L E N A
black clouds are behind me, I now can see ahead

She knew about illusions, ones of compassion and deceit, ones of betrayal and tenderness, the comfort in warm absolution, then the broken, fragmented pieces of it. She’d been witness and victim, stifled and suffocated, torn and then reassembled, grown and blooming, the blossoming floret in the shades of darkness and mantles of heresy. She knew strength and conviction, and the ghosts that flourished from the tides of trembling insurrection, the wraiths that billowed from elegiac distortions, the poltergeists that maintained prowess in dreams and reality. She knew remnants of another world still held resolution in this one, and the next, and the next thereafter, streamlined into psyches that once corrupted, once distorted, always carried the weight of that savagery tucked into their souls, where it waited, submerged into veins and ire. She knew because she’d lived it, felt the desolation, felt the despair, felt the strangling whims of capricious endeavors and piercing, puncturing claws that ripped and tore, and she pushed the savagery down into the base of her form, made it move, made it dance, made it ripple into mellifluous chords and exotic raptures. Her petals had flourished with specters, had thrived with apparitions, had sprouted from glimmers and semblances of haunting dissolutions, and she’d overcome, she’d prospered, she’d fought and won in the springtime haze, the summer sonnets, the crisp fall and the chilling winter. And this one, this stag before her, reminded her so much of otherworldly things, the spirits in the mist that tugged and tangled their fibers into hearts, that rendered them tormented beings, that disheveled and dissolved into anguished souls. Was he the latter, driven against the wall of these apparitions, collected into their heinous grip, poured and pervaded into the senseless, cracked, split, withered and decayed anarchy of the forest, of the realm, of the palisade? His voice told her, floating chords of uncertainty, grating doubt, audacious clamor in the midst of silent pariahs and courting presences - he didn’t know. Her eyes searched the bounty of his face, the youthful glow captured by indecision, hesitating, then chuckling into the distance, and all at once its cold.

Then why aren’t you running? Why aren’t you skipping? Why aren’t you clinging to the barriers of this forest and waltzing in its runes? I would go with you, for I dearly love to dance. She imparted nothing to him, witness of the pool and the earth, hushed fae in the calamity of shades, phantasms, manifestations of truth, devils and virtues. His smile is cracked, dissonant serenity in the glade, like a treacherous snake or a Cheshire cat, grinning for the sake of grinning, snickering and smirking because deep within the recesses of their hearts, they know their recoiling devastation will enamor and bleed into their chosen aperture. But she is no weakling, no frightened lamb, no trembling, quivering maiden left to rot in the chilling, harbored walls of the copse; she’s been sculpted into something more fine, distinguished, strong in the valleys of mayhem and brutality. He asked her, inquired if he was truly well, and it wasn’t her place to say, not her venue to judge, so she slid the mellifluous chords of her vocals into the earth, allowed the harmony to surround, pervade, with its tender nuances and its genuine beneficence. “Perhaps.” But, from her honeyed, ambrosial stare, he changed again, the smile dissolving into cordiality instead of rancor, and her eyes narrowed briefly, pondering over the simple, quick, swift alteration. A mask pulled over his features, forgotten before, alive now? What was truth and what was fantasy? What was real and what was discarnate? What was disembodied and what was corporeal? She shifted, one hoof placed forward, the beat of divine wings, of seraphic grandeur, the soft, dulcet lullaby of rapture, of reverie, of generosity quelling from her heart. She’d find it, this inspiration, this promising influence, locked in the fancies of his upheaval. The harp rang again, feathered and laced, taffeta whims and assuaging balms. “If not, may I help you?”