Dazed, leaking eyes bore into his -- a bizarre, alien intelligence heavily opaque over her own, so bleak and empty. Possessed. A charcoal carving of wretched existence, Imonada is motionless and unresponsive he turns from a model stallion into a tightly controlled storm bringing with him a healing rain. But she just keeps staring, seeing yet not, dreamily tracing his jugular and chest in what once was an analytic function now turned hyper surreal; each bump and couture, shifting as he breathes, a fascinating lay of ridges coated in hairs the color of evening sun bathing desert mountainfaces of red porphyry and tuff. Then she blinks slowly as the bundle of brilliant soothing light nestles into her chest, passing through skin and bone and lungs, blazing in a purifying warmth that devours the virus.

Life returns to her in a slow build of movement, until she suddenly braces her legs and heaves violently, hacking out a small lump of that atrocious black slime; no bigger than an acorn it lands in the grass at her feet, its thin spidery tentacles writhing in death throes before abruptly ceasing. Desperately sucking down the clean fresh air into her lungs, she tries to speak, managing breathily. "''At... is.. mingin'." The oil still mars her coat, but at least now it is a dry river, caked and flaking away in chips.

Imonada looks at Miykael again -- his aura is gone now, and she feels a pang of disappointment, but its drowned out by his soft and concerned voice; her own response is subdued, tired, uncertain, but with a precious hint of hope. "Uh. Comparatively better." Squinting at him, her eyes having returned to their bright shiny onyx, with nostrils flaring, she realizes there is something about him that is familiar; but it is elusive and floats out of her reach like the mischievous butterflies that originally led her astray. Before she can make any connection, she glances to the side and finally notices the large gathering of ill that Miykael begins tending to.

Memories unbidden from another time take hold; she and her sweet twin, Imanie, but ill in the way that stole foals' once limitless futures, curled up together in a bundle of black baby-feathers and soft, fuzzed fur, in a terrible fever-sleep. She never remembered actually seeing her sister dead before she was taken away; she only recalled a nightmare, of thousands, where she reached out to her soulmate only to never again feel the comforting reverberation of unconditional love in response.

Seeing so many gathered and suffering was not a first for her either. All the children had succumbed, save for herself and one of her cousins.

The exhaustion, the elation from the cure, the responsibility of a second chance, the tiring memories... But it's Ki'irha's very real and very slavering aggression that solidifies the discomfort. Her chest constricts, tears pooling at the corner of her eyes, threatening to spoil over; Miykael's command comes like a welcome redemption and she heeds it after warily regarding the admittedly beautiful, but savage, unicorn mare. Before she turns off and walks --never flies-- away north, she bows her head toward him.

""M in yer debt, sair."

~