Immolations and sacrificial rites slaughtered a reign of perseverance, conquered and relinquished the burnt offerings of a harpsichord essence, strung and stung divine, stalwart beliefs until valorous efforts were choked, smothered and strangled under the heavy weight of arduous culminations, demonic precipices, infernal decadences. An embrace of the wicked, the potent, the maligned, taken with open arms, with barbaric turns, with savage hands and villainous stones. Lena had driven her heart into another discordant score, unwound all the intertwining taffeta, all the scintillating finery, all the raw warmth, and allowed her body to be kindled, incensed, into the pernicious, treacherous onslaught of licentious creeds, of immoral sentiments. Benevolence twisted, compassion distorted, beneficence destroyed, thrown into the Tartarean fires, scalding the inner sanctity of her carefully built serenity, of her alms and balms of tranquility, of all the brilliant, tender candor she’d meticulously created and entwined. In a matter of moments, she’d ruined all her worn, affectionate armor, tossed it into the brutal, ferocious songs of war drums, of heated, barbaric munitions, squandered and wasted years of grandeur for the touch, the taste, the relish of insurrection, battle, blades, rapiers and cutlasses, knotted coils of an indulgent, impulsive dominance, severing superiority. And wasn’t it wondrous, to encompass the indignation, the exasperation, the rage and fury, channel the ardency of her motions and movements into insurrection, to unleash every fiber of her being, so locked, so chained, fettered and broken from the oubliette of all her frayed designs? She’d concocted schemes to annihilate, she’d rendered assaults and sieges, she’d become a ghost, a wraith, to unravel the livelihood of their enemies, and selfishly, horribly, abominably, offered another into the fray, watched as the heresy of her crimes attached to her friend, her companion, her beloved. Gone had been the harmony, the rapture, the reverie, and only the unholy barbs and shambles to take its place, ravenous, raptorial, a picture of everything she’d never wanted to be, the pieces and remnants she’d hidden her mind, her frame, her existence from, torched on a feverish pyre of ire, of wrath. Nefarious depths revisited, eternally puncturing and lacing her into the capable, the fierce, the enigmatic dominions; kind masks and sympathetic ears, easily ripping open their love, their generosity, for the fiendish, for the damned. Once melodious, now fractured, splintered, broken tirades of liberation, aspirations and ambitions, the stalwart songs casting dimming shades, tumultuous, turmoil requiems.

Did she merely live a lie now? Were the grins mercurial folly? Were the smiles capricious whimsy? Were all the endless, eternal giggles and delights scorched, buried in the designs of absorbed sentiments, halo slipped and fashioned into a noose? Had she always been a malicious juncture in the sea of familiar faces, waiting the right moment to untangle from all the salvations, all the sanguine shades, all the strength and good will? Had she always been a monster, searching the earth for the right victim, the moment to shed bliss, to forgo hums and hymns, to be an arcane, rotten, withering shell? What had been the purpose of her provisions, of her gifts, of all the well wishes, all the sanguine sanctuaries she’d allured, beguiled and enchanted? Was the bloom off the rose, petals plucked and fallen, scattered across the runes of all her glorious days spent beneath the dawn, the dusk, the horizon of a world’s edge, the auspicious glamor of satin peaks? Had the floret waned, crumbled and crumpled, withered deep into the arches of the sinister earth, just as deceitful and specious as thorns? And, after the dust cleared and the ash settled, what had it all been for? For victory, for conquest, for triumph over those who’d tarnished them time and time again, or for the mother, the children, still lying in their prison?

