The Nightingale remembers the eons and centuries ago in which the lands were not covered in the illness and disease that pursues them into the umbra, the Labyrinth that winds and curves within the contours of the very spine of Loorien itself; snarling with slavering jaws and hackles raised— a wolf upon the scent of prey and fresh claret upon its lolling tongue. The entertained voices of the daemons in which haunt her breathe into a fractured mind and batter against the walls of a entombed prison within her bosom that she is but a frail and feeble babe in the comparison of that which has raised her from the birth of her endeavors, from the womb of the country known as Helovia in of itself. She does not hold but a dime in comparison to that which has disappeared and faded into the darkness's barbarous gullet, she does not sing life into the flesh of woven creations as the seraph, nor breathe fealty into being as the Jester. She does not aspire to the throne as the froth sent King— does not glitter and gleam as the face of the childe songbird. She is the merest of all beings, the frailest, and so she has aspired with the rumors of children lost in the midst of the demons grasp to savior those lost, to bring them forth to salvation, even if she shall always be cast away from it's sheltering wings.

She remembers the screams between the travels of the Heart of her homeland and the entrance of her people.
Agonizing, frightened cries to the heavens above— and the Nightingale did not come to them.
She did not come to that which beckoned for aid with a child's sob.

Within the crumbled walls of a torn cranium, she recognizes that she shall have no rest tonight (and why does she deserve it's bliss?).
And so the woman has come, come to the entrance of her lands (and the cowardice voice at the back of her mind tremors with the urge to simply usher her people away from terror and rot, from disease and daemons, from the cruelties of reality and the harshness of loss), the clouds of damnation boiling within the glimpses of a cerulean sky above, creams and pinks and the bloodiest of vermilion and the fresh air only brings forth gut wrenching agony (she could not save them).

Yet as the Nightingale meanders beneath widespread limbs, she finds something far beyond the simplicity of a child.
A brute is lain upon the earth before her, a frame of soot and ash, of terracotta and obsidian (they rise from his dome in twin pairs, draconic down his dome), a leonine tail curving from his hind and a dual toned apparel draped from his neck (he is rugged, built as a statue). A curving strap leads from his shoulders down to a jug as that of a drunkard would deem appropriate— he reminds her of another beast, a soldier to whom she has grown (a little) too attached too— and he seems to lay as frail and soft as a newborn kitten. If it were not for the rise and fall of his sides, the Nightingale would think him dead (her heart thuds to and fro with anxiety in her bosom).

A clearing of the throat (it is so dry) and the faintest of wetting of a alabaster maw is the only signs she is there, until lyrical words are sung forth with hesitant intentions, frightened for both he and she; for even the quietest of voices may draw forth the murderous beasts from their hives. "I beg ye, vagabond, do not rest your dome here. We are in grave danger, for the very roots of this land are damned to the diseases that have chased us into the Labyrinth below." Manners are not forgotten in the back of the woman's mind; the pang of hunger a dim reminder of her thinning framework; a bow of the dome in a polite air.
"I am Circuta, the temporary Queen of my people. You have come to a land known as Helovia, although you have entered our realm in dark times. I beckon thee with us, for you are not safe here."

@[Rostislav] @[Oxy]