Herbalists' Cache The demon sat there waiting on her porch

The cliffside that she had taken solace upon was far from her mind now; it had been days since Tavi's last visit among the wolves of Ryujin. She had forgotten the faces of the wolves that helped her within the hour, and even with the occasional jump-start of her brain as she roamed, she only thought of Ukko in fits and starts, and often did not know why. She remembered his silhouette the easiest; or maybe it was just the darkness of her many allies mixed together? The woman was long past being saved, as her brain had become a melting pot of ink-blot patterns. For each split second of memory she thought she had heaved up from the deep pit of what she once was, there were hours of confusion — days lost to her wandering, to her mind playing tricks. She was not crazy, she was sick, and was too far gone to notice.

Today, the creature that was once Octavia of Marauder's Keep, mother to the madchild Tambourine and lover of few (but a passionate one nonetheless), had found her way along the riverside of the Swiftcurrent and now stood like an obelisk among the swampy ruins of a forest. Behind her were the wetlands; it was obvious which way she had come based on the foul smell that clung to her ratted pelt and the fecund tint of her extremeties. She looked hungry (and probably was), yet her mouth hung open, and where saliva had once dribbled from her limp jaw, now there was nothing. She was parched. Her tongue was cracked and bloodied, and her eyes, they had stopped holding the fire of life so many days ago.

Her thirst knew no bounds. The woman had found shelter on the edge of the Herbalist's Cache, not knowing the name of the place nor having the wherewithall to care, and she did not move further. It was almost as if she wanted to go one way, then another, then another, and then forgot where she was, all within moments. The pattern would repeat — look right, look left, look down at the puddles of well soaked moss, and then restart. A few times she went so far as to dip her nose in to the mud, to slather her dry tongue with it, and thus dirt became trapped between her teeth. She did not think to spit it out, and when Tavi lifted free with a sickening squelch, she let the fresh layer of grime drip from her face. It was not satisfying.

With a sound that was closer to a mewling kitten than anything, she groaned a breath and stumbled between the trees, and then sank to her tired haunches. Her hips jut from her body obnoxiously, and the rest of her seemed ready to fall to pieces at any time at all. She was a bundle of match-sticks ready to be lit aflame. Maybe somewhere deep within her brain there were still some healthy cells? Some pieces that were untouched, struggling to make everything work as it should; it was enough, whatever was going on, to control the lift of her head and the desperate cry she sang out from her belly. There was no message to her call, only the out-of-tune rattling of the air.