The nymph slid into the waves and felt the water crash into her chest, the liquid lap at her limbs, ricochet off her skin, sketch over the mahogany, honeyed blends, and pondered if she deserved more pain, more anguish, more torment from its brutal assault. Each powerful torrent stung, pricked, goaded and pleaded as she marched into the sea, as she opened her gaze to the widening expanse of darkness, gloom and terror, if each day was to be like the last, rippling over her frame as a dire, disastrous lament, constantly consuming, reminding, devouring dulcet lullabies, angelic bliss, satin intrigues and curiosities, the idle, blessed moments of repose. Invoked and inspired by the damnation of her soul, she whispered a continuous dirge, floating over the brine, over the currents, over the streamlined bouts of domination and supremacy, like bobbing notes in a bottle: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and they beat a steady monody in her head, carved a steady crescendo of all the platitudes she couldn’t voice, couldn’t thread, couldn’t deign to each and every soul she’d somehow sullied. Imogen, chirping for her on the dunes, selfless and strong, enduring and wonderful, courageous and brave, Kou, Sacre, Roux, the faces and features of undeserving captives, thrown to the brim of the terrain, unseen, unheard, and even for the unknown mare, whom she’d longed, yearned, desired to pummel and destroy. Reviling revelations, barbarous incantations, treachery dabbling over the mist, and her features held each lasting covenant of her struggles, of her heartache, of her disgust and repulsion of her own soul. Where did she go from here? How did she mend her ways? Were they past repair and resolution, too dampened and fettered, too cracked and dismantled, too abandoned and maligned to justify restoration? Lena closed her eyes, crooned and begged into the surf, permitted the influence of the waves to tangle its authority, its might, its strength, into her soul, asked for deliverance and was assured it wouldn’t come. Swept away and stolen, encased in the inner sanctum of brutality, of pretense and chicanery, without the ropes, the steps, the tools, to pull herself out; stuck in the boundaries of hell and heaven, purgatory drenched in ethereal rhapsody.

The songbird raised her face as the sun rose, and wondered if it thought to burn her alive.

@[Kirottu]

The golden throng of the summer’s hailing did naught to assuage her damning sentiments, consuming and misshaping the fabrications of gilded light, of ambrosial warmth, of songs and merriments, harmony and mellifluous heralds, into unworthy bombardments and undeserving travesties. Coaxing vibrant, vehement memories, disasters and follies, caprices and whims, of gilded light flooding her sights amongst a shallow bed of flowers, waiting to be taken by the threads of darkness, incapable of resolution, inept at turning, swiveling her chances and opportunities into anything but lingering, loitering, listless for a grasp on humanity and morality. Drifting in the swallowing halls and thresholds of massacres, of heathens, of infidels and cretins, brought to the earth in anguish, in torrents, in turbulence, meeting the clamor of dissonance and laments with the dainty smile of flowers, belles and laurels. To be crushed, annihilated, persecuted or neglected, overlooked, tossed aside, tortured and maligned into desolation, the scarred traces of dismal, bleak isolation – led down the primrose path, lined with petals, chimes and echoes of otherworldly, ethereal stanzas, outlined by remnants of blossoms and blooms, glades and copses, only to flounder, stumble and falter again. No revelations sparked against her crown, her tiara, her fey conjectures to offer her peace, repose and proposals, to thwart the wicked, to mold the licentious rhythms from her frame, cast away, to the arms and boughs of faded foibles and iniquitous inclinations. Had each transformation been rendered into nothing? Had she wilted adaptations, from floundering babe, to wandering gypsy, to ebullient, graceful nymph, to this defeated anguish, to this lacquered shell of regret and remorse? Where was her luminescence, her delight, the majestic creation she’d worked so hard to achieve, she so desperately carved and sculpted from the weary statue of her childhood, from the listless, haunting songs of her youth? Could she regain its stumbling steps, its weary discourse, its molten ambiguity, or would the waves take her away? Would they find her nearly as undeserving, and the hands of Poseidon and all his rivulets, all his currents, all his aspiring hands would grab ahold, drag her down into the fathoms, into the depths, and she’d be just as forgotten, just as inept, as the world she’d started within? If she pled in the silence, would she be forgiven for the portentous sins etched over the fine, subtle, airy entanglements of her hide? Or did she have to cry out over the waves, languish and mourn her discarded moralities one by one, watch them drop into the cascades of her dolor?

