Fragments of Shadow
                        or, Triangles
                     -------------------

She has secret places in the forest that she goes. Other people probably know about them, but to her they're special. There's the crumbling stone wall in the eastern side, just above where the tunnels descend down into the bats' realm. She can sit in it for hours, staring out at the forest, sheltered in the thick fog that's been there since she was a child.

~~

            She sees the past, whole and unsullied - 
     the echoes of it resonate deep inside her heart and 
 bounce 
      off the walls like ricocheted stones. 
                 As they plunge into the fleshy walls blood
                                       gushes forth 
         in painful sympathy, 
               whilst the past, victorious, 
   rears its head and devours the tiny splinters 
           of hope within her heart.

~~

When she was small - or rather, when she was even smaller - she used to come to this same spot and pretend the wall was her own towering castle. That the chestnut trees were the wardens of her realm, and none could enter her shadowed demesne. But then the winds would rise and toss her about like a ragdoll, and it would be time to hide indoors again until she had grown enough that her wings were strong.

~~

                 He stands proud, devout, wreathed in loyalty,
      and she watches the past with wrenching gaze.
                   The shadows flicker and the other, 
                                               her counterpart,
    superior in every way,
              all the things she will never be and cannot equal,
      wraps arms around him and takes,
            and takes,
                     and takes what her heart cannot have.

~~

Then she went to the library, and the library was where she first saw Him - not that she knew it was Him. She had sat there for days on end with the scholar she most revered, listening to tales of great histories and prophetic futures. When the scholar left and the faeling remained to muse on her discoveries, the voice began to speak to her.

~~

                       Then the present:
                            where shadows wax and wane in blissful
      agony, their snaking tendrils contorting
         about the 
                 Wyrden 
                     heart she sought so hard
                                            to conceal.
                 Echoes of she who was past and greater still
              remain, ever present,
                      preventing the ways onward.

~~

It was beautiful; languid and articulate, fluid and concise. The intoxicating sound of His melodic tones washed over her, and for the first time she felt herself falling helplessly in love. She'd been aware of love, of course. All good historians were - it was the one thing that had affected more of history than any other emotion, or even any other power.

~~

             But a triangle has three points.
                  The third is amalgam, shrouded in confusion -
        what was twilight is shadow, and the truth 
                                             hidden.
                  Though it began in word and deed, not the
           bloodied walls of her heart
              there it now resides, pulsing, whole.
          But not enough.

~~

Whilst her fellows had been playing kiss chase in the forest, she had been reading in the library or listening to the elders tell great tales. It was, perhaps, due in part to her parents having had a strange and turbulent relationship. She was certain that they loved one another, somewhere, deep inside their hearts - if only they could remember, through the shouting.

~~

                               This one is everything
                     first
                       and only and last
                (for now, at least),
                     and he stands so proud and tall just like
             the other one - but in hand and heart held,
                   in soul given, accepted, bound.
              Bound by word
                  yet in blood grown and festered.

~~

An ephemeral hand ghosted across her cheek, and the faeling knew - for the first time - what it was like to be touched, and what it was like to feel love, rather than just reading about it. She began to live for the moments when His voice would appear again, and they could be together. A part of her, the scholarly part, knew that she was languishing in fantasies that would never truly come to pass. The rest of her knew that she didn't really care.

~~

                Time passed
          for she and he and they and then.
                   There was together, much of it, hours and days
          where there was nothing else
                              but them
                     and the rest of the world didn't matter.
                At some point along the way
                             he splintered off, Silent,
               and was there and whole yet apart and broken.

~~

Although she was never certain of His identity, she was desperate for any indication that His curiosity about her was even slightly as strong as her obsession with Him. With a furious, narrow-minded passion she pursued joining his Order, determined to become indispensible to the Enigma who had ensnared her heart.

~~

                       Now there are two
                            souls stabbing in her heart
                  virulent and violent
                      vibrant and volatile
              viridian spears,
                          clamouring in her soul for unity
                                             and victory.
                She would weep if it were not quite
                               so terribly unlike her.

~~

Love, however, is fickle - what was an all-consuming obsession of the faeling's quickly passed as the mantle of leadership fell onto her and began to sap away at her time. With this, and the fading of His interest in her, the faeling slowly fell back into the rhythm of keeping her heart secluded, never bestowing it upon another. In time she followed a new Order and this time joined up fully, her vows of Silence and Amalgam seeming fitting for her self-induced celibacy.

~~

        There is strength burning within her
                  like the love that should not be there, but
                   effortlessly
                it takes over control of everything, every waking
                                                    moment.
             There must be something else,
                          somewhere she can direct this anger
                   this energy
                        this hate and love.

~~

Then the world shifted and there was nothing but blissful darkness for a time, enveloped in the shrouds of slumber and dormancy. When she woke it was to a world changed, and the heavy shackles of betrayal fell upon her to look out to the east, her Enigma taken by those who would control the powers beyond all mortal ken.

~~

                 So
              shrouded in confused twilight
                    she gives in to the whispers of ebon queens.
                                         For if her soul
                         is consigned to service,
                   and her mind distracted,
                        how then can she pine 
             for things that can never, must never, will never
                                                       be?

~~

Her family were there, however, and in them the faeling found great comfort. Though her adoptive father and mother were long lost, her true parents had reawoken and embraced her as their own, slaugh-blooded child, no longer alone in their company. Together they began to plot and scheme the growth of their family's honour.

~~

               But the birds whisper in her ear.
                    One caws of loyalty and devotion
                  of
                       the counterpart she will never be
                              of
                      the changes that are natural
                 of
                      risks that gained rewards but broke them
                                        of
               possibility, of chance, of how she could maybe
                    just maybe
                               have a chance.

~~

It was her idea to use her body as a gift to their would-be liege lords. To offer her as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of their greed, the blood-bound army that she would be bound into by word and deed. It was not so terrible an idea, to give up her solitude, when all the love she had ever wanted was already lost - devoured by the ages.

~~

                                The other is certain.
                    Heart's blood must pulse where it will,
           the ever-present need and desire for unity
                              must be acquiesced to.
       She must give in
            no matter how much it hurts
                                       (for the hurt it will do
                                  him
                            is less than she feels now).

~~

She was the most perfect of gifts, small and devout, and her recipient took her with a stoic and polite gratitude. He taught her to while away days at hunting, to pursue things always in the devotion of Silence, and to remain loyal at all costs to the Wyrd. Enraptured by the depth of his faith she followed him, stood beneath the Ravenwood and made oaths that were bound no longer only by word and politics but tied delicately into her heart's strings. He was first, and everything.

~~

               Here she stands then, trapped
                        between loyalty and amalgam
                  between one and another and two
                                           if only it were two
                                for her heart
                          if only.
                        But truths are bound in pain
                     and sorrow effortlessly entwined
                 with love.
                      She hovers, listless, lost.
                    Nothing is resolved.