They eyed her, wandering abandoned in the darkness
She, a guiding light where the two paths merged
Their white princess, leader of the sacred armies
Naked feet tenderly absorbing the ferny floor
And as a dappled deer she sensed her fragility
The feathery touch of the breeze told her they had come
It grazed her cheek sending soft hairs spiraling skyward
While their watchful hush loomed as a heady perfume
Gleeful as she caught the roots of an old oak and fell
Tumbling downward and downward to a bleak wonderland
Stopping with a numbed thud on the hard foreign soil
And then she saw them, she looked and she really saw them
Jackal like, stepping forward, each more daring than the next
And for a fragment of time she pitied them their malice
Before they shattered the delicate fragments of her
A spectrum of rainbow shards and glitter flecks from her aspect
Suspended and floating in the tranquil air before they fell
A frenzy of teeth and stars until there was nothing left
Crushed to lifeless powder beneath them as they departed
The fragments of her.