No words passed over her lips, too ashamed, too humiliated, too broken and beaten from the length of her regal demise, and only the gentle lull of the froth and foam, of the swallowed dunes, the swooning gulls and Imogen’s harmonious chirps filled the horizon. The waves rolled over her limbs and she felt the cool grasp of the ocean swell around their length in an enticing dance, siren and exotic, awaiting for one last, singular breath before she plunged headfirst into its passionate embrace. Silence stretched in a seamless, hazardous, crushing decadence, pressing and smothering, acerbic and trenchant, haunting the bright, raw refinements of sea glass glistening from the shoal and shore, whispering over the final touches of a lost shell rolling across sodden sand, and she waited for a sign, a manifestation, an intimation that she wasn’t truly shattered and splintered. What if nothing came? Lena, songbird of the heavens, nymph and sylph, fey and fairy, without her fluttering wings, without her divine attributes, without her cadence and brilliant glow, strolling in the snapped shadows of her former luminescence. Dismal, bleak pieces of a once radiant puzzle, dimmed and shaded into dangerous pinnacles of dying embers, coals and ash, the piquing nettles of frustration, exasperation and defeat nestled into the riotous din of her brow. Only the strange fixation of a glowing anomaly dragged her sights away from the outlying skyline, Imogen’s chirps becoming wilder, curious, inquisitive, and had Lena not been consumed by the bottomless dregs of her worn heart, she would have journeyed across the current to join her kitsune in avid exploration – but she merely watched, disheartened and fatigued. An orb pressed its enigmatic pulse along the shoreline, and the fox followed with eager abandon, while the muted follies of the healer dragged their dismal shades, faded, dulled, dimmed, to the ivory figurine fumbling for its grandeur.

Hoary, like arcane, primitive cobwebs, withering ghosts, translucent wraiths, he dragged his form along the beach, and the nymph’s heart floundered, witnessing the quiet reticence and acceptance of age, of injuries, of ailments, somehow fumble across the earth with more resolution than she’d ever seemed to manage and maintain. Her companion’s motions ceased when he reached the bright, lustrous object, turning back towards Lena for approval, to reach and coax, to abide and accept, when all the belle wanted to do was break across the ocean. She’d crumble and disintegrate for this beast, another victim of ardent violence, she’d wither and fade for this creature, bent and broken and reeling from some future, pending loss and the gloom of the one before, and she’d sing her last song until she grew hoarse, fettered away into stone, rubble and ruin. Would that be enough to salvage the remnants of her glory, to build one more beloved sacrifice, to burst into requiems and harpsichord melodies, to seethe and smolder into ceaseless raptures until the world was healed from her immolations? The sylph conjured one cry over the waves, proceeded in unrefined steps, towards the juncture of harmed, felled characters and souls, ceasing to reign in her formidable elegance, conspiring to warrant heavenly bouts without the wholesome aria of her precious sanctum - where is my sanctuary now? “Can I help you?” Can you help me?


@[Kirottu]

Change was a cruel mistress, a mixture of siren catacombs and coaxing wails, vicious hymns and murmurs, croons embodying the dying art of sylphs and swans, laurels and sweet nothings. She’d been strangled amongst the midst and mist of the forlorn, swindled and pillaged from the gliding arts of tender moralities, affixed and combing the arches of the sinister, the nefarious, for gains, for means, that, years before, would have been licentious creeds her brethren drove into her mind, refused over and over again towards the wind, towards the shambles of her fragments, towards the silent string of muses and spirits. She’d collapsed and faltered into a heap of iniquity, undone in the feverish reverie of calamity and acrimony, pierced, molded, and reshaped into something else; an unknown particle of audacity, selfishness and barbarity, and each touch, each taste, of the bitter, rancorous truth seethed across her tongue. A poisonous, lethal barb of her heinous actions, of her heathen pursuits, of all the potential and composure sullied, ruined, marred by treachery, by duplicity, by the specious antiquity of her heritage and bloodline, a reminder of its existence, deep in the burrs and thorns of her creation, waiting, wallowing, for its next insurrection. Could she return to the sculpted movements, the freedom, the liberation, the deliverance of her motions, her refinements, her sentiments and scriptures, or was she too sundered, too destroyed, too far gone into the crushing, gnashing wreckage, consigned to damnation, doomed to hell and all its dark fingertips, its sinister brushstrokes? Was she another piece of earth, awakened by the sun, finished by the moon, fiendish and deplorable, fallen from heavenly shrouds and pedestals? Given another opportunity, would she deliver the same machinations, calculate upheaval and violence, villainy and unholy raptures for the absconding of children, to take another’s land, home, fortitude and sanctuary away? Would she order Imogen to slay, would she ask herself to maim, sear, rip and tear, would she unwind calamity from her sword, from her shield, twist and turn with her brethren until she was reshaped again, more ruthless and merciless than before? Was there any absolution in the cantankerous, reeling world of Helovia, inching, arching, lofting wickedness like a mighty stone, watching as mere mortals were crushed in the pit and pendulum of its diabolical gallows? Or would she be a constant, unwinding sacrifice for its barbarity, the christened songs and sonnets for a never-ending cycle of villainy, benediction, and atrocity, lost to the framework of haunting, hollowed shells and halls, a chassis, a gilded form of all the broken, shattered things.

