She fought against the bitterness, the confines of rancor stored and settled in her stalwart heart, in her staunch gut. She tore against the overwhelming senses of dangers and perils, hazards and predilections, coasted and ghosted over the rapid contortions and fleeting moments of upheaval so that she didn’t unravel in the anarchy, in the swelling abyss threatening to swallow them whole. She drifted upon snow and sleet, ice and rime, for the chance to distort the seditious splendor of decadence, of torn hides and flailing limbs, of raucous, callous bedlam sieged upon their homeland, upon the world. Would they endure more scars, more blemishes, more tainted calamities for the odd sense of veiled, cloaked paradigms? For the touch of wan, moonless, starless contortions, when the earth entangled their feet, left them immobile, incorporeal, writhing wraiths? For the gift, the iniquity, the immorality, of each moment covered in Stygian thresholds? And what did it all mean, to no longer grasp the sun in their sights, to no longer feel the beams of warmth flush their skin, drench their hide, collapse upon their backs and wander into luminescence, into grandeur, into reverie? Confused, perplexed and dismayed, she traveled the vacant parlors for a sign, for a sensation, of the pieces scattered and ruined alongside their portals, for answers that couldn’t be found.

Her eyes shifted over the horizon, alongside the caves and caverns, the inner workings of a sanctum that had given them blessings (a sovereign’s return through the looking glass) and hushed mutiny. Cracked and splintered, the mirror couldn’t utter the phrases she longed to hear, and without the power of such sight, she was lost to its munitions anyway. Instead, she combed the scope of peaks and grottos, crypts and vaults, until the shimmer of ivory caught her eye. Not like the piled heights of snow or the cool wind that hastened the touch of winter, but otherworldly, ethereal. It moved with focus, with precision, interlocking limbs of archaic, wise, astute and learned knowledge, and then she recognized the scope of its motions, the weight of its body. Myrrdin, their Haruspex. Had he gone to the mirror for guidance, only to be rewarded with nothingness? Had he ventured across the glacial walls for a mute response too? But as she paid witness to his wavering stead, to the strange, bloodied columns, she noticed he didn’t cease, he didn’t halt, he didn’t pause. Were his wounds not ailing him (and oh, if she could, she’d utter every last song she had so that they no longer scraped at his skin and tore them open with each crimson rivulet)? Or, was something else occurring, leading him onward, away from them, away from home, to the gallows and trenches, were Gods murmured sweet nothings into mortal ears? Lena wanted to holler many things, bellow across the foreground, forget intricacies of delicacy, finery, unwind herself from the coils and machinations of elegance, pry open the lid of all her demands. Are you leaving us? Why – when we need you the most? Are you fleeing? Or are you searching for the answers too? But composure and constraint won, and she was silent in the depths of the dusk, watching the form retreat further into the haunted hallways and corridors, down into the murky remains of their livelihoods, wondering, pondering, but never voicing her concerns. She didn’t stop him, and remained the quiet girl in the north, hushed and breathless, forever wondering what they were to do without another worthy soul, without their steady Oracle, their prophet of Siberia.