Within the lights she heard the glint of smiles, and it all began to rush through her mind. The paranoia of every footstep was just that pulse – the one focus. The one voice. The one serpentine thought that could choke her or leave her to her misery; In flowers there was a love blooming, or hissing smoke from the candle as the past loves gather around a stone to gaze upon the buried corpse of the one they had known. As she wandered, the forest knew – perhaps this was a grave, blooming, vibrant flowers glowering with uncanny nostalgia that lurked where it knew struck anguish. It knew her – these serpentine tendrils with leaves to catch agony in its palm were so innocent, and yet they seemed to writhe in anguish, a dull, ineffable dance of smoke – they were not the distant first love torn so painfully apart but the moment as the flowers are tossed upon the ground, letting the smoke trail toward a begging sky with viridian stalks sprouting into looming figures of green. They were serpents; hissing and striking the innocent with claws of ice that would never thaw. She shivered, letting her hand fall with trembling dread toward the amber skin of a beauty somewhat... Uncanny. It spoke as if it were a friend, but with compassion slithering down its serpentine viper's scales like wax down a melting candle. Or like ink down the page it lit with blinding sharpness, ebbing and flowing with inconstant dread, knowing each word was delicate, an art that could be so beautiful, and yet turned to ash the dreams it held for you. It could choke every wandering soul out on that field as the reflection of her bedraggled complexion drifted past in a torrent of sinister whispers – it swirled around as if the scales were gold, a joy so intermittent. They swirled beyond her grasp as she grasped at the stalk; but it seemed thin, and perhaps the ink was so delicate, a blade that did not want to strike her flesh and draw blood. She held the stalk in her hand. Somehow holding the scales of a viper was comparable to this etching of horrors upon horrors, but it was not the only tendril that could be held. There were many held within, branches of possibilities that held nothing but hopelessness – and she let them whisper mournfully into her ear, moulding her thoughts and contorting whispers into roars from beasts.

They whispered every memory, and yet here it rang out deafeningly, leaving tremors in the sea far behind her. Smiles within the scales of a viper as it lies beneath the petals of a rose. Lingering joy as the residue fades little by little and all begins to cascade down like blood; everything could have been prevented if only a single path had wound from that flower, another serpent bitten into her world and tossed it aside in favour of a desolate place of misery. There had once been hope, but a full knot of those possibilities whirled in a storm of foreboding before her, her reflection slithering past as they whispered in her ear. There had once been hope, but now it was left to a path far behind her of solace and peace, comfort flowing in rivers of joy with no brooding fog lurking above. Hope had been snatched away by the wind, its clutches strong and fierce, whispers cast into the whirling torrent of despair, leaving her with a flower, rasping those stories of lingering joy and smiles before it too was snatched away, and in her hand, she held one of a different kind of compassion, cold and emotionless; it held no dread that one day that constant gunfire would lead to a death. And yet it felt more fitting to have raindrops cascade down that. Felt more comforting to have stories that may have seemed insignificant before. Somewhere within that stream of melancholy was the dull glow of a surreal sorrow that seemed almost kind, almost a comforting hand against her shoulder. A bell. A bell. The shivers seemed to speak a dull, pulsing tongue that squirmed through blades of silhouetted eclipses, and though these serpents were quieter, and they held blunt knives, not shattered glass among a sea of smiles, it was an unsettling calm after, the silence of a funeral – perhaps the wind had clutched at those branches as it blew past, desperately trying to extend its tendrils, choke entrails out of soldiers with the bullets carried in the wind with desperation for something more than a meagre hint; a tainted answer with ink that flowed with a cowering uncertainty. Perhaps they wished they could know why the bell rang in the distance. For the heralding of grief of the most wicked, oppressive kind, or the binding of two hearts. She heard it. She heard her pulse quicken as she chased it, a flash of foreboding in the distance as she did.

She grasped at the sound of a comfort, a familiar voice weeping, their tears falling in an intermittent, choked breath down the rose she held, slithering with mistrust as swiftly as insidious ink upon a page. She did not chase with desperation, not even with oppressive uncertainty like that of grief's beak as the crow plucks not a rose but a serpent laced with deadly blades – in fact, perhaps her reasoning was but a mystery, unable to be detangled through the web of promises between tied hands, hands bound with chains of cold, cold dread formed by individual tendrils. A bell could ring for love or one last perishing breath. It could be laced with flowers that bloomed or flowers that dried, refusing to show the poor lost souls an answer. Perhaps that could be used to describe love too, she thought; lost – helpless. She held a glowing flower. It glimmered with once prosperous smiles.