The nymph watched the battered steed, pondered if she’d be enough to warrant him blessings, to bestow her immolations and offerings to his ragged frame, beaten against the outcrop of another world, another time, another place; a lilac stare shielding the acrimony of his story, weary, a necessary bid to sacrifice her drained beatitudes and graces. How did he acquire such vicious ailments; had he been shackled and chained to a dance of the macabre, had he paid the price for avaricious activities, had he wandered over empires, kingdoms and sovereignties for the scrap and slivers of something he once beloved? Imogen bounded amongst the shoal, washing clarity against her mind, weaving and lacing tattered ribbons and plaits, attempting to muster the trounced salvation beyond the stars, chirping one word into their shared bond. Familiar - but Lena couldn’t discern what was recognized and what was not: the ailing beast before her, the ruptured moments of bliss, the relentless siege of maddening motives, or the callous weight of the world, and only provided the merest hint of a smile to the ivory vixen. She turned away before she could witness the despondent stare flickering along the kitsune’s face, the bob and sway of blue-tipped tails as they gestured in wild pandemonium, to alleviate the thickening press of dejection and misery from her fairy friend. Her focus remained fixated upon the stag, the orb resting between his legs, the luminescent world promising many things, and she being incapable of gifting them in turn. Would healing him render her worthy again, or forgotten in the abysmal cataclysms of bedlam, stanzas and lyrics forgotten mere moments from now, punctured by future sedition? Her eyes captured the wounds, the lacerations, the injuries, the burns and ravaged sinew, and thereafter, she closed their lids, listened to his plea. Please. Deep within her ravaged essence, she snared, allured, and entranced the canvas of her oeuvre, of her mastery, plucked the coquette strings of harmonious bliss, fostered and founded sanctum across her steady breath, allowed invocations to cross over her lips, dainty, serene arias, light, unfaltering hums. She glowed beneath the might of the sun, drank in its solace, the unwinding, uncurling, unfurling reverie of the whispering waves, chased after the abandoned dreams of her faltered ambitions, granting tranquility through the ardor, the passion, the opulence of her power. Radiant and beatific, gleaming, glittering, flickering, the song pervaded the sultry swing of the ocean, called to the gulls, cried to the heavens, no words, no lyrics, no poems or verses, pieces of laureate lyrics without the ambling, fumbling contortions of her sadness – defiantly heralded until they bloomed and blossomed from her chest, into the ethereal conjectures and sentiments of the salty, summer air. Lena trilled and warbled over the wake of the earth, along the intertwining horizon, until it molded into the stranger’s form, warmed the aches in his body, sewed the slivers and splinters, the shreds and fragments, the ashes of his actions, the barbarity etched and sketched upon his skin, and she wouldn’t cease until he asked her to, until there was nothing left of her nature – lost in the throng, in the euphonious, mellifluous bliss she’d squandered. Through whim, through fancy, through compassion and generosity, perhaps she’d discover the pieces of peace she’d dropped from the stars.


