A confused look snapped the girl back to reality, away from her misty flight. The water dissipated away from her, dissolving into the air, disappearing from her body. She was solid again, for Resplendence and for Quilyan. She was no specter. Just a mare once more. And as she finished forcing the words from her mouth, as the stallion stepped towards her, she accepted his touch opening. She needed his touch. Something to let her know this was reality, that she was not dreaming, that the blackness she had seen was very real and the ominous terror that flowed through her bones was not just a figment of her imagination. She seemed to believe her. She was glad. Perhaps she wasn't going crazy.

She didn't have time to answer his question before Res spoke, though, causing the painted mare to shift and sway uncomfortably. Her predictions of godless days again set the painted mare to fretting and so as Destrier moved to be the fallen angel, Kahlua followed dutifully, her eyes staring past the stallion to a point far beyond him. She was lost in the nightmares of her mind, though Res's voice still penetrated her ears.

But at least Destrier was there, consoling, offering peace, and Kahlua clung to this words with fervent hope. She needed them to be real. They had to be real. We will prevail. She repeated it in her head, chanting it to herself, breathing in time with the rhythm of the words. They would become her song, her call to the gods, to the land to the darkness. And though she was not brave, and she was certain that she would turn tail and run again if she ever saw the blackness, she would have those words to cling to, to swallow, to hold before her like a cross to the devil. We. Will. Prevail.

She was breathing more easily then, just in time for her best friend to fall to the heap on the ground. Kahlua dropped with her, nose reaching to touch the fallen angel's shoulder, a comforting motion. It was all she had. She was not the doctor, Resplendence was. Res was the healer, the fixer, the strong one who held the two of them up when Kahlua brought them all to trouble. But Kahlua tried now to be the strong one, to smile, though it was forced, so that the pink lady would not disappear into a terrible corner of her mind that she could not be called forth from.

“I'm not hurt,” she offered to Destrier though she was looking at Res still. Then, just a whisper, but words full of hope. For Res. For herself. “We will prevail.”