Nine maidens roam endless the great realms as one as their paces' aims are far and wide,      
to race and back every last slow turn of tor so to stand still in the rush of every of tide. 
But return home, steadfast, all come midnights struck under the lit watch of Orion’s moon 
and, as the trying sun crests in oft ashen skies, when sacred peals wail summons each noon,
for to spin steps amid old friends dear-brothers ever mourning passed time of blood and bone,
since the ring of sixteen hearts caught restless for mere moments, were cast for all the rest as stone. 
Though early divined the hex cannot be undone, the ennead intone still their uplifting spells in song;
their moot gift of hope, true compassion’s grey lie, as without trace, eternity can feel too long.

Desolate air stands in stead of another, a rogue errant ere banished to lonely exile
after his unbidden kiss, turned down with grace by elusive lips turned up in gentle smile,
unleashed a rage, til as she slipped away, did he, a crafted dart more deadly than his aim.
It missed his mark, fell to lame on grass; now left him a seen snake teeming venom sans fang.
As his shame stained too 32 finer-led feet, for its shadow shaped by their ancestral tree, 
his wayward branch, yet lush in life, was hewed clean so theirs could so again breathe free.
Was thus dropped to man wistful wood lone, one dripped in dewy cascades of emerald green;
yet while he could liken its beauty to a storied land of faeries to help unforge a golden ring, 
his only held blanket, a layer of guilt, a quilt ever colder than languid nights were warm;
it bladed the bite of each brittle gust of wind and deepened the dank of every damp storm.
So soon he dwelled sole by old cozy hearths of home blazing in flickers of wisping memory,
lost then to found belonging in brotherly banter still echoing, if ever fainter, in denial's reverie. 

Spilling vines crawled to share the chatter in somber whispers held silent to his passing ears
of the fate nigh after befell his bettered clan; frozen to time, unable to cry their granite tears. 
Unsown oats bound by petrified roots, so sunk, became each tombstone and too shallow grave,
as trapped lives all but unlived in this unsighted linked cost to the due steep price wittingly paid.
For ever they rued the rot grew unruly in dark, though never damning his hands as tipped ungloved,
on the first seventh day past his paring, grieved his loathed villain overtook a kin forever loved.
And amid the deafening roar of absence, rang music, distant, all minds too so to not go unnoted,
but as it stirred still legs idly in time, in time sworn sole to stern idol devotion so solemnly doted,
old gods false avowed scorned scorched their ground; in a beat, wrath welded poor souls in place;
turned each being near as if, by misfortune, their own locked an ancient gorgon's mythical gaze.

The damsels' primal magic of might grew pure from love, and pure love is their strongest to share,
yet unable to break the curse of invisible infinite vanities, omni-seeing in over-clouded air, 
their loyalty stays bronze, aged unstained, as they recall tender the loyalty ever still shown,
and, in this, it matters naught, they- then and now- amply well able to defend their own. 
So cross each day, one next to see towns of heirs to thrones after first one arch to see them home
to dub their silver knights, always a short throw of being together, and who for it, feel more alone,
in a wild moor else shared only by ponies grazing blissful, unaware of who wait just ever there.
Then the maidens dance as the lads did once, in vital error, to honor theirs did chart stars unfair
and jinx fortunes fixed ill of trespassers come as dare try unsettle what peace they may still hold,
yet will the world will turn still up in wake to elegize a legend one only now has true and full told.