L E N A
reaching as I sink down into light

She was nomadic again, a wandering sylph immersed in cloaked shadows, rustling amongst the assuaging forest, awakened by the melancholic heartstrings of the forest’s silent agonies. While the nocturnal eaves stroked soothing winds amongst the churning leaves, there were still fixtures of ash collected on their fine filaments, their silken brushstrokes, their cool, green veins that spread like whimsical fingers. Sorrowful, lamenting throngs, clinging to a livelihood taken from them, sullied, soiled, and blemished forms, crooning tirades of a grieving aperture. Damage committed, done, finalized in the rubble and ruin of burnt timber and fallen logs, crisp fronds that snapped, fragmented, at the slightest hint of air, the torn limbs and mantles of embers. Fragility, mortality, and demise daunted and divined; the tragic pulse of victims that could not save themselves. The scarred remnants were a constant reminder of powers beyond their means, of toiling, turbulent foes, of a searing, scalding wrath ignited, then left for mortals to pick up the discarded shards, pieces of potency none of them could touch or rekindle.

Yet, where there is calamity and devastation, there is also rebirth and renewal. From the wreckage, tombs misplaced amongst charred graveyards, the children of the forest would rise once more, peek at wide-open sunshine and lift their silk petals at the alluring gaze of rainclouds. Cracked rubble would be turned to lush, verdant greenery, patches of ash forgotten, lost in the bloom of a christened palisade. Flora and fauna would breathe, stretch, and reclaim their former spots, awash in the glow of new dormitories painted in the façade of an old home. There would no longer be the stifling cry of misery, stiff in the harsh despair, flickering in the hardened murmurs of sedition – merely the sweet, nurturing song of regeneration; the renaissance of the Edge’s cracked, disheveled corridors.

And, from the looks of it, the icy sovereign had received his own renascence.

She heard them first, hooves dancing over acrid, parched loam, clambering in pitches of lengthened, haughty strides and smaller, delicate paces. From beneath the strokes of the curling leaves, she peeked out over the rampant hillsides, sienna eyes searching for the masterful courts of whimsical movers - dauntless, audacious despite the vicious sun’s leftovers, the striking, stifling humidity. In the moonlight, they glowed, similar, supreme beings of descending, seraphic plumage, luminous, radiant. Stars flickering against a dry, starved horizon, offering worthy sentiments of divinity – she smiled, then proceeded to turn, not willing to encroach upon such tender moments. However, moments thereafter, the glacial monarch bestowed a deep, rolling cry, a deafening deliverance, a harkening to meet the one, who undoubtedly in their picture frames, was intertwined within his soul. Staring into the abyss of the evening’s tresses, she briefly ruminated; after all, he’d requested his followers to join and encounter the scion. Gathering herself, she hastened another dance amongst the forest and out of the char, gentle air and lissome water, billowing from the sanguine depths of honeyed, whimsical delights – and popped out from the containments of leafy brethren that covered her regal crown, some fronds dipping into her compassionate eyesight. She nodded once to the Edge King then settled her enlightened grin upon the child. “I'm Lena." She dipped her head, goofy giggle bubbling from her throat, insatiable and pleasant. “And who are you?"