Coming to herself enough to lift her strange gaze to the sweet old satyr, she looked at him with a depthlessly mournful expression, the corners of her mouth turned down almost comically, were she not so plainly heart-stricken by the contents of the book that she'd succumbed to reading despite his caution against it. They eyes that met his were, as always, a stark and seamless blue, appearing to even somehow be without pupil, standing out sharply against the unnaturally reddish cast of her skin. The orbs burned, as if her body was yearning to weep, to sob, and yet her face was completely dry of tears.<br/><br/>"I'm sorry, Nikodemus," she rasped hoarsely, her voice thick with the emotional turmoil that the tale had wrought in her. To any other girl her age, it would have been little more than a rather morbid fairystory. For Ember, the words rang inside her like a taunt, images flashing up in her mind's eye and darting away, fast enough to make her flinch from insubstantiality. She did not bother to answer his question - she had not been with this wagon train long, but she had been long enough that any and all of them knew she was far from okay. That was, perhaps, what little was certain about her.<br/><br/>"It wanted me to read it," she whispered, and while the words sounded inane to her ears, she knew that was simply how it had<em>felt</em>- she hadn't even had to search for it, really, among all those many, many books. It had almost reached out to her, resonated with her before she'd opened its cover.<br/><br/>Now, though, it sat close, discarded some several yards away, and she wondered if she had thrown it? She couldn't remember. THAT, at least, was another constant, and she curled miserably back down into herself, whispering, "I'm sorry."