Used to Be

Lena the Songbird She wished for a multitude of things in those few, precious moments – somehow, someway, the collapse and fall of Helovia, the monstrous beckoning of the Rift, hadn’t curtailed her ability to dream (quietly, beneath the shadows instead of the stars). The most vivid ambition was to see them in a world not shrouded in deceit, back in the familiarity of winter’s touch, or merely coasting along the streams, the mountains, the meadows – anywhere but here. She’d seen too much treachery, she’d been eclipsed in too much violence, and she couldn’t understand, couldn’t fathom, why their chances had been so slim, their moments so finite, miniscule, unbalanced. The Songbird had always regarded them as precious, but perhaps they were even more so now, so few, so vague, so in between soullessness and discord, and there was naught she could do about it. It was a powerless, agonizing feeling, and she bit down against the frustration, tried to rejoice in the whirl of the present, in the here and now, without wondering what would befall them next, what anguish, what torture, what melancholy the void had in store. He was ok, he was all right, he was scraped and bruised but otherwise untarnished, and the way it echoed across her entity enlightened her for those brief instances without calamity – striking her face in such a vivid, bright, ebullient portrait. She hadn’t worn the beneficence, the gentleness, the warmth in what felt like a lifetime, and allowed it to radiate there, away from the torturous sway, the nefarious entanglements, or the daunting dawn. Then, when her eyes caught the smallest of grins floating across his handsome features, she yearned to bottle that heartwarming occasion too, savor and relish in it in the cold, darkening days to come. The Mender tucked herself away in the promise of his grin, in the layers of his presence, because that was all she could do now – when they had nothing left but one another and the beckoning hands of damnation. “I don’t know,” she answered, for she’d yet to find shelter. Their brethren had dispersed into the wind, in all directions, sometimes seen again as Kisamoa hissed and growled, sometimes spotted when the hour of need was at hand. But there’d been no place to gather and unite, not like Helovia, where they could bend and bleed beneath the weight of the mountain. They were lost, lingering refugees, and there was no end in sight, no empires glowing on the horizon, no lands for refuge without seething, conniving maelstroms behind it. She detested it was the only response she could give and grant, that no hope was laced in its parallels, that there was only the unknown distorting the background. The nymph nearly offered herself up as sanctuary, to be that sliver of deliverance and liberation; but even she had her limits. Perhaps they could only persevere, endure, day after day, night after night, until something happened. “You could explore with me?” Her eyes were illustrious and honeyed in the lack of light, in the torment consuming and chewing the scenery, proffering more promises and hopes, ambitions and aspirations – it was all she could do. “Maybe we’ll be able to find something.”

Image Credits
@Roland