Lena
hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
that perches in the soul
For the next few days, Lena was lost.
The absence of the Tower loomed like a blank canvas across the horizon. They had cremated her sister upon a pyre, where the fire burned white hot and black all at once, and she could still taste the way the air burned against her when she tried to reach out and touch it. Her home was gone, and there was a cot in the Celestine where she’d curled up beside one of the unicorns’ enclosures, as if they could relieve her of anything (they couldn’t), and cried until she was empty.
She journeyed down the plaza simply by way of necessity now, head down, basket on her arm, winding along roads newly forged by debris and rubble, staring out into the void like so many of the other citizens. Where a smile had always bloomed, now there were just residual lines, very muffled, quiet, thank yous to other patrons and merchants, all trying to get by. Because now, she truly didn’t know what to do.
The absence of the Tower loomed like a blank canvas across the horizon. They had cremated her sister upon a pyre, where the fire burned white hot and black all at once, and she could still taste the way the air burned against her when she tried to reach out and touch it. Her home was gone, and there was a cot in the Celestine where she’d curled up beside one of the unicorns’ enclosures, as if they could relieve her of anything (they couldn’t), and cried until she was empty.
She journeyed down the plaza simply by way of necessity now, head down, basket on her arm, winding along roads newly forged by debris and rubble, staring out into the void like so many of the other citizens. Where a smile had always bloomed, now there were just residual lines, very muffled, quiet, thank yous to other patrons and merchants, all trying to get by. Because now, she truly didn’t know what to do.
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops at all
and never stops at all
