving them just enough time to tend and finish with their current duties; Lena shifted a few sprouts here and there, Imogen cleaned up any fallen shrubbery lining the sod floor. She hummed a merry little tune despite the inclement gathering amidst their sanctuary, only a little more hurried in her efforts, presuming to return to her cavern before sleet or rain struck its formidable, chilling blows, when the mountains roared, when the tempests echoed. However, a strange sense of urgency curled and coiled within her soul as another being clicked against the glass, and both nymphs turned to see Rikyn’s companion, Duir, pushing his hooves along the veneer. The Mender dipped underneath their opening, smiled, grinned, beseeched the noble stag with a fine, regal nod, friendly and amiable as ever, but he seemed rushed, fervent, restless, immediately bleating out commands she couldn’t understand, but Imogen caught, snagged, and hastened to her brow.
 
Need you carried on the wind, between their connection, along the blue depths of the fox’s gaze, and the Songbird stared briefly along the horizon, wondering who had been caught in the elements, who’d been snared, who’d been gnarled, who’d been whittled down – and wasted no time thereafter.
 
They were another segment of the tempest, following Duir’s clattering beat, a rise and fall of echoing rhythms, emboldened, daring, forgoing the possibilities of being lost amidst the mountain, the whipping snow, the chilling wind, the strong, enduring persistence of a wailing summit; it didn’t matter, not when someone required her powers, not when another ailed and faltered, stumbled, bled, scarred, wounded, and obliterated along the onslaught of so many terrors. She tried not to ponder any further than necessary, uttered oaths and prayers under her breath, only narrowed her eyes when the pellets first hit her face, as they drifted away and away and away from their precious sanctum, blending into the fold of malice and menace; a beacon of light, a vessel of hope. Everything became a blur then though, she barely managed to trail after Duir, calling out to him every couple of strides, waiting for his answering call before turning or twisting in that particular direction, racing, pulsing, pervading the loam with her essence, struggling to maintain calm in the midst of the unknown.
 
When she came upon the group, they were initially mere outlines in the nocturnal bedlam; she drew closer and closer so that they weren’t shadows or silhouettes, but didn’t waste her time prospering hellos or granting respectable nods of her crown – if she’d been summoned, there’d been a reason, a notion, for the foreboding gathering. Her eyes swept from one to another, Rikyn, Toulouse, Roland (and here she attempted a smile just for him, but it was gone in an instant, effort and promises fueling her, invoking her, conjuring her to do more than stand), and the two strangers, locked in an embrace, blood pooling, wounds open, lacerated, torn.
 
“I’m Lena,” she said to them both (winged, stragglers from elsewhere), kindness, warmth, and delicacy pouring from her stance, from the depths of her grin, to the beneficence enshrouding her entire being. “I can help you,” she murmured, and at once, took a massive intake of air, didn’t mind the rainfall, the enigmas, or the torturous divide. She simply closed her eyes and began to sing.
 
The tune was mellifluous, fluid, sublime, a triumphant coil of virtue and splendor, forgoing and forgiving trespasses, sweeping hands of fate, kismet, serendipity, curling back over ruined sanctions and bloodied sinew. It rippled along marred flesh, persistent like it’s owner, angelic, seraphic, dream-like in its haze, gliding upon the tyrannical winds and the urgent melancholies, fixating on repair, on mending, on soothing aches, pains, and anomalies. The hands of time swept through too, echoed on the fringes of her power, illustrious, golden, gilded by the passage of sparks and divinity, polishing and pulsing until their flesh was whole, until it was steady, until exhaustion was no longer a blight on their brows, a press on their bones. The song went on and on, beautiful, incandescent, radiant against the definition of darkness, eventually ending on one more tender note, and her eyes opened again, hoping she’d done enough. “How do you feel?”