The orb on his shoulder throws him off balance, the teetering stallion a sight humorous enough to bring the scant shadow of a smile to my lips; it is fleeting, but it is a moment free of the murderous intent of my pale blue tattoos, and it is pleasing enough for just that simple release to continue with this conversation for as long as it need take place. Surely, he only stumbled so because his brain was a literal cotton ball with electrical currents pulsing through it, but one could not punish the rain for the cloud from which it came.

He thinks too long about what I have said, however. The rancorous snarl of the venom in my body is almost palpable on my tongue, but I am used to such outcries; it does not escape to the porcelain smoothness of my features, which have settled back into their blank state. His response to my inquiries as to the nation I have found myself in find him much more quickly – but it does not win him any future speech master awards.

An ear flicks back in a twinge of the savagery that pounds my head, the ways in which he aligns himself with the dark lies of my heart, and perhaps there is a slight tightening of the muscles in my face. Covering the splinter with a coating of lace, I focus on the ways in which this man would be humorous if my mind was not so poisoned, so chained to a system of belief that I no longer wished to follow.

”Look lady, I don’t know your sisters,” the dark man says, and I nod in agreement quickly and without much delay. I don’t think he does either – unless that’s where all those scars have come from.

Princess, hisses the voice of the intricate displays on my flesh, the resounding bell. It forgets that I am no such thing in this land.

The stammering that happens next manages to shatter the stalwart resolve of my passionless stare – downward fall the corners of my lips, ever so delicately, and my eyebrows and ears rise in expectation of whatever it is that he struggles for hard to vocalize. Perhaps it is a complex thought; perhaps what appears to be an egg strapped to his back is actually a scrying orb, and I might be able to see where my sisters are while gazing into its depths, or perhaps he has a friend who is capable of discovering others most expediently.

He offers me only a possible acquaintance with such skills of discovery. My head and the nearly black tips of my wings sag ever so slightly from their lofty positions in his lack of immediate aide, but perhaps this “Phantom Seeker” – by the Moon I hope it is not the poor creature’s true name – will be able to find them as he says.

"How far?" I ask with narrowed gaze, tilting my crown ever so slightly to gaze at him through pupiless gems. He probably won’t be able to answer that one either, at least not properly – I assume I’ll get a general “two days” or “long time that way,” in response. I could nearly throw stones at him for abusing the herbs as he does at this point, pausing to rephrase my inquiry so as to better get my point across. "I can fly faster than you can run. If you can tell me where to go, I will meet you there."

Surely, there would be time to inspect the terrain which I was accepting during the period without the stoned stallion (surely he did not invite me to meet his friends to no benefit of his own), but it was not the main focus of this inquiry. Much of my desire to go alone was to be rid of him. He seemed as if he would be a horrid road companion, not to mention I was not overly fond of the scent of his chosen habit. There were also my most… unusual quirks, inspired by the markings of my youth, and the longer he pressed me with his offensive presence, the more likely I was to lose control of myself in face of the monster that I could be.

I have seen what happens to those who do not control themselves. Hemera, the daughter of fire, and Persephone, the child of the darkness, are lost to the poison in their blood. Both of my sisters are beyond salvation, I am most afraid; I have never dreamt of them being anything other than mad, and I trust nothing I have not seen with closed eyes (though I have not dreamt in many months; the magic of this land rebukes my right to such power). Perhaps I am wrong, and they are not fated to suffer eternally in the grasp of Inanna’s deranged plans – but I reserve no hope.

I only look to them to know what I do not wish to be.