A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.
She is veiled in moonlight, following a beaten path in the snow beside the heart shaped lake. The cold is biting, it sinks past her flesh to find the marrow in her bones, but it is worth it. The next step is important. The next step is critical, because nothing is going to plan, at least not yet. It’s taking too long when every second costs as much as it does — when every second is one more moment that the world is infested, that everything becomes contaminated.
But Phasus can fix it.
She has no choice but to fix it.
“Hello,” she mewls into the frozen air when she sees the tangle of a body in the dark before her. The sound of her own voice is grating, like she is pitiful, like she is a desperate, stupid thing when she is only one of the three. She burrows deep inside herself and conjures her softest smile, snuffing the wildfires from her eyes as she starts to speak:
“Are you the one they say has laid claim? I hate to bother you, but I’m worried we’re running out of time to do what needs to be done. The sick are everywhere, and we can’t trust the fairies that in these places we are safe from them. They’ve lied to us before. The sick already have safe passage through the other safelands to heal and become better. We need a space free of contamination in case things go south, in case this island becomes the only salvation — for our friends, and our families. I’m worried that the longer we wait the more likely it is that this place is compromised, too. We have to act.”
She doesn’t wait to see if this is, in fact, who she has been seeking. The monologue and the mask are not wasted regardless of who she has stumbled upon in the night. She needs every ally she can manage if she is going to pull this off, if she is going to save her skin.
“It will be hard to turn them away, but I can do it so you won’t have to. Let me help, back my claim. In exchange, you can have this place for your own when the world is safe again.”
And then she lets the silence settled between their bodies.
And then she waits.
phasus
@[Camomila]