Like some falsely sweet fairy tale she emerges, slow in her transition from sea to land, humble and cautious steps taken through murky and unabiding waters. Deceptively beautiful and pure in the way she rises like a goddess making a brief appearance, granting a withering statue the privilege of seeing something so magnificent with such undeserving eyes.

I'm afraid to touch her, to reach out with my marble muzzle and brush it against the warm, living flesh that she wears so unwillingly— that I may stain her precious surface with my foulness, with my sins and damnation. I strain my neck in attempt to keep myself from reaching forward, eyes following each movement as she makes her way towards me, face scrunching with disgust? Disappointment?, my stomach churning as metallic eyes reach down to view the rivets of blood soaking into chestnut hide. O h, my eyes widen and mouth moves to make nothing but a fool of myself, too afraid to raise my gaze and see what more expressions befall her features.

Like a guilty child found with cookie crumbs scattered about their lips and an angry parent looming over them, I so hesitantly produce one utterly gnawed on limb, head hung in shame and shoulders hunching in. "So s o so rr y." Is all that I manage, creaky and unused vocals rattling, creaking and sputtering as they force broken syllables through. Laughter echoes through the ivory dome, voices muttering unintelligible words of hatred and judgement, millions of eyes cast down upon me (don't look at me that way! Stop!) as the wounds are kissed better— gut wrenching and heart lodging in my throat as Sia pulls away without so much as a glance, bitterness lingering over my being as she draws back. The wounds still burn.

"You've disappointed her, returning to old habits. Like a baby to its thumb. How pitiful you are, hasn't she told you before how childish you are?" Their voice ghosts across my nape, a shout among a thousand whispering souls, so prominent and there— so inescapable. I feel Their breathes, slow and blood curdling against my ear as skin touches mine, head snapping back and eyes wild. "You'll scare her like that, looking so mad." A toothy grin spreads over my vision, jagged teeth and curling corners etched into my mind as They fall back into silence.

"Goldenseal and vines... goldenseal and vines..." I repeat the names, brows furrowed in concentration as the names already begin to get lost in the whirlwind of my instability. After more than a minute, the names are sinking into the empty depths of my mind, falling back against the mountains of other forgotten discarded things that my subconscious no longer saw any need for, thrown away somewhere to collect dust until some sudden action brings them all raging back with a new found hope of being clung to, of being needed.

Eyes draw to Sikeax, distantly observing the way she stands, the way I seem so far away from her— how far away she is from me— so far that she feels unreachable, that there are unbreakable barriers between us that I cannot (will never) reach beyond. I am trapped, an observer (a caged animal) looking to the cage across from mine, watching from afar the way her features shift with each passing thought. I'm scared that if I touch her now, my skin will burn with harsh temperatures, cold enough to burn away my flesh, prolonged exposure leaving me falling apart beneath her.

"So sorry, I— I d o n't know wha t came ov e r me." Anxious tension, building up in my stomach like some kind of tumor, a sickening parasite that urged me to grasp my limb between blunt teeth and grind and gnaw and ruin— to set me back up at square one. And she was there to watch it all happen, to witness my failures and reflect on my selfishness in ways I could not, to laugh at how pathetically stupid I was for crawling back to bad habits like they were the only things keeping me alive. Not so much alive, but present.

Without those cherished moments of pain, where the wounds blossomed cherry red droplets and shed their petals, I would be lost— forgetting whether I was still a living, breathing being or just a depressingly dull mass of cells that was slowly deteriorating into a nothingness as the brain it preserved withered away without so much as a blink. And it was a complicated thing to go through, a strange, ritualistic process that I know Sia will never come to understand. Or perhaps she does, but her ritual has manifested in other ways (why do you love me when you know I can't do anything for you?).

The slip up has given way to a winding path to instability, providing all those menacing shadows those others to come crawling back to me, clinging to my fractured mind and rattling my thoughts, screaming in need. They wanted in, their eagerness off putting as I began to turn my body, legs moving at an unnervingly slow pace. I cleanse myself of my mistakes (if only), scanning the island before us and wondering where I could find those... things. What were they? Goldenseal and vines.