For all the benedictions Lena conveyed, all the well wishes and tender alms she bestowed and offered; she was forever uncertain if they were enough for the individuals of the Basin. How long did it take for her spun saccharine to dissolve and fade from their shoulders? How long did the powdered dreams and aspirations last, clinging as one last shield before sanctuary was riddled and tossed away? How long could sanguine smiles, ethereal grins and uplifting seas rage against calculating, fastidious storms? How far could they trace the convictions of her crooning grandeur and splendor, and subsequently forget and forgo them over coasts, edges, cliffs and rime? Did her trills, warbles and whispers proffer sanctity, shelter and repose, or simply, quietly, drift away as their desires claimed shadows, iniquities and immoralities? How many times would she give slivers and splinters of herself to her weary companions and comrades, before they settled, before they bore weight? Did her gestures, in the end, even matter? As innocent as the world thought of her, the nymph knew far too much about deliverance, purgatory and the Tartarean guile of empires stretching down below her reach, and attempted in desperate notions to express amiability and compassion through the smoking arms of the reviled, the renounced, the condemned and damned. When their embers burned her, she didn’t cry, when she inhaled the luster and enamel of their wicked entrails, she didn’t cough, and when their coals ghosted and writhed over her hide, she didn’t flee, didn’t hide, didn’t run into the glimpses of Elysium. The fairy stayed and strayed, longed to assuage the sullied, the ruined, the struggling souls bent and swayed under the cumbersome weight of too many eyes, too many strands, too many powers crushing their souls. So what was Deodat now? Her honeyed eyes lingered back over his form as he drew closer, offered his sword in greeting, and wondered if she’d somehow left pieces of herself on his hide – to protect, to preserve, defend and honor when the remnants of her influence had scattered to the ill winds. Had her hums and hymns done anything for him, mended bits and pieces back together? She watched as he gazed over the boundless lake, but said naught as he gathered his vocals, bent her head downward to listen and absorb. The fairy refused to alter their contentment because she mulled over her insignificance.

But the gruff phrases unwind over her, lull her back into tranquility, and she can’t cease the warm laugh curling across her mouth at his assertion of the darkness suiting her, of looking well within the depths and confines of shadow and twilight. She didn’t know what to make of it, to realize and remember that long ago, that’s where she’d clung, to the depths of gloom, a scarecrow nestled in tall pines and oaks, how she’d survived, how she pressed and shaped her quintessence into its delighted spirit, into its bleeding, corporeal musing. Did she bear and wear the dusk well because she could still glow in its heathen contortions, or because she was still a part of it, lingering and existing on the edge of infidels and villainous screams? Somehow, she knew even if she probed the query towards him, if he could distinguish between her sins, scars and virtues, he wouldn’t answer her. He was made of stone and brawn, had no use for a fey’s inquiries. Instead, her eyes roamed back to his, bore the intrepid glamor of her perseverance, the soft, dulcet chords expressed multitudes of grandeur and gratitude. “Thank you.” Did the Stygian veils suit him too? Was he a cross between rubble, devastation and wreckage, tasting the ambrosia of whims and fancies she gave, then licking over the demolition he concocted between the seams? Her cranium tilted, absorbed the lines of his vigor, fortitude and resilience, and presumed he’d belong anywhere with the mettle, courage and power he possessed. “You are suited for any element.” Lena giggled again, twisted her head away to avoid the confusion possibly ignited in his gaze, chased and traced the vapors of their intermingling breaths with her eyes. He spoke of insanity, of his day drifting into mania, and though her curiosity heightened, he must have realized she wouldn’t pry, that she never deigned to intrude, snoop and nose her away into the foundations of anyone’s walls, boundaries and castles. She spoke into the wind, let it be drawn back into his features as the breeze fluttered and rustled along their mortal tapestries. “Not at all. I’m pleased you’re here.” Imogen chirped at her feet, danced one single twirl; snorted at all the unspoken breaths, words and phrases.

But when he requested something of her, she was so easily woven back towards his stare. Deodat rarely asked her for anything, and even at their first meeting, had attempted to remove her shells, shambles and reverie away from his wounded canvas. Was he so broken, brutalized and dismayed now that he craved, invited, summoned the sanctum of her croons and warbles? Her features altered into worry, into disarray, pondered over what she’d missed in the covering of darkness, if the lacerations of another had pierced his pelt, if he’d been marked and misguided through the treacherous layers of gloom and disaster. Or, perhaps, he knew she’d give anything to him. The songbird nearly told him the glow, the fiber, the invocations of her enchantments had flown away with the sun and the dawn, but on further introspection, convinced her sentiments he didn’t care; he’d requested the tone of her sonnets and stanzas, not the healing raptures. It would be a test of her volition and valor, her honeyed syllables and lyrics, if they could soothe and placate without the radiance of spells weaving their web. Lena gave him one nod, closed her eyes, lashes embellishing her dished cheeks, and composed a draw, a lure, and a promise within the dulcet clamor of her rhapsody.

“Strength strangled
Should bloom and brew.
Reach and rediscover
The steady notions,
The quick endeavors
Of a valorous heart.”

Infused with her ardor, her fervor, her potency, she pervaded the heart of the lake with the sumptuous caress of her vocals, maintained the rhythm, the hum, the hymn and whimsy, drawing deep into herself, eyes still shut off from the world. The nymph wanted him to emerge from her grace, to gaze into her finery and find what he’d lost, to rewind back over the ages where he’d not been so distorted, so rattled, so confined. Her lips gave a subtle pause, breathed in the clarity of dreams, of fortitude and resplendence, and stroked, caressed, the idle carving of his essence again and again with palatial divinity, passionate, dragging him away from the decay; a carol, an aria, of love and devotion.

“Don’t be swept,
Unraveled or decayed.
Find the parts
You cherished so long ago.”