Lesion and laceration, notches and vermilion flag blemishes pressed into fingerprint crevices and canine toothed jaw, thin flesh collapsed and crinkled beneath tenacious serration and greed driven starvation, each lash of contact a crack of a whip against her sinew— too slow, too slow, too slow and it is always then that the dim caresses of the lull drive her back into the inevitable annihilation of her kind, for beast and equid have come together in unholy sanctity in order to create the mutation, slavering maw and boyish in frame, far too blown out of physical proportion for the realistic meanderings of a mind to take hold. It is always the same since salvation grasped bony slim fingers upon the Frostheart and she, he with towering statues of glacier, and she with meager bodice and fleeing hide. She has dreamt the scenery again and again within a tumbling mind, thrown askew upon tremulous wavelengths, and each time she awakens perspiration drenches her lacerated sinew and reopens inflamed and raw carvings, one stretching from flank to brisket in it's entirety, contused upon her starboard side. Purging of the flesh and laving require delicate care, for one cannot bathe in too many sources of water (lest another equine come to drink from the infected liquid and fall ill themselves)— and so she has been meticulous, leaving it salty with sweat and earth for days before deciding upon a suitable dipping place. Restoration is not the Nightingale's forte, although poison is listed among the various damnations that occur to her mind, and mild herbs in which to mend ache of mind and frame, to soothe, to bring peace upon. Yet, the movement required in which to nudge bandage into wound and anti-bacterial into claret is difficult, lending only to further ripping the clotting cells, and so she does not try, does not attempt after the first declination of agonizing misstep.

The Nightingale does not concern the minds of fretful others, for she is too aware there are far too many souls to replenish, to mend fractured minds and bone alike, and so she does not speak to that which would aid her in her conquests, her deliverance— she does not forget that there is one under her care neither, a icy king of the arctic brine (it is legended among her kin that all crowned have stepped from sea and froth, and he commands her attention with the twitch of a hark). And so she queries, queries the outside realms drenched in demise and queries the internal veins of each grotto, each gently carved stone, she queries the memories jutting from within her mind.

And when salvation presents it's scalding grin and saccharin sinew, the heavy tang upon her tongue and the ever present scent of citrus fruit, she is elated with tremulous jubilance and alleviation, ravishment in knowledge, for what little it may do gleaming as a beacon of light within the canvas of a frail cultured mind, and she traverses once more to the realm of fluorescent hues and glittering blossoms.
It had not been painless and smooth of a task for her to lug his burdensome frame into the grotto of organic constellations and imitations, of twinkling buds and tropical fragrance, for although he was no lard filled swine he was far from the doe legged ship of a colt— higher in both physical clout and crest than she, for she was built with the thin flesh and traditional bodice all women within her homeland were expected to be bred with, spindly as a immature sapling.

But the girl would not leave him to rot.
She would not abandon that which had lent aid upon their return, would not abandon that which she had grown ever so affectionate with. The strange meanderings of a king, the harshness of a blizzard, the softness of snow. He and the angelic Queen Irma had placed intrigued queries upon her soul, for she was as curious as the weaving river and as fickle as the tide.
Indeed. She had laid hexes upon him at first viewing, for it was the curse the King Crow had labeled her, it was the damnation she had come to believe (no matter what honeyed words her comrades would protest), and she would do well to assist him from the carnage she had caused.

And so she had brought the minuscule clumps of ivory and yellow buds, the emerald stalks still attached to their tops, it's crisp perfume tickling her maw, meticulously held between alabaster lips, but when the Nightingale entered the grouping in which she had placed the Frostheart, she found with a undesirable twist in her stomach the aquamarine and leafy painted hues of two others, the scent of one familiar within her mind (she recognizes her as the woman Leto and her companion, Dezba, within milliseconds of her arrival).

She is bloodied with claret, a tinge of madness gleaming within her ocularis and a sturdy lad of onyx and alabaster, a pallid dragon accompanying him. She did not recognise he, and a dip of the dome was given with a gentle curve of the lips towards his ship— but his existence was dropped from her mind at the distressing poison within the woman Leto's voice (for surely she would have had better manners if it had not struck such vexing malaise into her cranium, the soft smile dropping from her maw).

Scorn and slanderous speech arose from Leto's quarreling vocals, disdainful mockery of the Frostheart (why does that which has been her saviour in ice deserve the kiss of death?) and his title, of Zeus and his demise. Confounded in the stridence of the lightning borne woman's lyrical words, she stands as a meek creation in the background, for what reason would he have to have caused the malnourished demise of the Olympus Lord quicken? He had been lost among the damnation of the outside realm, for she had found him, about to have been mauled by the horrific and slavering maw of a mutated monster, and so the insolence of her words rang through her mind with both unsettled dropping of the heart and the mild twistings of acrimony within her bosom.

With haste she dances forth, glancing first at the Frostheart, violent and gloom ridden gaze softening with tendrils of warmth before laying the tangy flowers down before (she hopes, if he does not move) him. Lyrical and silvery murmurs escape her from somewhere between her lungs, as delicate as the thrum of rain against glass panes.
"I am.. elated to see you are awake. I have brought to you feverfew, a flower in which I believe to aid in your recoveries and welfare. It may taste sour to the pallet, but I have seen the doctors in my homeland use it on occasion for the needed patients of my kingdom." A glance around the contours of the room result in the pallid feathers of Irma— relief drumming within her heart.
"And you as well, my dear."

