Nightfall has brought with it a stillness, a silence that buzzes inside the woman's mind with the all the abruptness of a lightning strike, and all the sound of the whip lash that follows the bright flash of pallid cerulean. It brings with it villains, savages and monsters that flit and fly along the contours of her mind, memories and cackles of laughter.
The woman has a charge.

The thought burns through her as a out of control flame, spurred by the storm inside her own delicate frame, for she has a charge. A daughter of twilight and vermilion blood and cream and she cannot do this.
She fears the possessive urge to dance into the dark of the forests, the call of the Abyss, she is terrified of the possession in which she has been given with so much trust and adoration from her Queen. She fears she shall break the girl, she fears she shall cause curses to befall a far too innocent dome and pain to enter obscure depths of barren obsidian stone. She is terrified of one thing, one thing that she cannot beat, cannot fight, cannot hide or charm.
She is afraid of a charcoal woman with an alabaster moon upon her poisoned skin. She, the Temptress, is afraid of herself.

Silver rises into the burnt skies. She follow's the twisting and churning clouds, the warmth that bakes her thin flesh and sinks into
fine, avian bones.

Her mother was a woman of flame, the Temptress recalls with both fond indifference and utter bitterness that leaves a putrid taste upon her maw. Morndis the Revere had been a candlelight flicker in the darkness of a dead homeland, a soothing voice and tittering tongue and even the King of the Crow's had cherished her with a unholy lust that makes the woman's figurative hackles raise upon feminine withers. The girl's dam had been a blazing fire, cleansed from impurities, consuming all with a gaze of unaltered honey and a song of molasses. She had blazed with a luminescence unlike any of the creation's the Kingdom has spawned, she had blazed for centuries, decades before the childe was borne.
Before she, daughter of Morndis, was born.

The Temptress pauses in her dance across the Earth, for there is a ship of ice and charcoal splotches upon the horizon, with a jutting sword of cerulean
that sprouts forth from it's brow.
For mere moments, the Intelligence of the Asylum stands still, a leaf that sways with the force of the wind, slow and calming.
And then she flows down towards him (It is a masculine scent across the air between them, is it not?), a droplet of scattering
rain upon a pane of clear glass.

The daughter was not like the Mother, she has been born a river, a lake, a endless ocean. Where her mother was warm and comforting, she was distant and freezing, a touch of icy chill to break through clammy flesh and into hot blood. Where her mother scorched, she soothed, and where her mother inspired hope and light, she inspired fear and dread, she was the unknown, the darkest depths of the ocean. She drowned.
She took the life from all that came far too close to the glacier heart within her breast, thrashing and racing as the waves upon the stormy brine.

She had drenched and frozen the flame of even her dam.
She had drowned her own mother. And she, was a damnation to all who stepped into the tides.

The Temptress comes to a standstill next to the frame of snow and ink, gazing down into the depths of the darkness alongside the stranger, and she wonders if he knows
as to the heated core behind a pane of endless glass beyond.
The only noise that comes forth from a icy maw of alabaster and night is breath. It flows forth as water from a dam, and slim sides expand and shrink in tune to her song.

After what seems to be a decade, quiet words escape into the steamy air.
"It is fascinating beneath the surface."
Matching violet splashes finally come up to glance with briefness towards the stranger's dome, a fleeting slight smile upon her exotic features. Long lashes brush against smooth cheeks as they flick back into the depths of the caverns below, and she moves down into the Abyss.
"Accompany me?"
Slippery ground falls against sleek hooves, and it is far too late now to backtrack into the above ground. If the stranger means her harm, he shall find a labyrinth in which to chase and hunt her in.
A dead end.
But she, too, is a killer.

The Temptress fades into the darkness, breaking into a smooth dance once more as she seeks what she has come for.
A auburn glow meets the nightingale's vision.

She rounds the corner..
And she basks in the glory that is the Sanctuary.



Circuta</style>
who's the killer in the crowd -</style>

If the woman had known the thoughts that ran within the ice and soot man's mind, she would have began to cackle with mirth at the mere whisper of Valkyrie.
For the nightingale is no hallowed amazonian to bring forth damnation upon him, she is dirtied and tattered and atrocious as the inky-black water that fills lungs and drowns
the mind's of mortals. She would then give him a deadened smile, poisonous dagger gleaming in the reflection of the incandescent heart encased in a shield of thick glass, and she would quip that if anything, she was the incubus come with the good tidings of Thanatos himself to end the lives of all those who came before her.
And she would whisper, as light as babe's breath upon the wind, that the demon had killed her, too.


She would have laughed at the homicidal urges that passed through his brain as flies flitting around hark's in the summer.
She would have lightly joked that maybe, just maybe, he belonged next to her, amidst the ghasts and ghouls of the Marsh.
But she didn't.

Because the nightingale knew nothing of the cogs and gears and workings of the ice breath's mind, knew nothing of his thoughts
and cravings, and knew nothing of him. She was but the wisp of the north wind upon summer's feathers, the laughter that sits upon the tides of long forgotten memories
to the man that she escorts down into the depths of Hell.
The woman first sees the dragonbacked, alabaster and obsidian owl upon his back in the light of the orange flames, and it turns her alight with flickering candlelight. (The woman assumes it is, a her, as she cannot tell the differences in scent of those not equine).
And the woman thinks, he has chosen a alluring companion to travel with, indeed.

