It is said that the less ears that hear a secret, the less mouths there are to mutter about it elsewhere. It can easily be said the same of eyes. What more could the Grey expect after ambushing Willow while she traveled with a fellowship? The others may have been distracted and her captors able to slip away with her in the mean time, but they had all witnessed the loss of their healer, it was understandable their senses would be stretched far and wide to locate her.
The trail to this place was surely not perfectly concealed either. The Basin and the Forest have some distance between them, and all the while the unconscious lignea was being dragged along. Quite a feat for the two stallions, which surely would be exhausted. A shame for them she wasn't a flower, but rather a hulking tree on a similarly rotund draft body. She wasn't terribly graceful when conscious, much less when nothing but dead weight.
Willow does not know the events happening around her however. In fact she does not even yet remember the pitfall that injured her right knee, nor the act of falling into the darkness of a forced sleep. Perhaps the fall had also struck her head, or maybe the pain had overwhelmed her until her mind shut down. Perhaps just the event itself had been too exciting for the slow-paced mare, though this was not her first ruffle with other horses, it was certainly one of her more extensive ones.
All the while Ermine had been quiet, tucked up safe in her branches, largely unnoticed. His worry overrode his fury, so he spent his energy at trying to rouse the foggy connection between he and Willow. Whether it was his chattering in her ear that roused her or the commotion surrounding her, she could not know, but eventually Willow did begin to rouse.
First the Lignea's eyes began to flutter. Green lit up within a brown face, gentle and delicate with confusion and sleeping haze. Then her legs began to churn against the ground, hooves knocking against each other and easily reminding her of the injured knee. Pain lanced through her limb, evident with the crinkling of her face into a wince. Eventually she found purchase however, and flopped from her left side onto her chest.
That's when she began to scream.
As if waking from some terrible dream in which reality would give her no respite, Willow became fully aware of her situation as agony pulsed in tempo with her heart. The abrupt shift of her position had refreshed the pain which had otherwise subsided into a dull ache with the familiarity of discomfort and stillness. Now however, she felt each broken branch as if it were snapping apart once more. Her once full and beautiful tree had been marred extensively, likely used as a handle for the two stallions dragging her or jabbing into the surroundings the passed through. A normal horse her size would have been enough trouble, but she was made heavier and more awkward with her soul sprouting from her withers.
The green of her irises were lost to the white walls of her eyes as terror consumed the injured healer. Each dangling limb or lost leaf felt like a burning brand of white-hot electricity jolting through her; a worse sensation than bones break or muscle shredding. She flopped back onto her left side, flanks rising quickly while sweat began to bead in the creases of her body. Her teeth clicked together with a sharp sound that cut off the ungodly yelling from her maw.
In-between all of this the tawny bundle of fur known as Ermine shot like a bolt of lightning from her boughs. Her pain was felt in every fiber of his being and her fright drove him to react. Feeling like a cornered dog he could only attack to defend himself. In a flurry of screeching curses his clawed paws swept a frenzy of attacks towards the first he saw - Ophelia. He aimed to crawl up her legs and harass her from her back, needle-like teeth flashing to assist his pricking paws. All the while his body was bushed out to twice its normal size and his eyes sharpened with hate.
Willow only felt her companion like a secondary sensation in the back of her mind, too focused on the overwhelming feeling of being broken and fighting off the unconsciousness that threatened to steal her once more. She needed to focus, to see, to
understand. She recognized none of these horses save the dappled grey not far from her. He'd been with her... Argetlam was his name if she remembered. It was hard to say, her thoughts were scattered and her world sideways as she lay on the ground.
Focus she berated, teeth gritting with the determination she felt.
She could not let herself die here, not after all she'd been though. Prim'sylvia still awaited her return some day.
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We are The Grey | Ophelia, Willow, Open
