Everything's washed out. It's a world of gray, perpetual twilight; shafts of moonlight dancing fractured on the quick-moving obsidian river, clouded silver glinting on slicks of ice, pools of nefarious jet shadow gathered beneath each frost-crusted thistle. And yet even in this world, all greasy shades of gray and bleached out color, there is the faintest hue of saturation, a sullen, sickly crimson which permeates the very soil.

The footing is treacherous. It's damp soil that bubbles with water every time she steps down, cold wet that presses on her frogs and chills her dainty toes.
It's hued, faintly, with glowing maroon.

Nymeria hesitates, dithering on the edge of the open ground. Cardinal retinas rove over the contours of the earth; the air tastes like iron and decay, salt and the same sickly magic which trailed her mother. Instinct screamed, cried out, for her to turn her back, to leap into frantic action, pound back to the safety which awaited her beneath her mum's teats, nestled between Confutatis' shapely pillars. No. No, no, and no. It wouldn't do to turn back now; instead, sharp curves soften, her neck lowering, nostrils cusping wide. With a feigned casualness that does not deceive herself, the tiny spider slips towards safety. It is a number of low bushes, scrub growing up, gnarled and twisted branches, which offer suitable disguise so she might assess; the cover is cast in auspicious shadow, wrought in ink, beneath a grand oak with rustling branches and creaking bark.

Unknown to her, water drifts up from the soil, beads of silver which flash and glitter in sparkling starlight, droplets of moisture which hover, float, trail behind her a couple inches from her heels, elevated a foot or so above the ground. An unconscious reflex of her magic (undiscovered and untested); she seeks comfort, contentment, in the midst of danger and adventure, and water, quiet and cool, has always been a source of consolation to her. So it follows her.

Behind the tree. In the bushes. Thorns rake thin, trembly legs.
Eyes remain piously wide. Ears flick, twist, uncertainly. For a long moment she presses her forehead against the tree, so big and vast and ancient; it's solid. Comforting. The scent of sap washes away the reek of metal, of death.

And then, with a quivering exhale, she peers out from behind the tree, a slow, terribly cautious movement. Nymeria sees darkness, cruelty shaped and sculpted into thick edges and knotty, swarthy muscle. The subtleties of silver dapples and pale mottling are lost in the vague, sweeping bends and curls of draft-like anatomy, sturdy legs and a heavy, carelessly made profile. It; it's very presence is barbaric. Black, black, black, a configuration of shadow on shadow; the only light is a pale sliver of ivory on a curling thing poking up from a hefty brow. Still... it (rendered genderless by starlight) doesn't seem like it would run her through, if she decided to step out.

Nymeria lets her gaze drift away from the unknown, roaming over the scene. It's washed in red, syrupy crimson, but to a girl so fresh to the world, that in itself is of little value to her. She doesn't recognize the more nefarious meanings behind it, nor the dreadful connotations which might be dredged up had she only pondered it a moment longer... no, what captivates her attention (apart from the figure, so capriciously dominating, in the center of the stage) is the shapely shadow stretched across mud and spring earth.

It doesn't move.
Perhaps, were she older, smarter, wiser, she would've recognized it for bloody murder.
She does not.

Audits creak back, catching the sound of rain pattering on earth. For an odd, suspended moment in time, she is impossibly confused, for there is no wet lashing at her from above, and then she recognizes for what it is, a stream of urine being lavished upon blood-soaked soil. It comes from it, a fountain of palest yellow, and mentally she affixes it's gender. Him. He pees like Volterra, after all, not like mama and herself. Lips wrinkle into a scowl, ears pinning back to her pretty skull in clear distaste; ugh. Did he really have to piss all over the place?

In quiet she watches, a lurking observer hidden behind the curtains.
And then she steps out, draws free, little spider spinning silk, gossamer mane (tufty, short) lifted by the slightest of stirring breezes. Delicate as a flower, as bending petals in the rain, she sweeps forward, chin up, eyes commanding, daring and dashing and audacious. "Why here red?" And with that, the haughty darling gestures towards the smears and streaks of scarlet, oblivious to the body.