.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
Something was happening to her. Something new, something alien and violating.
-
A strange sensation had slipped into her after Resplendence begun infusing her magic with Imonada's vitality, not only eradicating the pain but breathing life into her spirit--its relief so intense she set aside that cold, slimy creep into her nose and mouth. Voracious hunger and thirst had hit her then, previously stored away snug between her malady and mortal weakness. Eventually, when all had been said and done, she slipped away to find privacy for indulgence and recovery. Taking Resplendence's idea of sheltering within the low-swinging trees, heavy with parasitic veins, she followed the shoreline for some time until she came upon a large crop of cattails shivering in the breeze, undulating like waves, but what lay hidden in the water nearby is what really drew her eye--some Cobra's Tongue, a few red curls lacing the border of the cattail lot. The Falls grew some, at least, but that didn't surprise her--the land was a living encyclopedia of flowers and herbs, both on land and in the water. A paradise of monumental nature and a countless array of colors, shapes, and sounds. After a light graze on the water lillies, an intake of enough water to make her feel full without cramped, and a nibble on the Cobra's Tongue --just short of too much damage for regrowth-- she slipped beyond the veil of the nearby cluster of trees to sleep.
-
Waking from a violent dream where she was drowning, it was two nights later, her lungs so clogged and heavy and hard like iron. Some small mercy kept her panic short, leaving her lucid and hyper-aware, the knowledge that she had become tainted by the land's bizarre plague quick to claim her epiphany. Anger fires her blood, its razor-fine blades tearing her veins, the molten fury bleeding the heat of suns into her flesh. She felt tricked, somehow. Lead from one disaster to another. Would this thing eat her from the inside out? Would she suffocate slowly, each pull harder than the last? But she was alive. Brisa had made sure of that and Resplendence, as sick and afraid as she was, took her away from the brink of eternity. She was not dead yet and that counted for something. Guilt for her traitorous thoughts cool the flames inside of her.
An owl screeches high in the overarching canopy and Imonada allows it to distract her, to direct her attention to her surroundings. A thousand stars blanketed across a midnight sea, twinkling diamonds strewn across dark velvet. The bright blue and red dust and gas of their galaxy a snaking ribbon across the heavens. The deep, embracing darkness that cradled her, reminding her that she was in the care of ancient trees having seeped in the magic of this place for hundreds of years. She was awed and humbled again by a place so wondrous in the daytime now mysterious and breathtakingly beautiful at night, with the roar of the waterfalls a comforting hum all around her.
But when she gets up, much steadier and sure than the days prior, her tear ducts begin leaking, as if shedding a great sorrow. "What the--?" She wheezes and a trickle gets inside her mouth, on her tongue. Immediately she spits, the taste salty and mucous-like and leaden with what could only be described as the horrible, acid bite of foreign black bile. She barks out a thickly accented "O' holy ay hells!" before grumbling more, indecipherable oaths. Scrambling out of the bush sanctuary, she canters straight into the water with a large splash, white-capped ripples eroding away into the pond--and promptly screws her eyes shut and dunks her head in, shaking it beneath the surface, her mane a wild tangle of swirling black tentacles. It's some time before she rears her head out of the water, bursting into a coughing fit with the first intake of air.
After the attack calms into the occasional whispery whoop, she begins slipping deeper into the cool water and her own thoughts. Is this why I haven't really seen anyone else? This plague? Musing, now deep enough into the pond to allow her wings to float on the water's surface, she becomes hypnotized by the rush of the nearby waterfall.
~
~
elizabeth: you're not telling us everything.
red: let me put your mind at ease; i'm never telling you everything.
--blacklist
force allowed
plotting prior to death/maiming please
![[Image: a0jmns.png]](http://i68.tinypic.com/a0jmns.png)
line art by jennyleigh
red: let me put your mind at ease; i'm never telling you everything.
--blacklist
force allowed
plotting prior to death/maiming please
line art by jennyleigh
