The little cantankerous murmur of sensation in her mind, that she interpreted as a voice, was hardly ever helpful. Most of the comments were degrading, making sure to mark each occasion with incessant chicken-pecking at her self-worth; she imagined it as a rotten thing with diseased roots burrowing deep into the hair-width fissures of her mind. But it took a guardian stance in the Deep Forest as it urged her in that violating way, that she needed to keep moving. Forget about the butterflies. Forget about the creepy forest. Just keep moving. Away.

But the further she tread, the game trails began to vanish as if having been washed away--to the point she was forced off path. Soon the world she travels into becomes clogged with a sheen of mist that collects around the soaring tree trunks, buoyed by the earth. Here she is lost in the maze of those imperial, antagonist trees providing no care or shelter, her only companions the ghosts of the long-dead that haunt the place.

Then, suddenly, a distinctive tug in the direction of the Green Labyrinth? Like a sign in the desert of desperation, showing the way. The black sludge leaking from her eyes and mouth begin to increase with the promise of proximity to their origin, the virus's home, her bright acid purple irises florid against their dark river backdrop. So it is miraculous that a breath of life from the capricious gods themselves intervenes, startling her when a great roc zephyr bursts from the onerous canopy above that eschews most of the natural light. Imonada yelps and takes a few reactionary steps backward, but since it doesn't begin attacking her on sight, she resolves a moment to study and steady her erratic heartbeat. Beautifully wrought, a regally stunning example of a zephyr, carefully crafted with love in its creation for sleek conformity and predatory elegance. They watch each other, the roc perched on a moss-infested log and Imonada with her horrid drooling face. She close-coughs deep in the back of her throat, ready to say something, but then the creature stretches itself wide open and flies off.

Another fae trick?

Imonada refuses to budge--and is rewarded with the bird coming back to lightly smack her withers with its soft wings in a delicate, encouraging gesture before it's airborne again, its message clear to her now. "If ye insist. 'M stuck atween a rock an' a hard place at th' moment. I've nae much choice." Inwardly she cringes, realizing she made a terrible joke, but all her new observer gets is a pained expression before she sets on the trail to follow the creature. The mare only affords the Green Labyrinth's pull one last hesitant glance back, but Eliana has won.

--

The path Eliana takes is efficient and passes with such speed that the black broken pegasus following her is in awe, for soon the wretched forest bleeds out into a vast meadow with its sprawling grasses rolling like waves under the touch of the wind. True to its namesake, the thistle can be seen as far as the horizon, splashes of prickly shades ranging from zaffre-blue to bold magenta. Like a bruised thumb charred to a crisp she is, Imonada sticks out here, a silk-shadow ebony witch surrounded by nature's bounty of many a great color.

The sight of those millions of flowers takes her into the grip of pure elation. Thistles were native to her homeland and even their symbolic flower, but never in her life had she seen such a display of them. She is momentarily distracted until Eliana peeps a small sound to her, drawing her attention to painted stallion patient, standing, waiting, surrounded by her nostalgia. 

"Hello," she croaks, her breathing a labored hiss; her tone bland, as if her face didn't look like it was practically melting. Her qualmish eyes raking up and down his body in a clinical perusal; she tries not to notice, not to acknowledge, that illusionary gift from her sickness that reveals an aura enfolding him in a bright halo of incandescent white. She doesn't really want to internally address their height difference either--it would be easy to spook herself when it came to larger horses.

~

@miykael