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Shaheen wasn't wandering in the woods, but she was sleeping in them. Up in a tree, in fact, leaning sideways against the trunk with wings folded around her to keep her warm and comfortable. Sleep didn't come easily for the war chieftain anymore. Nightmares tormented her to the point where she found she was forcing herself awake for days on end. But it couldn't last, and it never did, no matter how much she tried. Eventually, she needed the sleep, and today as she had perched up in a tree, she had found herself resting comfortably in it's boughs before she could even stop herself.

But the nightmares came as well, as they always did, disturbing what might have appeared to be a very peaceful slumber to begin with. It started with a faint twitching, a low moan, and then wild thrashing that led to the inevitable.

Shaheen promptly fell out of her tree, tumbling to the ground in a screeching and disoriented mass of bronzed skin wrapped in robes and wings with feathers ruffled and out place, landing in a tangled heap with a cry of pain and a resounding thud not far away from where Zhi had fallen himself.

Classy.

Zhi really didn't have too far to roll before he was bumping in to something warm and soft. Shaheen felt the assault on her person before she opened her eyes to see it, and the sight she was greeted with was a confusing one at first. a figure, covered in leaves and twigs and dirt and...

And whatever it was had plastered itself against her. By the horns of Ares, what the fresh hell was this?

But a little further looking over had her recognizing something else, though it took her a moment before she even knew that it was what she was looking at. Sleeves. Long ones, though they were wrapped around and around the form that had burrowed itself against her body, what might have been it's face dangerously close to a pair of somethings that it probably did not want to be near.

Her eye twitched as a scowl formed on her face. Falling out of a tree combined with almost no sleep in the last few weeks had soured her disposition mightily, and what she might once have viewed with amusement, she instead just found completely grating and annoying.

"Zhi." She said from between clenched teeth. "Kindly roll away. Now."

Oh yes, she was a real treat today.

Personal space. Yes, she needed it, and she actually felt a momentum of relief when Zhi realized who it was that he had rolled into, and promptly rolled away as well. She didn't stop glaring at him, however, irritated just by how incredibly silly he looked instead of finding it amusing as she usually did. When he grinned at her and greeted her with a cheerfulness that was absolutely grating, she winced and clenched her teeth, hissing at the way his voice made her throbbing headache feel about ten times worse.

Before she could open her mouth to give a curt reply, he was off on a tangent about falling out of tree's, and her upper lip curled back from her teeth.

"Shut up." She growled, fingers clutching at the damp earth, curling around leaves and dirt and bits of twig that she threw directly at his face before rolling onto her back with a groan, wings spreading out beneath her, likely getting covered in filth.

"I was trying to sleep. You woke me up so suddenly that I lost my balance." She lied, though her voice was no less angry and was full of accusation.

"And you're obnoxious." She growled in response, "Is there a cure for that, Zhi?" Yes, she was certainly in a terrible mood, and Zhi was somehow doing everything possible to make it worse, and he hadn't even really begun to do anything yet. Mud and leaves splattered her already dirt and filth covered body when he flung his sleeves around, and she had to close her eyes and count, very slowly to ten, in her head, to keep herself from drawing her dagger on him right then and there.

She had just about made it to three when he was suddenly overtop of her, and her eyes flew open, golden orbs swimming in a sea of darkness, narrowed up at him in a manner that spoke volumes about how irritated he was making her.

If he was observant, she wouldn't even need to answer that question. Her robe had tangled around her body, but her face, her neck, her right shoulder were all left unadorned an exposed, the grey fissures that had spread across and down her skin, the taint of her insanity that streaked her hair so thickly, now so much worse then it had been before.

She wanted to murder him, right at that moment, but she somehow kept her twitching fingers down at her sides. But she continued to glare up at him, silently, refusing to answer his question out loud.

She was sure he wasn't stupid, and that most of it was just an act. He could figure this out.

She nearly let out an audible sigh of relief when he rolled back to the side and stared at her from a more reasonable distance. She would not need to be murdering him today, it seemed, though the pat on her forehead nearly made her change her mind on that hasty decision.

"Zhi." She growled a warning, eyes shifting towards him though she didn't bother to move onto her side to see him better. Nope, she was just going to lay here on the ground, arms coming up to cross over her chest as she continued to huff out her annoyance.

But then his question caught her completely off guard, especially considering the more serious quality his tone of voice took on. It was so...un-Zhi like, that it shocked her out of her dark mood for the moment.

"I'm tired." She repeated. "I'm having trouble being around others, dealing with..this.." She didn't say what, because it was obvious.

"Physically? No, it does not hurt. It just..is." She sighed, and uncrossed her arms so that she could reach a hand up to her face and pinch the bridge of her nose as she closed her eyes, because there was really no good way of explaining it to somebody who was not experiencing it for themselves.

"Zhi." She opened her eyes, and leveled a stare at him. "It does not make me feel better. Nothing makes me feel better." She was finally moving, finally pushing herself up from her spot on the damp and leaf strewn ground. Once she was sitting upright, she stared at him for a long moment, trying to decide what was the best way to explain it, or if she even wanted to try, or if she even cared if he understood or not.

"What hurts is that, on a good day, I still can not always separate what is real, and what is just in my head. What hurts is knowing that, eventually, this affliction is going to tear me apart, and leave me a monster that tries to destroy all of my friends, again.[i/]"

She paused for a moment, letting that sink in before she continued.

"I've been having nightmares. Not...the usual kind of nightmares. These ones are worse, and when you're experiencing them, it feels like they go on for days and days. They feel real. In fact, sometimes I do not even know ireally awoken, or if I am still asleep." For a brief moment, a haunted look entered her gaze, and she stared into the distance somewhere just beyond Zhi's shoulder.

"I have trouble concentrating on things, and not just because I hear voices. Sometimes, I do not even feel like I am myself anymore, that something else has taken control of me, that the voices have possessed me completely...."

She shook her head as though to clear it, and then snorted.

"Listen to me. Shikoba would say that I'm being over dramatic again. But do you understand now?"

The smile she received after she was given a chance to vent did actually make her feel a bit better. She felt silly for having let her overtired and emotional state get the better of her, as well as embarrassed that she had lashed out at Zhi in such an angry and unnecessary way. But she could feel it, the doubt that gnawed away inside of her, the paranoia that washed over her, making her cast quick glances left and right and over her shoulder on occasion, as though somebody was out there, watching their exchange.

And what did she plan on doing, now? "I plan on living what part of my life I have left to live. Medea is..." What did she say about Medea? That she was useless? That wasn't exactly true. She had no doubt that the woman could help her in some way, but after she had been part of the reason Shaheen now found herself in a much worsened state of insanity, she was finding it hard to drag herself back to the priestess to ask for help that might not be given, to have hope and then to have it dashed away.

"She is unpredictable, you know that. And she never tells things straight, but speaks in riddles. I was never good at puzzles." She sighed, shaking her head so that her blonde curls bounced around her shoulders. "I will go to her eventually, when I feel it is time to do so." Which would probably be soon.

Time to change the subject. "What were you trying to do before you fell?"