Her thoughtful frown brightened into a happy expression when the pretty lady laughed. She laughed! Oh, what a wonderful feeling, to be able to make someone do that! It was infectious too, the good kind anyway, because it made her giggle along. In the excitement the delicate child skipped and jumped on the spot, a merry little dance that only ended when one of the usual coughing fits glued her back onto the ground.

They were tiring, and she couldn't really see why she coughed all the time. It was as though something along the way between nose and lung was being poked and prodded, but it was also a burning and stinging like bear god blood as she inhaled. They didn't last long but left her breathless and panting, drained in a way that hours of talking or playing couldn't accomplish.

And yet, as soon as she found the strength to speak again, the child kept smiling. The frail constitution did nothing to dull her bright nature or fill the gluttonous appetite on life. By the time she looked up she was already talking again, blabbering on as though she didn't have a concern in the world.

"That was awfully nice of him! My papa is nice too, but when he gets angry he can be really scary. He scolded me once, I sneaked out, and you wouldn't believe how angry they all were when I got home!"

She swaggered back and forth around Rexanna, boasting with the kind of pride only one who loved from the bottom of her heart could about being yelled at. She giggled at being addressed with the accidental nickname, happiness spreading like something warm and soft and wonderful inside. She felt something great had happened just then, like the moment they shared belonged to just them and no one else. It was like a good secret, a hidden gift, a ray of light illuminating frost on a flower bud.

But... then a cloud passed and the sun faded from her eyes. Rexanna asked about the boils and Erthë became quite still, her eyes growing distant as the unpleasant memories welled up inside. Well, one eye at least. The left one saw nothing at all; it was blind, dead, destroyed by cursed blood. Soon it would begin to rot within its socket, but for now Erthë only felt mild discomfort whenever she blinked. It kept watering and leaking so that her cheek became stained with foul smelling liquids. She hated it, hated the boils that swelled and burst and bled all over her legs. Ah, it made her feel so dirty, so tainted...

"I walked into a red forest" she responded automatically, but some of the eagerness had died away and the voice was mechanical. "Then a big bear appeared. They said it was a god, but he was sick... Mother thinks that's where I got them. She was itching an awful lot too..."

A shudder passed through the child and she pressed the downy wings tighter against the slender sides, suddenly chilled despite the temperature of the air being so much higher than her own.

"I don't like this place" she added. Sea-green eye jerked back onto Rex, unspoken angst aging her by months as she inched closer. "It feels wrong and fake, just like the red forest, and she is here too, just like the Time man was. Something is going to happen...."