Disgust and repulsion swim with a wave of nausea as vermin crawl into crevices beneath gnarled roots, pressed deep into the miry landscape around the Nightingale's frame. The heat of summer has vanished, replaced with the bitter tinge of autumn, and soon this too shall falter and crumble, a endless tug of war between opposing forces, seasonal God's and Goddesses that dance and swim within the contours of her very core. The familiar stench of the woman's homeland meets upturned nostrils, carrion and bloated carcasses filled to the brim with slimy larva. Milky silver moons gaze upward into barren limbs, sickening squelches echoing across the skeleton of the Spectral Quagmire from creamy apricot and burnt charcoal. Mud gathers among slender appendages that the Nightingale knows must be washed and cleansed later on in the flowing river, blooms picked from poisonous lilies to cover her with the sweet scents of the cleansed (even though the Nightingale is far from the definition).

As she navigates the swamp, onward towards the invigorating brine that junctions with the temporary Kingdom in which her kindred have deemed appropriate, the land becomes minimally more hardened beneath her hooves, the bloated, abandoned framework of the dead long-forgotten in the trails in which she leaves. Mind aflame with the illusion of the ocean's scent, the kiss of fine grains upon thin flesh, the cleansing in which she shall take forth (the salt will wash away the bacteria that seems to creep upward towards her heart from the damned souls behind), she does not recognize the pungent taste of blood upon her tongue, the charred smell of scabbed sinew, the stumbling hoof prints in the soft Earth. It is not until a bellowing roar of vocal cords startles the very avians that flit to and fro in the pathless skies, disgruntled caws that squawk forth in contest to it's demands.
Hark's swivel in surprise and dread, concern clotting vermilion veins with a pallid complexion, and within but moments the Nightingale has fallen into that of a quickened trot. She, for the first time, takes in the shocking revelation of the precise smells around her, that of hemoglobin and burnt hairs. Plaguebearer.

When she finds him, it is not hard to see. His bulk seems to waver upon the very Earth itself, wallowing in filth, grass and dark Earth staining his already mussed coat. Bruises, a kaleidoscope of hues as the Aurora Borealis to the far north. Red-blue, sapphire, sharp tinges of heliotrope, edges of green and sickly yellow that twist her stomach into a burning knot in the depth's of her bosom. Vital fluids drain from a wound she cannot identify, the stench of blood covering him as one may draw a blanket across a young babe. It is not just his own, but the scent of another, one she has not yet cataloged into the infirmary of her mind. What seems yet stranger about this appearance is not that the Plaguebearer is gathering the green weeds in which he consumes with fierce determination as if it means his very life, but that he has gained a orb upon his port wither. Anguish and misery scald her as guilt from each and every pore as she observes the (it's almost as if he is in spasms) brother before her, draining away any interest she may have in acquiring knowledge of the mysterious object perched upon his battered warship. His given name from the Nightingale herself slips between alabaster and obsidian maw, through ivories, and soft as the spring song of morning birds.
"Plaguebearer..." It is troubled and remorseful, gentle, for is she not at blame? She is the very intelligence of the Asylum! She alone should have protected her brother from the wounds in which he has bloomed upon his hide.

With careful examinations, she uses sharpened ivories and curved dagger to slice and cut forth a grouping of the same plants he consumes with such fervor. Gathering them daintily within her maw, she moves forth to place them in front of her brother's emerald tinted maw. She is meticulous in her movements, for she does not want to become addicted as he whom would loom above her if he stood now. "Take these, brother."
And then, dome raised high, she calls forth the name the bloodied stained Queen of her land had told her to take healing from. Her lyrics are clear, resonating, not bellowing as that of the Plaguebearer, but cutting as that of a knife against the meager life of a plant.
"Reizend!"
It is a rare sight that she, the Nightingale, speaks the name of an individual.

.. Perhaps the life of her brother is more important.
How intriguing.