Beautiful. Whoever came up with that name must have been on some powerful drugs. There is nothing about the woman in front of her that she could call 'beautiful', at least by any objective standard she's aware of. Her sister's assessment of herself is startlingly accurate: the emaciation and the tension of her stress response has left her looking stringy and jittery in a way that makes it uncomfortable to look right at her for too long. Her feathers seem sickly and ready to fall out all on their own, without the need for her nervous plucking to speed them along. She even [i]smells[/i] unpleasant, in that hollow-sweet way of the dying. 

But then there are her eyes. Those piercing, violet eyes. So bright and alive and sharper than a knife that looking into them feels like falling into a bottomless pit while being dissected at the same time. Even as tired as they seem, they gleam with a curiosity that seeks to understand every last detail of everything around them, even (especially?) the most familiar things around. But more than that, there's a light of something the girl can't really describe. There's a word for it, one she's sure she's supposed to know but just the simple concept slides right off of her brain and back into nothingness. 

Maybe Beautiful is the best way to describe her after all. 

The girl sighs as she hunches down in front of a locked door. Her body is tense, but not in the way her many-named sister is attempting to explain. There is nothing of tiger goddesses inside of her. Probably. But her claws are sharp and ready, and they cut through the handle of the door so swiftly she doesn't even register the tactile feedback of the metal pushing back against her before it's gone. There's a whisper of something sliding open and then a clatter of pieces on the step at her feet. The door swings open freely. This is how you pick a lock. 

"I'm not going to shoot you, Sister. Unless you would... prefer I not call you that? The word feels right and wrong at the same time, I don't understand it. There's... well, anyway. I'm not shooting you. And if you wanted to die there are better ways to go about it. You wouldn't even know it was-- mm."

She gestures through the open door.

"I need you to lead. I don't know what the drugs they might be keeping in here look or smell like. Rampancy is not a game we should be playing, and in any case constant stress is no good way to live."

As she stands, she frowns and shakes her head. A small and hopeful spark dies inside her sister's eyes, and as quick as she is to disguise her face and her body language, she can't do anything about the pheromone release of pure disappointment leaking from her pores. A few sad feathers drift to the ground before they're caught up in a passing breeze, and dance with each other for a moment before they fall inert forever.

"I'm sorry. I wish I could remember the details, or at least why it feels ironic to be speaking to you like this, but I just don't. I do know that word, though. I'm never going to forget it; it's the reason why I'm here in the first place. I made a wish, you know. On that sword. There are people that I care about, so much that I think it could drive me insane. And for some reason almost all of them carry this disease. Is it because I know the pain it causes, too? Is that why I want to wish it away?"

She cuts a regal figure even here, burglarizing this house for sedatives she has no understanding of. Her back is straight and even her ruined clothing hangs off of her in a way that makes her seem like a queen instead of someone desperately trying to do something, just anything at all to help so that she doesn't fail the person watching her and lose her like she's managed to lose everything else. And maybe it takes a queen's courage to admit that you're scared to lose the only person you've ever known whose violet eyes and nonsense speeches stand among the lone treasures of the universe that make her feel like she belongs somewhere.

Not for any grandiose reason like she keeps trying to put to it. But because she is a small and needy creature after all. Here inside Oblivion. 

"Do you know, though? I feel like all the names you just told me are terrible. No offense. I have no idea which one of them I would have called you when I knew it. Was it all of them? But they're all just dumb jokes. Maybe none of it meant anything to you then, but just look at you now. If I were you I'd want a new one. What's something you wouldn't be embarrassed to be called twice? Or maybe even forever?"