A crackle of electricity roared in anguish in the distance, and she turned, anxiously gathering her will and courage to gaze toward the wound, where the viper had sunk its blinding fangs even through the many veils placed over her eyes by shadows. Where the phlegmatic screams had not held back the blood from pouring from the two wounds, a break in an almost complete line of smiles and tears; there had been a thread, but that fate was sealed as soon as the moment had passed. She felt tremors of dread through the earth, whispers of dark tendrils floating in crooked grace and choking soldiers like serpents – the line was made of thread and silk, a delicate peace so easily snapped into pure havoc and seas of regret. There had been compassion in the silk petals of those flowers, and yet the lightning seemed to tear through the light, leaving the insidious tendrils of darkness to spill through, leaving a dull light for her to walk by. The contract was begun, and so did the agony of so many shattered hearts, ready to fall into pieces if but one fang pierces the delicate silk flesh of silence – tears could fall in rivers from the wounds, into the seas and the oceans, fuelling the guns as they fired, the clouds murmuring ripples of those intermittent bullets; and just as tears could drive away festering infection, the serpents of gas slithering through the air, searching for a neck to wrap vile tendrils around, mocking the coughs that spread through veins – it could also drive them forward. Winds began to writhe as the sea settled, complacent to the rain that cackled and fell as swift as blood. And complacent to the shadowed, foreboding entrails that swept over them, seeking the flesh of the innocent to choke the joy out of. Then the breath. Then the life. All in a single cough. A cough that made the earth shudder, for remorse could come at the most agonising moments. But through came the eerie calm, the serpents whistling a tune through their limp, thin corpses; a blink, and the wind simply saw light, the terror fading away into a dreary pulse, one it found and seemed to whistle, knowing it simply triggered bells to ring, in death or in forever binding two loves together; it knew the tendrils it whistled through were seeking her throat, yet unable to grasp it

No blanket of night can endure. The sun always rises, watching it go into flames that dance and mock. The night stirred, silence returning, yet beauty vanishing. The viper's fangs were full, and yet the rose still fell, despite the eyes laughing at every small movement; it still crept through the layers of moments to mute the whistling of placid joy, untouched by the blade of sorrow, or the echoes of that single, foreboding cough – it seemed not to hear, only to feel the traces of the crow's beak and the knowledge that within moments silence would fall and not be overtaken, as the one smile faded as the serpents were left to bleed, their tendrils cascading through the air and simply rotting into the ground. Not even the growl of a distant hound of war, or the incessant pulse. The fangs had sunk deep, and the rose had struck the ground, leaving a hollow hesitation to every sound. Almost a recoil. But she knew these sounds were sinister; they rippled long after when the glow had begun to fade to nothing, and the sea had turned to an eerie solace – every sound seemed to turn back to the almost silent sound of a ticking clock. The cackling of time. Of that ink. Of that glistening serpent that is not complacent but merciless, uncaring. Insatiable. The ink could run out, but more tears would be wept by fearful wives and children. And the slithering hunters that seeked in tendrils would drive the paper into a long scroll. It was a slithering mass of ink – its smile was sinister, an incessant reminder that those fangs always hung close; but even that pulse could falter, and she heard as she wandered that the cackling had faltered, if even for a moment while it paused to breathe. If even for mere seconds. A mother's white lie could always be discovered, if it blew softly as the wind, even if its grave was heavenly and divine. It would always run out, like the ink in a pot as the plot begins to choke out its last breath, scattering blood over the page. Everything could end with something as graceful as a stroke of a brush by a sinful human hand; and yet they writhed against those restraints, a deep trembling shaking the earth for a moment and leaving the ink flailing over the page. But the pulse halted. For the viper had been choked of its white lies.

She turned, feeling the blanket of night once again settle upon the forest, blades engulfed in fog of grief. The corpse could rise at moment. It could choke out those tendrils once more and choke the world of its smiles; it lay only dormant as she wandered toward it. That petal. The intricate, worn wood, stories in every scratch – it had returned. A hand to guide her through a sea of paths and clashing swords.