There is love in your body but you can't hold it in,
It pours from your eyes and spills from your skin,
Tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks,
And the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts

Rapture, majestic and enchanting, molded its whimsical fineries into the lavished reverie of her alluring heart. The essence of belonging, the taut embrace of home, had strung its petal soft silk along her mind, enthralled, captivated, and entranced; a welcoming, beguiling segment of life for one who had never felt the tender warmth of brethren. It was a cordial ravishment, smoothly composed over a cumbersome entity, breathing hushed, vacant whispers, humming mellifluous tunes. What was once a burden could become a forgotten anomaly, what was once a tribulation could become consigned to oblivion, what was once cold become melted – and she longed to experience it all. Now, however, she yearned to entreat someone else to the possibility of an enriching, affable homecoming.

A nymph again, tangled into the drying court of leaves and boughs, the smooth conjecture of her lithe, limber body was fairyesque, satin movements against the brush of crackling armaments. She caressed the earth with a dulcet croon, motions harkened by grandeur of wood sylphs, searching for another desolate heart. Into the alms of anarchy and the barbs of bedlam, she combed the molded, carved scents of others, individuals cut from serenity, entombed into the threshold as she had once been, waiting, lilting, wilting. Many were of other species, with taffeta wings or solid, corporeal forms, and she had been quickly aware that only the horned, sworded individuals were permitted in her chosen realm. She paused, silent tranquility in the arms of the glade, and listened, ached for the echoes of another, yearned for the resonance of a future comrade. Luck would strike moments thereafter, the crush of sticks, the rush of action stirs her ears, clamors her sentiments. An excited thrill enters her body again, a wanton spirit stirred into action, and she slides against the wood again, coquette dancer strings rejuvenated, restored by the presence of another.

Yet, upon her arrival, she was not the first.

A brightly hued creature kindled her attention, motley colors forming some metallic statuary – she tried not to stare, held no inclination to be rude. Instead, she blossomed into a genuine smile, dipped her head in an affable greeting, and continued her soft movements towards the other stranger, the one she’d came for. He was another moment of study. What should have been a proud, uplifted cranium of strength, dominion and sword was lowered, giving off a desolate, forlorn appearance. His features painted an entity of loneliness, despair, and isolation – she couldn’t stand it. Whether this was hastened by her own history, her own moments of cloistered solitude, or by the heavy, heady magnitude of his encumbered body, she was a rhythmic column of beneficence, ardor glancing off armor. Drawing herself close to his frame, she lowered her face to match his own, tipping her head to enter his span of sight, grin threaded through the webs of melancholy. “One cannot see a handsome face when it stares at the ground.”

There is love in your body but you can't hold it in,
It pours from your eyes and spills from your skin,
Tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks,
And the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts

He is made of quiet moroseness, this wayfaring stranger, filled with a silent sensation of melancholy, intertwined with vacant, hollow desolation. Plaited with cumbersome strings, the Gordian knot of ethereal despair, the expressionless, emotionless tides of his face have no ebb, no flow, tied, sown into that boundless weight of existence and turmoil. He suffers with a hushed, inaudible cord, pulled across in lacquered layers of his mottled hide, pride, twisted into the limbs of a shambled, indistinct, hallowed caress. The taciturn, soundless chords muffled into the dried, intrepid lands, his intimacies a cherished, furtive blend of secrets and assurances from the eyes of glades and newfound, idle companions. What does he want here? What does he search for? What does he run from? What does he hide? Her mind turned with these burning queries, but never voiced their recognition, their tumultuous credence, their thirsty bane. She too was made from enigmas, quandaries and paradoxes, and had no bearing to ruin another’s carefully woven obscurity. But from her position, head tipped, dipped, into his keen vision, he watched her, sullen and farouche, bristled against her words, a challenge hastened from one of his many swords. He’s driven his posture away from her charming figure, like a ghost harkening to his fellow spirits, to take his corpse away from the bright, complex frame gazing into his rigid stare. Her first thought is to laugh at him, this silly, gallant beast – but she doesn’t. Instead, her smile broadens, movements and motions like a warrior’s grace, poets and sonnets molded from a laureate’s mouth and pen, voice a calm, soothing dulcet tone, ignited at his provocation. “Grime is easily washed away. Fortitude is not.” The grin, corporeal and vast, doesn’t lose hold or sight of his bearings, even as an eye is lowered towards hers, disputing, questioning. Her answer, honeyed from her parted lips, is as valiant as the former, direct, brazen. “I see strength in your eyes.” The smile’s prominence doesn’t dim upon his adherence of her request – she and the other are allowed to see his risen head, the noble brow, or his own version of a grin, thin, wanting, bereft of emotion, but the cool appearance, awakening, is enough.

