Poor Resplendence was a ghastly sight, although Imonada herself did not have much headway above that descriptor, either. Quite taken she is with the other mare's innate elegance and sublime beauty; but in that sticky messy hazy way of infirm lassitude, a new realm borne when reality and fantasy caress one another with an intimate delicacy, she is reminded of a great work of art shamelessly defaced by ghoulish vandalism. Where this gold creature should radiate, she leaks purification and disease. A contrariant bundle of emotions, pity and revulsion, hollow out a pit in Imonada's gut to vie for dominance, but she has no strength to boost one or the other--and so they remain mired with the sundry, overshadowed by pain and bodily distress.

A weeping angel come to heal her, whose kindness the mask of sickness cannot obscure, smiling reassuringly through the tears--Imonada cannot help but return the gesture, just as weakly, in her own attempt at fostering common ground between two stranger souls. To be so ill and yet offer power to another from a reserve that must be draining, a selfless feat appreciated even in the mental fog of disarray.

She will make you sick...
I'm already sick.

When the vines come, she is ready; insofar as she can allow it she wills her body to lax, to drop her harried defenses, giving quarter with as little resistance as possible. With a gradual closing of her dark eyes, Imonada begins to meditate, matching to the rhythmic pulse of magic-imbued life that surrounds her womb-like in tranquility and swaddled comfort. Even the mud it drags with it is not jarring in temperature, at first refreshingly cool before becoming toasty with a warmth that compliments her own body heat. This feeling... That frosty dam of hers who shed breadcrumbs of affection faster than rock aged, wrapping her twin blight-stricken baby daughters into the encompassing embrace and sound darkness of her soft wings, an unwavering promise of security joined in hand by the tender passion of maternal love written into the very touch of the feathers, while seducing them to rest with ancient lullabies... So many memories of her mother and her sister were polluted by a sorrow much unwelcome, but right now, this one, fills her with the gentle light of hope -- something so foreign she would normally reject it, but in a weakened state, she yields to the fantasy.

Until an angry roar stirs her from trancing; the accompanying shock of blinding pain in her stomach has her lurching upright to a fair, if not wobbly, standing. "Och mah." She manages a fragile, humble little laugh at herself, which is quickly followed by a wince when another hunger pain strikes hard. Her throat, too, how horrible, like a husk it felt as if she had swallowed mouthful after mouthful of salt. Suddenly whipped into a wild frenzy of starvation and thirst as her body finally catches back up, she is a mere puppet to its whim, discarding her social graces for pure survival. She'll thank them both more thoroughly at some point, but animal instinct forces her to begin mowing down nearby succulents and grasses.

The strange curse Resplendence had transmitted to Imonada, both unknowing but distantly suspecting, settles deep into her lungs and begins to grow.