@[Kirottu]

Vulnerability, webbed and cracked, sketched a pathway down the lacquer of her relentless spirit. Hard, then soft, lilting and listless for poignant, evocative shards, eyes closed and heartlines drifting into resonant bells, carols, warbles and trills, floating, assuaging tones. Dulcet bird song, enlightening, conspiring, soothing, angelic, seraphic whispers and guardian benedictions, cascading, warm rivulets of arias and ballads. Varnishing, imploring, exploring, the depths of salvation and deliverance, painting black canvases with sea foam and glass, mermaid melodies, exotic crystals and deliberate portraits, essences of elements dipped in ambrosial sonnets, honeyed lyrics, stone and armor glistening, harboring, harpooning the dreaded armaments of past fragments. Held together by aspirations, hopes, tied in satin and lace, taffeta and silk, smooth, gentle, subdued and lulled into the waltzing paradigms of primrose graces and blessings, washed over and over in the lustrous shades of light. Sweet, scintillating, cosmic rhapsodies, piercing the veils and midnight oeuvre, left blinded by the bliss, dawn and twilight mingling in wild, candid dances, vivid, trying to find the sun. Each note composed sanctuary in the harpsichord trance, in the plaited anthems and strains, a map of Elysium and fleeting, beating sanctum, carillons and minarets, towers of rich reverberations and hallowed hymns. Could she stay here, beloved and treasured, cherished and adored, in the wake of paragons and virtues, saints and divinity, gleaming and radiant, the same as before? Could she awaken again, cast aside the brutalities of yesteryear, the melancholy stains, the searing blemishes, become anew in the glimmer, the glamor, of sublime, holy, beatific tapestries? Or was she too ruined, too clouded, to return into the luminescent chords, the bright, brilliant brushstrokes, and the proud, determined resolutions of a celestial soul? Too torn, too maimed, too condemned, incapable of finding the pieces she’d tossed amongst the waves, the edge, the cliffs and the glades, revelations scorned into the villainous torrent of her spilled over animosity? Too malicious, another pawn sorted into the game of machinations and macabre ambitions, broken off for the next malicious dispute, the portended pursuit? Was she too heavy now, sinking and drowning in the depths of ravenous plumes, plunging hellbound into burning pools, vicious incantations?

But she was pulled away, from the shimmer, from the dismay, from the glamor, fading and slipping back into the present, eyelashes brushing over cheeks, awakening to the barbarity of her livelihood, vocals silenced amongst the vile imperfections, iniquitous immolations and hot knives, the lacerations of wounded fortitude and enamel. Her tender eyes captured the entity of the elder stag, the words he whispered over her orchestrated refuge; how dearly she wished she could return to the walls of resilience and morality, not continue embarking down the turbulence of her own mockery and creation. The stranger’s appearance was mended, no longer blistered, broken, distorted and altered from the searing, scorching efforts of skirmishes, upheaval and chaos, and she hoped his heart was the same, stitched and patched together, repaired and renewed. There were too many splintered spirits fighting for the chance, the ambition, the glory and hallelujah of a tender, wondrous life, too many extinguished and vanquished from the precious dreams and faiths, promises and possibilities. How many times had he roamed in the somber, hollowed walls, in the weary tribulations of sentience, aligned and reignited for another course of seething bedlam? And if he could do it again and again, was she also capable? How strong was he? How strong was she? If he bore the world, couldn’t she do the same?

She thought to leave him in peace, wander down the beaten trails of sand, dunes and gulls, of disappearing into the echoing chambers, drifting back into the aimless, nomadic quandaries of her existence, of shifting and unwinding in the incorporeal haze of all the damage she’d caused. But then he reached out into the void, across the parallel structure of sonnets and song, caressing at the droplets slithering down her cheek (and how had those appeared – tears from the ocean, crying for her when she refused?). For a moment, Lena turned her nape and face into the breeze, allowed the coiling rapture of the salty brine to coat her essence in the cataclysm of its coiling fates and mirages, embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated in the haunting gaze, in the simmering innocence of his query. Why do you weep? For foolishness, for cowardice, for all the chains she ghosted over her actions, for all the skeletal remains of her pride, of her prowess, of her virtues and divinity, rectitude and goodness shattered in the rime of her calamity? For the selfish tombs she’d laid scattered at her feet, for the blood stained upon her sword, for the crushed shield she’d thrust in front of her, for the companion who had left breathless incantations upon a shadowy floor? The songbird yearned for her secrets to be locked, kept away and enclosed, frozen in their oubliette, unsung water tucked behind her eyes. And if she told this stranger, this foreign body, this weary traveler, would he smite her too, damn her to the condemned sanctions of the underworld, paying the ferryman for her final reverie? Some part of her desired the opposite – that between all the steel, stone, tenderness and warmth, there would be some mercy left for her to obtain. The nymph’s stare returned to his lavender gaze, poignant and clear, and she uttered the same question she had once asked an icy sovereign. But he’d never replied, lost to the torrents of gales and goals, abandoned, faltering achievements and waning wiles. Would this hour provide her with some sense of deliverance, either by maelstrom or rapture? Her lips roamed over labyrinths and arcane derisions, unveiling only the barest image of her soul, a whisper into the eaves and ocean. “Have you ever hated what you were becoming?”


