It was such a contrast from their last meeting. That one had been tinged with darkness, with the jaded philosophies of the world, things which shouldn't be discussed in the bright autumn sunlight—always that undercurrent of danger, of not having a sure footing. Any moment she could've mis-stepped and he could've gone off like a loaded gun.. this time, though in a darker, stranger place, was the polar opposite. Light, airy, impulse in an innocent way: he didn't hold his tongue for half a heartbeat to think through his words. He said what came into his mind, said it with amusements wrapped around his voice like the sunlight they were missing, ears drinking in her replies. Rapid, humorous, open—they weren't hiding.

"It'd be one damn big mosquito coming out of that egg," he replied with a dry chuckle, eying the round, beautiful thing. On a level of how terrifying something was, he had to say, a huge mosquito would be pretty high, a 7 or an 8 maybe. Just imagine it coming at you with its huge, huge needle, sticking it through your skin and draining you of your blood... "Let's just hope it's not a mayfly." Wouldn't that just be one slap to the face? "Here, you get a companion, but sorry, it'll die very soon." What kind of minds did flies have, anyway? Did they feel and think the same way dragons, owls, dogs, did..? Or was there nothing in those tiny souls and hearts?

What would it be like, to be bonded to nothing?

"Did they get you? No, forget that. If they had, you'd be all...rotting flesh and drool." Vivid images flashed into his mind, of the filly's open ribcage, Ktulu's dead, blackened side with her frostbitten heart pounding dust through stale veins—his ears flicked forward, listening, they got me, you know, and he wondered why they didn't get him too. The filly in the Basin, her teeth had raked across his hide, the cloud of disease wrapped around his head.. the equine mare's spikes piercing his flesh, drawing blood, and the wolf-child scouring his hide time and again. And always, always that blue glow emanating from the holly branch the tree had given him, spreading like a shield against the forces of undeath and darkness. Had the tree known? Was that why it had given him the branch? Was it that, or some kind of immunity in himself?

Her voice had that quality, of remembering something unpleasant, almost hesitating as she sorted through the chaos of memory to put it into words. Having seen Déodat's brutal transformation as he fled the Basin he knew it struck the inhabitants of Helovia—and then he'd recognized Ktulu, half-rotting and just as much a bitch as she'd been before. But that there was a cure... Obviously there was, as Nyx stood there, whole and hale in body even if not in mind... And his mind went to Ophelia, his lost white snow angel; did she traverse the darkened realm in a cloud of shadow and vile dust, coughing and bleeding, chest ripped open to bare her infected heart? Could he save her? Could he even find her without being killed?

He gave a snort of laughter as she finished, wondering if she was brittle beneath it—if she'd truly be offended if he said it would've been. If she hid behind the humor like a mask, like he hid behind the glacial, stoic ice. "At least you didn't have a wolf's head twice the size of your own body, mouth splitting wider than the horizon," he said quietly, tail flicking restlessly against the wall; a splash of white against the pastel crystals. "How were you saved?" Lena had saved Kahlua; had anyone saved Déodat? Ktulu? How did you save someone? The guardian in him ached to know, to do something, but how can you be anyone's hero when your head is hot and pounding, and you can't even take a stroll without wheezing like an old man?