‧₊˚Dream-haunted ⊹°.

Drawn by her tremulous digits, kingdoms collapsed into a multitude of inevitabilities. Knights traipsed 'stray. Queens perished, if spared the fate of being caught in her web. Pawns stretched their diminutive porcelain 'cross impossible distances, to become something greater than themselves. For, not unlike herself, each piece desired a purpose... and her gift was to find that. She'd sooner shy from sleep than neglect a war in black and white.

Years folded around her like petals, and her flesh paled 'neath the candlelight she'd traded for the honeydrip of Sunlight. Each sacrifice was paid for in a lesson, and defeat merely concealed instruction. The tangled paths upon a grandmaster's map possessed a hidden thread she'd illuminate.

A thread she wove 'twixt ivory and scripture.

'Twixt the silences that followed each the selfsame.

Her journals had thickened multiplicatively, pages bestowed with opening theory and devotional verse alike. Errant fragments of sermons nested themselves within sketches of endgames. Musings 'pon grace shared their margins with shapes of sacrificial queens.

A bishop, and a bishop.

The distinction split her theory evenly in two.

Still, as her lashes fell heavy in the threat of another too-late night, she'd stare too long at them. She'd find herself remiss to separate them.

Through stained glass, the Sun cast warmth in champagne rays 'pon the breast of her marble figure. A bishop glided in her practiced digits 'cross perfect squares. A queen surrendered herself for her kingdom, as the altar lamb were sacrificed for something greater than itself. The flux of such thoughts dizzied her.

Unease nested itself within the garden of her mind and heart alike, its sallow roots winding 'twixt her ribs. For, her roses had begun to lose their color; frangible petals darkened at their diaphanous edges, swooning in their wilt against the blighted Scar of Quel'thalas. Atramentous soil threatened to write their elegy.

Neither condition seemed capable of abolishing the other.

Rynesmira knelt 'neath her roses, a coverlet of floridity crowning her as ash stained the hem of her dress. She carded through the pages of her journal.

A prayer unfinished.

A chess problem unfinished.

The same fallen petal found its rest across both.

Rose-roots threaded through the trellis of her home's old grief; too-cool veins seeking a pulse long stilled. Light spilled from the petals of her lips in dim refractions, blessing flower and thorn, whilst their shadows pooled in the hollows of her gaze.

Wan breaths of wind toussled her flaxen tresses, and they too turned a page. Her gaze held within it a notation that seemed more prophecy in her sleep-forsaken mind.

Sacrifice the bishop for the gain of initiative.

'Neath it, written surely days later from the unevenness of her quillstrokes, 'What must be surrendered for faith's to bloom?'

She nearly choked on her own breath, the silence permeating her garden muting her in turn.

Twilight, too, pooled its shadows around her. Pale, luminous faces in waxen petals turned to give pardon to the Sun's afterglow. Shadows stretched long 'cross the tear of death they found themselves a seam of.

Rynesmira lost herself in the endless-seeming contradiction. For, it was by the Light of her touch that roses bloomed; but, she refused to understand it. To comprehend something so obscure, even by her own hand.

The mathematics demurred reconciliation, yet the proof remained. Her contradiction rooted itself, and breathed blossoms.

When she'd be allowed a dream, they wrote stories from studies. She dreamt herself dancing through cathedrals built from ivory chess pieces. Bishops rose like steeples, and pawns knelt in endless rows of pews. Candles burned bright 'top kings whose crowns dripped in golden Light. Above the altar grew countless roses whose roots wound through marble and stone.

So, too, did they through scripture and bone.

Her outstretched hands never found their solace within their frailty. Petals unfurled into pages, and pages into feathers.

The rosarian dreamt within the dread of loving something too fragile to live; lifegiving unto a land believed to have forsaken life.

Unkindly, the world of wakening stole her back.

'Midst the hush of her garden, a thought came so gently she'd nearly mistake it for another whisper of wind. Every uncertainty's bones, she'd laid bare. She held an emptiness within the hollows of ribs she could not name, nor find; neither did she know if she could merely seek it.

Unfinished things lent themselves to her heart. Her rose garden, her chessboard, her theologic writings.

Oh, her roses. Glimmers of seashine gathered 'pon her eyes, spilling over the precipice of flaxen lashes to stain her porcelain.