Following suit, her regal tiara is lifted, ears tilted towards the other, colorful individual amongst the gathered throng. His voice, clamoring, is enriched and infused with hued words as bright as his coat, mane and tail – a soft giggle is poised from her lips at his response, succeeded by a wink from her radiant gaze. She doesn’t know what he’s made from, or where he comes from either, but he was a curious thing, wrapped in veils and shrouds of metallic canvas. But then, before her inquisitiveness continued, another din shattered the remnants of a boisterous peace, a tumultuous uproar, shrieking, vulture voices that could entomb weaker flora and fauna. Her stare is immediately regarded upon him, this emaciated, skeletal creature, with a meticulous study, attempting to register whether this is idle prattle, confusion, or the sickly-sweet clawing of madness. Flushed, varnished, with the sugared, saccharine, infusion of one’s own mind content to destroy, scatter, splintering and fracturing the wholeness of reality, the tangible manifestations, until it dims. Then the stabbing, lacerating, plunging convulsions implode upon themselves, and they are left with naught but the addled scenes their membrane contorts. She wondered what battle contorted his siege with the hot, smothering air, if in the humid, flagrant heat he lost sight of his realm, delirious with the stroke of the Sun God’s rays. But she, like the others, hardened just the same at his crashing approach, his sinuous sibilating, the feverish coil of his wanton hysteria. Her composure, still enlightened, still elegant, became ever more rigid, defined, postured muscle of lithe lines inclined forward too, step by step with the melancholy beast. The nymph’s brilliant strength, conviction, heart, poured from the assemblage of sylph sinew, rhapsody in the cherished moments of perilous foreboding. She took another movement onward, one slight, precise motion ahead of the argent stallion, crown aloft, proud, but still, not threatening. Her words remained sweet, genial, cordial, but never wavering, never hesitant, never withering. A quiet trill, a soothing, assuaging tone embossed from affable lips. ”Are you all right?”

There is love in your body but you can't hold it in,
It pours from your eyes and spills from your skin,
Tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks,
And the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts

The descent of madness: the mania dissipates as quickly as it had arrived, snatching at the air then fleeing into the ruins of the day. The high-pitched laughter, the contorted, twisting movements, and the withering decibels of agony before rushing, plunging, into the distance; unsettling remnants of a sinuous torture. She chose not to focus on it, the disconcerting potency that trickled through her veins, that echoed in the stream of memories, that drove reminders of another world intertwined in her youthful glow. Instead, her attention turned back unto the newcomer, drifting in his own weary wake. He too had the appearance of fragility now, like the weight of earth pressed upon his soul, the chilling precipice of cumbersome interludes, the hushed depths of unsaid quandaries. What tore against him in these blinding, fleeting fragments? The hardships of the day, the torrential hysteria, or the grinding glimpse of themselves – these strange appearances of welcoming parties? She wondered and listened, in her quiet, earnest platitude, allowing his voice to drift off the seams of the forest, off the walls of the hot, scorching glade, to linger and withdraw into the copse. He continued with their dispute, lofting, lilting and charming as it was, the duel of strength and weakness. Where she saw power and might in many forms, not merely pouring from undulating muscles and vibrant sinew, but also amongst the mind, the ample machinations and calculations, the teasing tilt of charismatic quips, he seemingly did not. Perhaps this state of framework came from her childhood, where beasts had to claim something for themselves, and hers had never been supremacy, dominance or authority – her brawn came from elsewhere, deep in the flutters of her heart. But this creature could not see his own, the depths of his vigor, the prize of his convictions? She smiled again, the tug of lips pulled into wholesome, lissome grace, eyes not upon his chiseled skeleton, but aloft on the canopies, amused, content. The same voice, dabbling in muse and elegance, refinement with the touch of ethereal balance, postured from her mouth, layered, masked, lacquered in stretched seams. Sentiments that haunted of experience, infused by justified understanding. “Strength is only foolish when it goes unused.”

He persevered, in the stretch of heat and damnation, of unseen wounds and potential slights, whispers of alluring charms that beguiled but never soothed – she witnessed his smirk and bestowed her nurturing grin all the more. Were there no hard feelings then, in the press of her answers and the grating pulse of his replies? She proffered none, holding her regal court in place, gaze flickering to his, warmth and assurance, confidence where some had fallen, cracked, pierced. He spoke his name though, which reminded her of how far they had passed in this threshold without familiar greetings; she almost had to laugh, but torched the bubble of a giggle erupting in her throat. Lena tilted her head to glance at the metallic beast, giving him a chance to speak – but only silence rang. Twisting back to this Lúthien Tinúviel, she spoke once more. “You are in Helovia, a world of many lands and creatures.” But what does he want from it? What does he seek? A pause, a glimpse of a breath, before she allured again, a first attempt at inviting, extending good faith shared amongst brethren. “A pleasure, Lúthien Tinúviel. I’m Lena, from the World’s Edge. Perhaps you would be interested in joining our band of unicorns?”