Valeska opened her eyes.

They had gone tumbling together into the underbrush where the High Priestess now lay sprawled off to the side with a mess of twigs and debris scattered throughout her fur. To be fair, she already looked like shit, given her own recent insatiable thirst toward the lake-turned-poison and a festering wound at the base of her tail that she refused to have looked at.

Still, she was meant to appear to be on the mend - at least as far as the lake was concerned - and the addition of broken foliage did her no favors.

She looked clinically unwell.

Do not be sorry! she exclaimed breathlessly, pausing to groan while she hauled herself back up on her paws. The lake, you see, it is terribly animated.

Her brow furrowed.

Wait. No. That wasn't the word.

Most of her understanding of the Common tongue had been slowly gleaned across years of experience and organic interactions with others, but there were some situations that had not yet transpired to add certain necessary words to her vocabulary.

It is - she struggled. Valeska had heard it only once or twice since the onset of the plague, an event which had introduced her to a great many new words, and she was still mastering their usage. ... Concentrated... ah...

Suddenly noticing a trickle of blood oozing from a wound on the girl's side, she gasped. Oh, contaminated! An exultation mixed with concern. Forgive me, I did not mean to injure you. The lake is dangerous, filled with poison that burns the throat but draws you in. Oh, Sacred Wolf Mother, what have I done.

Valeska fretted, momentarily forgetting the agony that was her infected tail as she paced the undergrowth for something familiar, something useful - a cluster of dome-shaped flowers, flat at the top, caught her eye and she immediately shuffled over. A few large mouthfuls, packing them into her cheeks as she quickly and rather violently chewed them into a paste, and already she had returned to the stranger's side.

I vill halph, she mumbled around the plants. Pweaf, wet me. My fifter vaff a heewer.

Maybe Liss would understand.

Maybe she would not.

All she knew was a very disheveled-looking woman with crazy eyes was just about to vomit herbs onto her open wound.