you were a shot in the dark
and aimed right at my throat
There is only the moon to keep her company tonight.
The Taigan woods are still and silent. Lilliana thinks her heartbeats might be louder than the waves that crash along the nearby shore and her steady breath emits a small cloud of smoke with each exhale. It's hard for her to sleep when there is an ache in her back and her joints grow too stiff. (She has always struggled with her pregnancies. This one is not as bad as the last but it seems that she gives so much to her children, even in this state, that they claim the shine from her coat to the curl in her mane.) The chestnut mare shifts her weight from one hip to the other and tries to hide the grimace that crosses her face.
Shadows cast by the full moon help and the red mare turns her head, peering past the trunk she has found herself beneath. Placed between Sequoias, the treewell that Lilliana rests in keeps her out of the snowdrifts and offers some shelter against the unusually brutal winter. (She has seen almost six in Taiga and can't recall the last time that she has shivered through the freezing season as she had this one.)
Lilliana wouldn't call her nights lonely. Not when her days are starting to fill with a sense of purpose again. The red woman of Taiga has resumed recruiting, is seen often making a patrol route towards Nerine and then towards the River (with the hope of catching a glimpse of Aela). She is seen often among the inhabitants of Taiga and though she doesn't smile as she once did, the routine that these days bring are teaching her to look to the next one. To look towards the months and (dare she think it?) years to come.
Because as the Watcher told her one starless night in Tephra, it would. The future always comes. She just knows to try and be ready for it, now.
Fate comes crashing down this night. It comes tumbling down from the sky, breaking mighty branches, and bringing them down with him. Lilliana doesn't see the fall but she senses the way it ripples through the Redwoods. There had been the loud thud not far from her cove and though she counts her heartbeats (some part of her hesitant to leave the safety of her wooded grove), the chestnut leaves the safety of her winter hollow. It's not hard to see the crumpled body at first; the white wings aren't immediately noticed because she sees the proud outlines of his horns against the pristine white of newly fallen snow. @[Warden] groans and churns in pain and Lilliana's heart writhes and twists with him, their pain tangling into one.
She moves as quickly as she is able, encompassing the distance between them as hastily as a mare carrying two foals can. "Warden?" she asks, trying to gain his attention so she might better assess the battering his body taken. The pain radiates off him in waves and yet each step closer she takes, it is not the sensation of drowning she feels.
It's burning.