A familiar smell slows her progression, dainty woman’s head lifted to catch the scent loitering over the green smell of the slumbering branches that hang like so many limp bodies around her. It is her darling, to be sure, but where? The wind is ceaseless, it caries the scent in ripples around Illynx, and she cannot find the source for the life of her, left standing in a slight clearing looking about her quite lost for the body her shadow so deeply longed for.

When the wraith appears, the golden backed mare also stares in a stunned silence – but it is not her bedraggled appearance, the curses knitted into her heart that stall her usual bouncy demeanor (especially around her dearest). It is Psyche’s horn, or lack there of, and her lips gape wide and horrified at the image that breaks through the naked arms of the willows.

The first tear splashes soundless on the grey leaves at her hooves as her name is ushered from the Empress’ lips, the second and third following suit though she attempts to stab into her tongue with hard white teeth to bite the emotions back. Is this why they had chased her away? The feeling of sickness grows in her belly, makes the inquiry her only friend asks of her lag and delay in her mental processes.

Her nod is slow and deliberate in response, yes, she mouths, her head finishing the statement in silence: but I have nothing to mourn that may compare to your losses.

Finding herself moving forward quite abruptly in her shame (these damn tears) and emotional stupor, she attempts to bury her face in the dark shoulder of her wandering queen if the woman would allow her to touch so freely upon her scar laced pelt. Her sides heave silently, dark hair strewn across her features and blurring the unsightly image of her red rimmed, golden irises. "Was this Ulrik?" she sobs bitterly, all her anguish towards the mountain and it’s seemingly perfect inhabitants coiling like the grip of a snake beneath her delicate vocals, "What has befallen your crown my darling!" “Crown” and everything after slides forth in a deranged gurgle of hesitant rage; she would kill him if she had to.

It would be only a single name added to her list of things to be cleansed – right there in burgundy ink beneath the devilish psalm of Deimos, the Reaper.

"How could you leave me with those men?" shrieks the Lady, recoiling from Psyche’s side as quickly as she arrived there, her harsh golden eyes burning holes through the branches that surrounded them, flashing to the world around their posed frames and the Empress herself through tear-tinted lenses, "Deimos is a monster and Ulrik is no assistance in keeping that heinous mongrel under check; they act as if you were never there, as if I am not allowed to mourn you!" Her tantrum unfurled in a sparkling display of her inner drive for self preservation, her anger at having been abandoned so unceremoniously and left to the hooves of men who thought more of their own swollen cocks than those they were meant to guide; like Medusa's vicious heads, her tail snaps and writhes about her body. "The mother fucker tried to kill me during a training session! And still he struts about wearing your title like it has earned him more than my disgust! And you…" her gold eyes are hot like molten metal as they find her friend’s face, "you left me."

And now, I can trust no one.