Crestfallen, that was the best way Illynx could describe that sad smile, so strange on the normally brilliant gleam of Lena's mask. Illynx understood the light behind her eyes, she herself felt it when others looked upon her while she was weak; she'd rather that the sun just burned their gaze away, leaving black pits where eyes had once been. It could not be said that she didn't worry for the bay and her bonded, but she did try to wipe her pitying expression from existence, though afraid that in the absence of concern for the healer, her own demoralized soul might peer through her well kept facade.

Why would it matter if she knew my soul was sore? she thought to herself, rather grimly, as Lena's voice reached out to stroke at her ears, comforting in its tone but laced with a sorrow that was normally not present in the angel's speech. Her nod was curteous, her gaze distant as the other unicorn's in their inner struggles, I do not believe she would condemn me.

It did nothing to ease her discomfort at being so utterly weak of spirit, to be cast into despair so easily by a land rat and her pet. And when she thought of Kou, of the white mare's children... it was nearly more than Illynx could hold within her brain and remain sane, but thankfully for the bay and gold mynx, her life had been an endless struggle against the current, and while the waves were heavy and hard upon her, she remained abreast the teeming waters. She would simply not accept the matter of the prisoners held within the Edge as closed, would not let her own disgust at her weakness pull her under, not when all her life she had been alone to wander, now surrounded by so many who seemed, despite her own hesitations to believe the idea, to hold concern for her well being. After a long while of pondering the theory, Illynx decided to let her guise slip from her, the frustrations she felt over the recent events bleeding out of every pore, her refined stance releasing to show the pain she felt so acutely but refused to let others see, for distaste of their judgements.

But Lena bore the same failure, at least one, anyway, and that was good enough of a reason for Illynx to share her own broiling emotions with the obviously morose healer. If she could not trust this one, who had been with her people for so long, then there were few within the land that she could afford to show any semblance of her mortality to.

She smiled sweet as could be imagined from such a rancorous wench, Lena's query striking to the heart of the matter at hand. "If you have the energy and will not short yourself," the mare replied, her golden eyes swiveling about to meet the gentle, earth tone gaze of the healer, "there are many things that need to be accomplished that cannot be in my state of ruin." A slender laugh broke from her, a wretched sounding thing, full of bitterness instead of genuine amusement. "Dragons," she balked, her head shaking to and fro in annoyance at the thought, her gaze flashing vehemently as the image of the slender blue beast flitted across her mind, the word itself a curse to condemn Zaffre and all his kind to a pit of flames.