The moment before the illusion fades, there is no warning; one moment she's an artist's impression of a beautiful woman in cloche hat and velvet jacket, and in the space of a heartbeat...she's still wearing the hat and the jacket, but she's neatly removing both, sweeping her long hair over her opalescent shoulder, gleaming in the low light, her eyes uniformly blue and so dark as to seem black here, oversized with sweeping lashes.

She half-turns where she sits, brisk and straightforward, twisting so she can keep watching him (to see him speak); she was prepared for this, evidently, wearing a camisole low enough in the back that he can see where the bite is healing on her shoulder-blade. The bruises on her throat are still ugly, but faded, and no longer bothering her speech.

"It seemed minor at the time; I cleaned it up." Her teeth, when she speaks, are fleetingly visible - needle-sharp and predatory. "The choking concerned me more, at first." It had taken her a few nights for it to properly sink in that the nightmares were out of the ordinary, which spoke less to their severity and more to Ilde's own state of mind. "I don't know enough about my own physiology - nixie - to safely do much, and it didn't seem severe." She says the name of her species a little like a talisman; she's not one of those watered down pets, but she is, unfortunately, lost.