She eye's the owl with but a curious and respectful air, for she admires the strength in those speckled wings, the intelligence in those endless depths.
Softness etches from violent indigo, gentle as the patter of rain, wild as the force of the wind.
"You have a elegant woman with you, lad."

What is it like, she ponders, the melded thoughts of those placed together with fate? What is it like, to know another as one know's themselves? To never, truly, be alone in the emptiness that is the world?
She meets the man's glaciers with rolling seas, broken and fixed, insane and sane. Desires and cravings and worry for families, worry for those whom she calls brother and sister, doubt for the companion that she has been promised to in the future (will he love her, despise her, be disgusted by the fractured girl he has been bonded to).
Does she deserve them?

There is hatred for enemies unspoken, there is loathing and love and affection and wonder for the stranger she has met, for who is he? The intelligence of the Asylum would not be in the position of those whom creep in the corridors if she did not grasp at the faintest strings of knowledge, did not yearn for the bliss of answers to her inquiring mind.
But she speaks none of this.
It writhes within her gaze as that of a coiled snake, and one day, she may shatter into a billion pieces upon the floor. She may snap.
And that day shall not be today, no, not now. Not yet.

The flames behind the thick glass have heated her apparel, for the faintest sheen of sweat covers her with a distinct metallic gleam that is noticeable to her lineage, and she breaks her gaze to the flickering movements of the heart, moves forward until she almost touches. Almost.
They dance within her eyes.
"What is her name?"
Lyrics wisp forth, light as birdsong, white noise in the Abyss.

A long tail swishes against dainty hooves.
Would the flames burn away her sins? For if she was a witch, was this not how she would die, one day?
Time meanders on.

Perhaps.
But that was not today.. Not yet.



Circuta</style>
who's the killer in the crowd -</style>

It is hushed. The silence is acidic and sweet, a taste that rolls along her throat and down into her own, beating, bloodied core, not so unlike the rolling waterfall before her
very gaze.
It is made of luminous glass, too, and yet it dims in comparison to the smooth surface that boils with contained heat, the broiling flare that rises and falls in the woman's visuals.
The cavern is calming, tranquil, and she is reminded that she, too, was scalded by flames once.

She remembers umber lashes, she remembers cinnamon and chocolate plumage, she remembers russet and canary pearls. She had adored the son of the King with affection and regarded him with the violet's of reverence, for he was the Prince whom had danced within her dreams. Childish adoration had been her game, the young girl that trailed and tremors as a leaf in his sight. He had laughed at her, a light, musical chorus that caused heat to gather within her blooming dome, she had swooned after him as a moth to the light of a lamp.
And as all insects that dawdle about the burning surface too long, bump against warm electronic buzzes one too many times, she had been roasted within his revulsion at the demise of her mother. They had all scorned her, spat venom and contempt, but it was the displeasure of the Prince that caused her the most disorientation, for was he not her hero? Did she not adore him enough? Why was it, then, that he snarled and snapped and cackled with such vehemence at her very sight?
She remembers when she had sought the Prince out, she remembers the stony gaze of guards as branches are set ablaze, she remembers the chase, the unbearable heat that burns hair with a smoky scent that rises into the skies, she remembers his voice among the royal babes, loudest of all, and she remembers the pebbles thrown at her retreating and bruised hide afterward, the noise of rock slamming into wood as she hides her insignificant and scrawny frame in a broken and hollowed, rotten log of a long forgotten tree.
At least, the dryad and she shared a few things in common.

Indeed -
She had been scalded once.
And she never wished to be scalded again.

Seized from her recapture and reminiscence, the deep, scratchy baritone of the stranger's voice startles the woman once more into existence. She chides herself, for only fools allow themselves to fall so deep into their own minds that they cannot discern the past from the present once more.
She is a fool, though, is she not? The harsh murmur of her subconscious caws as the noise of crows within the echoing silence of her own mind.
The name. Irma. She tests it upon her tongue, yet the words do not slip forth into the still of the caverns.

A smile slips upon her maw, then, and she turns her violet eyes upon Irma once more. Liquid, lyrical, her voice returns.
"A lovely name.. Irma." The name is foreign upon the nightingale's maw, and she thinks, just maybe, she thinks she likes it well enough. It is simplistic, indeed, and yet, it fits the dragonback well.

When she finds interest in cerulean once more, she decides that the stranger has intriguing oceans. They are endless, she finds, as the sea stretches forth to the horizon, and amethyst twinkles his reflection with a thoughtful air. He has come close to the wall as well, now, and she is well aware of the calidity that hums forth as waves from his wintry coat. He is regal, she decides, and Irma and the stranger match well, in a odd, but not unwell way.
They are both crafted from snow and obsidian, from winter and night, and that is good enough for the nightingale, as she drifts once more into the comfort of the flames.
"Circuta." A title is offered gently in response, the nudging of froth upon the beach, and heavy lids fall down to cover her pearls.

Her mother had not fallen the day she was borne.
But she had been wise, to call her what she did, derived as it was, it's origins known well.
Water hemlock.

Maybe the nightingale had been damned all along.


Circuta</style>
who's the killer in the crowd -</style>