Apollo reacts to her as if she is a monster.
If only he knew she was.

The woman bathed in the light of the star's does not truly hear her, does not understand that the Spector has deemed her a title she has almost long forgotten, a name the ghouls that haunt her never deem her.

But the Nightingale hears her next words, the trepidation Leto speaks of, that the two had fled in hopes of sanctuary outside their homeland, that she may have been safer with, and the elation that begins to hesitantly bubble up within her throat at the meager hopes of these two not figments of her fractured cranium rises as the wind within a storm. She comes forth, the storm blessed flesh of her friend against her own clammy frame, and the tremble that stutters out in the stead of words is soft as rainwater. "You're real?"

But they do not have long for celebrations, for from the shadows comes forth the aureate frame of Zeus, diseased in appearance, malnourished and emancipated, and her frame goes still with fright.
She only watches in horror the proceedings, the saliva mixed with claret that is spat from his mouth, until he drops as a dead weight upon the ground.
He doesn't move again.


The Nightingale recalls the taste of claret upon her tongue, harsh in it's realizations, the flavor of the tides on a warm summer's eve, she remembers the damp splatter of vermilion against a chaste childe, she remembers the sound of her dam drowning in her own life's fluids. She remembers the startled inhale, the glaze of once vivid honey pearls — she remembers and so she is damned to the voices that ricochet as gunfire within her mind. And when the second screech rises in a choir of echoes between cavern walls, when argentate flames blind her vision in the sure and complete illuminance of their brilliance, she is lost, a vagabond amidst her own memories.

The first thing she comprehends when the terrors of twilight end is the daemon upon her croup, the scalding breath upon her withers, the bile that rises as a swelling wave against her sinew is the liquid that dribbles into her nostrils, the vibrance of ripe strawberries and the bitterness of the brine, the stickiness of it's embrace. The second thing she comes into remembrance of is the bosom pressed into her dome, the source of the stickiness that dribbles as slaver down into her lashes, the banshee's wail of agony, the star-kissed flesh she recognizes as easily as the skin on her back — and when the childe of the Revere, the last remaining bloodline of the Sorcerer, Parvon, finally manages to rip free the scythe from her dam's bodice, it is far too late for childish apologies and fretful medics. For the Revere's last glance of the realm of Loorien is seen within glazed amber, the heavy and wet thud of her frame against the earth and the crack of skull on stone her last words, the final breath drawn from shuddering lungs resulting in spittle laced claret, gurgling within her throat. But what confuses the young Nightingale is that her dam does not move, does not herald the beat of confounded men with a thrum of her heart, does not whisper sweet nothings and promises of love and forgiveness into her dome, and the high-pitched words that escape her maw are tremulous in nature, a shuddering cry against parched lips. "Mom? Mom, I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean to. Mom? I-I can go get a healer, if I must, Mom. Mom..? MOM, MOM! Wake up, Mom, w-waaake up, pl-ease, Moo-m.."
.. But until the russet hued morn fell upon her civilization, until the ship of her sire found the girl standing still above the still frame of her dam, the wind was the only response she would receive in return for her efforts, it's gentle caress the only comfort she would find (for many eons to come).


When she is dragged forth from her memories, set sail upon new waters, she finds the stench of death in her nostrils, the crying frame of a silver blessed childe standing above his sire's corpse, and the trepidation that boils inside her bosom along with the abundances of grief and sorrow scalds her, burns her as the wake of tears along her cheeks. Leto has fallen to the earth, trembling frame, and her voice croaks from her lungs. "Zeus, no."
The Nightingale suddenly feels enervated, as if the weight of the realm has been draped across her withers, as if her veins have turned to led — the wobbly song of her voice aches, the back of her throat aches, the violet pearls set within her dome sting and flare akin to salt pressed into fresh wounds.
She had learnt long ago that the world was unfair in it's cruelties, endless in it's rage, a force unable to be reckoned with by divine nor mortal, the childhood tales of joyous after endings as false as she was the Goddess of the Lunar realm above.

A dry wail escapes her alabaster lined lips. "Zeus, Zeus no, no no no."
It is the only thing the Nightingale feels capable of saying, for she is aware she cannot heal the dead, cannot undo the tug of the Reaper himself, cannot give salvation to the ruined. What more can she do? What more is there to do?
She feels the woman's icy gaze upon her flesh rather than see it, almost expectant in it's silence, and the resolute and hoarse echo of her voice escapes her maw, rough in it's timbre. "We bury him. It's — it is what separates us from the beasts that prowl at our door." The Nightingale does not meet Leto's gaze. "It's.. it is only moral, it reminds us we are alive, with consciousness, the opposite of the monsters that seek our demise."

She swallows, for she cannot allow them to do the deed themselves, cannot allow them to do so on their own. "I'll.. I'll do it, Leto."




--

This post is bad because I wrote it on my cell. Many apologies.
Slight PP for future knowledge is given permission to by Ina, to know what Azarel and Delinne are doing.