@[Kirottu]

Every day and every night., strained and afflicted, similar souls interlocked and intertwined with pieces and slivers of anguish and torment; his seemingly locked away from her songs, and her own pieced and etched along the corridors of her heart, flowing past the silent void, the singsong arias. To what more did the philosopher ail from, and how could she offer him more comfort, more soothing bells, more assuaging streams of light and heaven, when this had not been enough? But he didn’t seem inclined to ask, to yearn, to twist and desire more, and so she placed the memory into the folds of her sentiments and images, poised it aloft as one more creature layered and lacquered with the remnants of brutality, where the tinsels, the notes, the syllables didn’t reach. The answer to her pressing, daunting query, finally spun from a sage’s mouth, addled and rankled the seraph, until, flummoxed and burdened again, she stared at the sand beneath her silhouette, the burdened waves rustling past the shore. The power to change is within yourself. Scorched and simmering, canvasing the platitude of all the things she held near and dear; the persevering, stalwart enterprises, the enlightened grins, the ebullience waning and waxing along woven threads, laced and plaited, secured and promising, shattering and conflicted splinters and scraps of seasons lost. Was she not enough now? Did she not contain enough power, secured into the vital creed of her chest, of her mind, of her convictions and certitudes? And how, when she could barely muster the oaths, the reasons, the vile bile rushing past her lungs and curling into the chasm of her enigmatic quandaries, could she acquire more? And if her alterations were unending, bending, fraying and wilting over time, what would she change into next? Would she rise from the fountain of adaptions as a beast, cretin and infidel, pursuing the next relentless upheaval, following nocturnal iniquities and haunting entropies? Would she flail, stumble and crawl from a hole, quiver, shake, shudder at every sound, remember the vicious plunge of her sword towards another’s flesh, recoil from the unearthly beat of war? What was she now, and what should she strive for? Hadn’t this been what she feared – becoming utterly, wholly incapable? Molded into silence, and thinking it rude of her to become so hushed, she uttered the gratitude trapped in her mellifluous, fluid voice, raising her eyes to meet his (unsure again, of their familiarity, what passed across them), then ceased. “Thank you. You’ve given me much to think about.” Another hymn and hum of adversity, struck the portals of one who’d already seen it again and again.

Stuck, mired, the nymph almost asked him, nearly pried open the unrelenting bedlam of her persistent questions, seeking wisdom, guidance, answers to all of her chaotic shambles, but thought better of it, closing her jaw and merely staring at the earth again. The sylph was all too aware that she was entering another trial, and would have to entangle, ensnare, trap and attach the remedies to herself, couldn’t selfishly ask another to do it for her. Her eyes fell upon the orb nestled by his feet, innocent, unabashed, unashamed by the world it had not yet entered, already enchanted and allured into the seams of virtue. Imogen paid careful attention to it as well, her blue stare riveted, allured, beguiled, by the smallest of movements and the slightest sound, providing her own curiosity within Lena’s mind, taking away from the portions of arduous soul-searching. Hatch? The femme, incapable of deciphering an adequate riposte, followed the tiniest, minute decibels, the slight, fragmented motions, swindling back and forth, restless and eager. She wondered if he’d sensed it, and merely tried to extend her comforts before glancing upon the active sphere, but she was instantly overcome with curiosity, with excitement, with anticipation, that her vocals couldn’t be ceased by the former pattern of thoughts. “Your orb, sir, I believe its almost ready.” A slight grin returned to her features, a wild bob of her head from his gaze to the brilliant, luminous globe by his hooves; rebirth and renewal in the warm finality of a new life, ardent, fervent.

@[Kirottu]