She is tired of being broken.

For well over a year of life, the gargoyle has suffered in stoic silence with the disease that plagues her heart. She was born with it, a parasite lurking in the depths of her body; at times it has crippled her, at others it has simply shamed her. Always, it has changed her. She thinks she would be a different girl if she'd been born healthy - maybe she wouldn't be so full of hate. Perhaps she wouldn't have the all-consuming need to crush any semblance of weakness in herself or others, perhaps she'd be less inclined to disregard anything good in herself to focus purely on the bad. Perhaps she would be a better person if a quirk of fate had not condemned her to this.

Her issue does not have a name that she knows of, so the gargoyle simply calls it The Thing. That is what it is, just a useless object lodged in her chest like a set of fangs compressing her heart. It comes from nowhere, with no warning. Lifting her head at a certain angle can trigger it, but it can also rip forth like a demon from the night, snatching at her breath at any given moment and sending her into paroxysms of pain. At the peak of her throes of suffering, the filly feels as though a giant is sitting upon her chest, crushing her heartbeat and decimating her lungs, reducing her to a simple lump of flesh that serves no purpose other than to writhe under the weight of her own inadequacy. Sometimes she jumps into Ker's body until it's all over, and the Philippine gratefully accepts her bonded's shaking, terrified presence. Other times she simply stands like a grey sentinel of failure, waiting for it to finish, waiting to be released from the nightmare born of her own bloodlines.

In a way, the girl is proud of what she's accomplished so far in spite of the horrendous hand that Mother Nature dealt her. If life was a race, then Oizys' birth ensured that she was placed right at the very back at the starting line, caged in and with seemingly no chance of ever clawing her way to the front; in addition to being born with no magic and being savaged by a harpy eagle moments after her birth, her defective genes also doomed her to a lifetime of The Thing. Weaker children may have crumbled, faded into mediocrity, but not Oizys. If anything, she took her situation as a challenge, chose to believe that Nature had handicapped her in such a way because it was scared of what she would become if she was born able-bodied and flush with power like most other foals. Off her own back, she's obtained two different magics and, of course, Ker; she's caused strife and she's made friends, she's loved and she's hated. And there's still so much more to come from her.

If she is to reach her full potential, though, the bulky yearling knows she must rid herself of The Thing once and for all. She can hide it, she can disguise it, she can do her best to avoid it, but until it is out of her system altogether she can never be what she is destined to be.

She can never be her father's daughter.

Oizys makes her way to the Veins with a heavy weight of hope upon her shoulders. It's the hope that kills; she's built up her dreams that today will be the day she is cured, and has pinned far too much on the outcome of this journey. Ker rides on her shoulders, her large beak idly playing with the filly's tangled black mane, a physical manifestation of her bonded's nerves - she is crippled with longing too, of unsaid prayers and futile desires. She loves Oizys just how she is, but knows how much the girl wishes to be healthy. She ascends to the shrines, and the exertion causes The Thing to bubble ominously in her chest; she chokes it back, her face twisted into a hateful snarl.

Eventually she halts by the shrines, hovering near the wind-broken one that exuses dark power, and the one split in two, its second half relegated to the sea below. "Uhm....hello?" The gargoyle has never been shy in her life, yet there's distinct nervousness in her voice and an anxious quiver in her muscles as she stands before the shrines, weak heart hammering with hope.