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A scream echoes over the frosted plains, followed by another, far less primordial and formulated into words. Ones that are chaotic as they screech into the young mother's head, barely articulated as the shadow of recognition and fear consumes it. A mother knows her daughter in every way, be it pain or pleasure, joy or jealousy. The plaintive cry does not belong to some lost, broken creature. It belongs to her precious huntress. Somebody has hurt her baby. There is a cold, prolonged moment of stillness as this sinks in. Hardly a moment passed in any other's eyes, but to her it is an eternity of terror. What about Deodat? Odette? How could her precious child have gotten hurt? For Arya is no weakling, she does not cower nor caterwaul over skinned knees and bruised shins. And the cry was the wail of a dying thing.
ARYA!
Her mind is screaming the name on repeat, and how she goes from motionless to sprinting she can't recall. Foam is thick on her flanks in seconds, running so hard her heart is nearly objecting, like a sled dog running itself to death. She runs to her baby, the only thing that has ever mattered in her life, the shining light in the dark void of her existence. Please gods, don't take her away from me! Not her, anybody but her! Blood is pounding in her ears, snow exploding from the sharp kiss of her hooves as she runs, sparse grass uprooted. Destroying the very environment, terror thick like sap, like congealed blood in her veins. Blankminded except the fervent, hysterical prayers that she be wrong. That it won't be her daughter at the borders, blood staining the snow. Ripping away the only good Hotaru had in her miserable life.
The body in the snow (Hotaru can't bear to name it, to think it's her daughter) is so small, so frail. Even as she races towards the standing filly, the stain of color seems to only grow smaller beneath her gaze. Breakable. Mortal. So easily stripped from the world. A world Hotaru could not stand to live in if it meant losing her baby girl.
A scream rips from her throat, agonized, disbelieving as she finally has to accept that the crumpled body in the snow is her baby. It is a shrieking, dying thing that shreds her vocals with shards of glass formed from the shattered walls of her denial. She collapses all at once, her momentum snapped as her strings are shredded and cut with a rusted blade. Her knees bruise as they slam to the earth, tears streaking hot and furious down her pink cheeks. Staring in horror at the blood round her baby's throat, a necklace of pain and defeat. Crimson, carmine, cooling red and pulsing weakly upon the pristine canvas that is her death bed. Too young, too young. Gods, let her take her daughter's place!
Her breaths huff, hysterical, completely uncaring how she appears to the outside world. Facade shattered, pierced and burned. Why should she care what they think of her now? Her life has no meaning, no purpose, no direction if that little heart does not continue to beat. Flared nostrils press to the slick of her daughter's bloodied throat, trying fruitlessly to place pressure upon the wound that will surely claim her life.
"NO!" It rips free in a wail, a screech of denial and distress. She hiccups on her sobs, presses to her daughter's limp body, chest heaving with the force of her agony. "Arya, Arya, please. I love you my huntress, I will kill whoever dared to hurt you. I will kill them all. Just please stay. My baby, please don't leave me," she sobs, a strained whisper into ears that are still so tiny, so round with newness and little life. She weeps, broken, upon her daughter's form. Preach all she may about strength, but she also taught Arya about the power of love, of loyalty. May her daughter forgive her for her weakness, for the cinders that turn her heart into naught but dust and smoke.
Her world fades to this single moment, to the glimmer of snow flecked on her child's still, motionless face. In her memory of those closed eyes, that little face she sees the few seasons her baby has gotten to live, and with all her might she prays for a chance for Arya to see so many more of them. Take my life instead. I give you everything. I give you my heart, my breath, my very soul. Just please, don't take her away from me.
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