The darkness that curls within her chest writhes as a monstrous creation, reaching around the glass surface of her soul and turning twinkling pearls into lurid stone (for if she were a feline, the twisting length of her tail would whip back and forth in ire). The crazed expression in Leto's gaze reminds her of that of her kin, and she has long since learnt how to deal with the mad.
"Leto! Calm your mind, sister. You must be confused. This man does not deserve thy's rage, he has saved me from the grasping jaws of the mutated beasts outside this sanctum." The gentle pitter patter of rain has increased to that of a scolding downpour from her maw, glancing briefly with confusion at the blessed jaguar (what is going on here, speaks her mind, for she understands naught the situation she has stumbled into) before back to the woman. "Do you not see he is ill? And how dare you start that of a quarrel within this holy place! The divines have blessed us with purities, would you scoff on their graves?"
The lengthy aureate feather from Zeus gently blows within her mane, rustling movements from the force of the waterfall near them, catching it's fragrance within it's contours.

She wonders if he is listening.
She wonders if he, too, queries Leto's state of mind, or if he understands the depth of which her madness has driven her.

In the reticent contours of her fragile mind, the gentle thrum of crunching buds and tender stalks registers within her conscience with ardor — a soothing wash of warmth spreading from her bosom throughout her veins, for the Frostheart has depended upon her and she has not let him down (and if the trembling speech within her cranium recognizes that she has pursued after the ice cloaked man as a lost young pup behind its master's feet, it remains as concealed as the breeze on a winter's eve). She has brought to him a herb in which to aid, to rejuvenate, to alleviate and mend agonized minds and feverish claret, and she allows the gentlest of sighs to pass through shuddering lips, even as the snowy Queen perched atop the callow tree chuffs in salutations.
  She almost forgets that she is in the middle of poisonous words and vile spittle and that Leto gazes upon her with such utter chagrin that it would wash through her soul and frame as a wildfire, scalding her with arduous flame, she almost forgets that there is a young boy with his weaponry aimed at her friend's battered ship. She wished she could have stayed that way, wiped the animosity and resentment and anarchy from her mind, wished she could have simply relished in the silence of a snow laden owl and a charcoal flecked, glacier hearted King (as the lightning-born woman so seems to speak of him).

She wished she wasn't a derelict fool with a curse upon her heart.

But the inevitable downfall arrives, as the rain does not wait for the imploring wants and desires of a mortal, and as the rain, the aftershock of its icy fingers leave her in the perpetual continuum of misery and distress, sending wavelengths off her frame, rattled to the bone at the abruptness of her voice flooding the echoing space, her rough song shattering against her harks as a dagger to twist in her heart.
"Stop," comes the minuscule whimper of a tremulous breath, harks fixing upon the woman as if she is a threat, and perhaps some more enduring half of her essence shrieks its rage and defensive ire of the glass-encased and ticking clock inside her bosom, fearful and frightened of the idea it may fracture under the force of her words. But as soon as a lull breaks between them, his voice ricochets into the room, as soft as rainfall and as firm as the wind against her flesh, as the ground beneath her hooves. There is some tale of damnation between the two figurines, some history in which she has yet to write unto her perception and carve into her sinew— and her breath wobbles out, quick and brief, and she does not know if this escalates into more than a heated conversation if she can stop it and her mind screams at them, it screams and screams and her throat feels hoarse even though she isn't speaking to cease this, cease this because the foes outside the sanctum in which they bow their heads are real and alive and they cannot do this.
  They do not heed the clamoring song inside her mind, do not heed the warning bells that chime as birdsong within her core, and as the lightning-born steps forward with insanity in her clouded pearls she sways as a leaf upon the wind, for she speaks of cruor spilt upon the ground and cessation and the Frostheart and his throat slit and she would cry out if she could force the words past her tongue, if she could force out more than a keening and almost panicked murmur.

"You won't— you can't— no, no stop it, stop it please," but her strained tongue only seems to worsen the situation, as when Leto stands once more, her gaze falls upon her, berating lyrics in passion and enmity to lay as a knife upon her skull.
  Something inside her splinters, a growing fault line within her shivering bodice until something warm and salty threatens to spill over the edge of her violent depths, and she imagines the dissatisfied glaciers of Allgemeine and he's dead but if he was there he would hate the foolhardy girl she has become.
 Feeble enough to believe anyone could ever cherish her, and unguarded enough to believe she could ever love when the bitter core inside her bosom has only ever been wrecked with grief.

And when she speaks again, it is with the voice of the dead (has she ever been so toneless before?).
"Leave." There's a cool dampness to her cheeks, a numbness to her bones, a lurch in her movements, and when she lifts her dome she does so delicately— as if it is a heavy thing.
"Or cease this hysteria at once. I allied myself alongside Leto." A baleful emptiness to her pearls, and she is retreating within herself because she forgot she was the only one she could trust. She is severed beneath the shell of her flesh, of the sinew that covers the bloodied beating thing in her chest, and she would rip it from its cage if she could.
"I did not give my heart and my loyalties to.. to this. And you will not talk to me in that tongue again, for I would have died for a alone woman at the contours of the World's Edge as she was attacked by drakes, and I would do so again on any eve."