Dragoncrest Cliffs well every lord i pray doesn’t sound the same,

Although her soft smile didn't vanish, the crescent curves of her jaw and throat worked in a tremulous little gulp. "Y-... yes," was all she breathed, wisping and withdrawn. She receeded into herself, into the she-wolf who'd told her tale to Takiyok yesterday; who'd gone at length of it alongside Verx so many eves ago, had returned. Even as Isleña neared, studied her diadem of hurts as if she might try to sew them with threads of pyre, the present vanished before her bleary, starlit eyes and was overwhelmed by the past.

Water and blood. Winter water in lungs. Brother's blood on tongue. Bedeviled hymnal. All she heard. All she became. Wail and shriek of bone in neck. Eyes, His eyes; mad eyes, empty eyes. Mad mortal, mad god. Ravenous god, severing her from herself as her brother screamed and there was only this endless agony agony agony—

The fanatical, unhallowed baptism had ruined her, and as she grew stilted and wavering; in her mind, Aure was convinced that she would never be lovely again. Unless, by some blessing, she was made to see otherwise, she would perservere in the inner allure that she'd cultivated ever since. At least, she hopes that remains, if nothing else will.

For so long, Aure had fallen far and from herself, like waves that had been kept from the shores for far too long. But, a little voice entreated to her, as she bit into her lip, you've always known. And your beloved thinks you are without flaw. Is it not what you deserve? There is nothing to be frightened of. Those she had been deemed loving and beauteous by — they were heavensent, not her. Never her.

Her heart beat irregularly, straining against what she knew to be true and all of that she’d buried within it. All the same, there is no shame in knowing your beauty, Elbereth, the voice whispered. "I..." With a trembling breath, it was with a film of tears that Aure brought her gaze back to the cocoa female, simmering with the hushed embers that the skayona had glimpsed when they'd first met. This brana was stunning; unmarred, as far as looks went, with piercing eyes of the sea. Exquisite. And it was this that made Aure's soul shy from herself.

With another weak, shuddering breath, salt-limned lashes fluttered as they cradled astral eyes full of repose. "I... I tried. D-drown," The words came out quivering; and then her bottom, ivory lip followed suite, and then she was fracturing in all her strained silence. Wilting, trembling like baby's breath as she babbled, voice hushed; unable to stop the tears from threading, dew-like, down her taut cheeks, "Wh-why couldn't I s-stop him? Why--"

Fractured, as the weight of her forsaken childhood, of Vonn, of her unsteady life in these unforgiving Wilds turned her voice in a weak, whelp's whimper.