[/html]She had been just leaving Thornloe, when it had happened last, the nonsensical terror and the unbidden swell of tangled hazards in her chest. She'd chanced upon the campsite of a mated pair of loners who had offered to share their fire and their roasting deer; the woman had been pregnant, and so the conversation had wandered there. The panic had been sudden, enveloping her wholly in just moments as the words died in her throat and there came an awful retching. She had vomited most of her meal, and when the man had approached her afterwards, seeking to comfort her, she had lashed out. Cassandra was glad that they had fled, angry and confused into the night. Others before them had not been so lucky.
But here she could not strike, could not turn her blades or her fangs towards her sister. She could not claw her way through the make-believe dangers and find the vanquishing sunrise on the other side. Her colorless fur stood on end and her skin was hot, hypersensitive, ready to boil. She could not fight the wisps of memory tangled in with the nightmares. She could only sit, and breathe, and breathe again, and cling to the body beside her, trying not fall apart.
Cassandra took the hand Myrika offered, but stared down at her feet, trying to will the weight to slip down and puddle away. The rational part of her still wanted to spare her sister the grief of knowing, of being told just what the world was capable of. But the rational part of her flailed against the tightness in her chest and achieved nothing while her heart continued to race. "They thought I was a goddess," she mumbled. "They thought I was giving them good weather and healthy crops. I should've never... never told him and let him... should have never let him... but I wanted him to and I thought it would be okay and he said it wouldn't matter and that no one would care but--" the room spun and she inhaled with a wild sort of desperation. "--Jean wasn't supposed to be back for hours; he said... he said I wasn't pure anymore, and."
The heaviness shot up from the bottom of her stomach and tore at her throat; the pressure was immense and it was all she could do to not shriek and whimper and cry. She bit her tongue for what felt like the hundredth time, withdrawing both her hands so she could clutch at her opposite arms, as if that would steady her body's shakes and trembles. Cassandra shook her head once with a sharp, sudden force, trying to clear it, trying to throw off the weight, but the weight came from all around her, a dozen heavy hands grasping at her and a dozen hot mouths panting terrible words in her face, stealing the air from the emptiness around her.
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