Mazikeen had cried, truly cried, for the first time in her life, back there in the forest. When she thought she was going to die, when the pain had blinded her and she had laid there in her own blood. When she thought she was going to die in such a weakened and pathetic state. She had been so sure that she wouldn’t be able to move if she tried. Then dawn had come and she had woken up - not remembering falling asleep (or passing out) only startling away when she could feel flesh being tugged. Orange eyes were wild as they spied the pair of ravens picking at her wounds as if she were just another corpse.
And that had finally got her to move. She shouted a wordless cry that startled the death birds and sent them flying into the red sky she could see between the boughs of the trees.
Somehow she managed to stand, though she could not put much weight on one of her forelegs. Her entire body screamed with pain as she took her first cautious step.
It was not an option to lie down again. She was not sure how she was still alive - the soil beneath her body was practically mud with how much her blood had saturated it.
And now, she is back in the Cove. The rocky mountains of Hyaline had done her no favours as she stumbled through them - sheer stubbornness driving her forward.
The soft coastal grasses of the Cove surround her now and it is an effort not to just lie down in them. She’s afraid if she gives into that weakness she will never rise again. Her gaze is unfocused with pain still - both from the wounds the creature had given her in the forest and from where she had fallen several times through the mountains. Her coat is more red than white now, mottled with streaks of blood and dirt and missing flesh.
She stands there, swaying just slightly, because she’s not sure what to do. She had only one thought - get back here - but now what?
@[craft]