No rest for the weary.

At night, you dream of winter. Cold creeps through the windows, under the floor, and between the boards of the wall. It surrounds you and suffocates, drains the life from you as you cry under sheets too thin to hold it back. It comes like the fairy king to take away children, to slay them in their innocence, no respecter of persons, indifferent as it is subtle.

Soft hands brush your face, and a blanket falls over you. Hands you know, that held you once and comforted you. Your shivering stops, and you rest easy. Your dreams are kind and bright, and when you wake...

Stone. You stretch your jaw, blinking as the sunlight sears your sleepy eyes. How late in the day is it? You rarely sleep through dawn, catching but fitful sleep until the sun comes up and you're granted a few hours respite before it grows too bright or noisy to sleep. Turning on your side, you see a bit of bread and some wild fruits, of all things, sitting next to you. You tear into them with little thought beyond immediate hunger, but can barely get through half of the former before you nearly **** on it. Your throat burns, dry as sand, and fully refuses to accept the dry food. You try to offset it with the fruit - a peach, maybe? - but it isn't enough. You cough, glaring at the stuff in dismay.

Movement catches your eye, and you spot a harpy staring back at you. Blue-feathers, of course. The most harmless of the bunch, and so the one usually the least on your mind. Silver and Gold like to watch and "play" with you the least of the rest of the girls, and it's... it's there. It happens. It's a little more... complicated with Orange. You enjoy it, but she comes to you less and you're honestly not that upset. Perhaps not trying to be "friends" with her is foolish, but you're honestly so confused when she does come for some attention that you're not sure you could at this point.

Red is Red.

Blue hasn't come to you, not yet. She watches, and sometimes you think she'll come closer. At a rough tally, she's probably spent the most time just looking at you out of any of the other harpies. Maybe more than the rest combined. But you're only an oddity, something to peer at from a safe distance...

Oh. She's... coming over now.

She shuffles forward the last few steps, and lets her gaze droop to your bread, and then back at you. Her body is covered up entirely by her wings, modest little thing she is. You lift the bread up, trying to catch her meaning, when it suddenly hits you.

"Oh, the coughing. My throat, it's sore," you rasp. You smile thinly, and are met with an even, blank stare. If anything, she looks a little pink as she stares.

"Um. Sore? No, that's dumb.... Water?" you try. "Do. You. Have. Water?"

More staring, and she starts to shuffle back.

"Oh, damnit, not now," you grumble. "Wait, Blue! Water?" you say, miming drinking from a cup. You repeat the motion a few times, even drawing a line from your jaw down your throat with your finger. More stares, and you try to think of something else. "Water?" you repeat, this time cupping your hands together and "dipping" them into an imaginary river.

Blue-feather keeps staring, her jaw and mouth hidden in her downy collar, and you let your arms drop. "Damnit, why can't you speak Common," you mutter to yourself, looking out to the too-familiar horizon. Greywing has been consistent with the food, if not particularly generous. Why she's bothered with it is still beyond you, but that question can wait. Harpies are magical creatures, and you're pretty certain human, animal, and monstrous necessities don't line up. Communicating is still impossible, but if you can't let them know that you need some fucking water then...

"C'chko?" a shy voice says, and you turn back to see Blue still standing there.

"What?" you ask, frowning.

She stares at you again, mimicking the expression before looking around for any of her siblings. Then, she extends a wing, showing a hidden breast for a split second, before it's covered by the other.

"C'chko," she repeats, and jerks her head towards the outcropping she occasionally spies on you from.

It takes a moment for her meaning to sink in, and when it does, you can almost feel the sweat break out. You look down to the circle, just as visible now as it was... however long it's been since Orange... since Red **** you into this damned spot.

"I can't go anywhere," you remind her, aware it means nothing to her but unable to think of how else to convey it. "Can't go," you repeat, pointing at the ring again before grasping your ankle with a grimace.

Blue deliberates for a moment, before gesturing again with her wing, jerking it straight up. She chitters something at you, but it's too fast to parse any particular sounds out.

"Listen, I think I get what you're saying," you sigh, standing up. It occurs to you that Blue is almost as tall as you are, and that for some reason you'd envisioned her at least a hand shorter. "I just can't lea-"

Whap. You yip as her wing practically spanks you, sending you lurching right out of the bounds of the circle. You gape at the harpy as you clutch your pants, and she in turn looks away, her ears bright pink. She starts walking away, still checking around to make sure that you two are alone. Unsure of what else to do, and still very thirsty, you give in and follow her. You're a little unsteady on your feet after having gone so long on your back - for one reason or another - but you keep pace even as she nimbly hops her way up to the higher level.

Sure enough, a stream bubbles down the back side of the mountain here. "C'chko," Blue repeats, a look of doubt in her expression.

"Cuchako," you agree, wincing at your own pronunciation. "Water."