"One Day, I Shall Live By the Code of Honor."
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It was taking forever for the young Acolyte to heed her father’s call; she stumbled about, almost sightlessly, her steps ginger as her weight rested upon her right side. In all truthfulness, it was not so bad; the pain was largely receding with time, and the blood had already stopped flowing from the slashes on her quarter, on her shoulder. All that truly remained was a dull, tugging sensation in the knit of her shoulder and quarters; it would heal fully, in time. Even her ear didn’t buzz with the pain of a thousand hornets. Instead, a vague sort of throbbing permeated the whole side of her head, but the most jarring sensation was the way the wind played about the flaps of her ears; tickling fissures they never tickled before, a constant reminder of the scar she had won from the battle. Hmph--won. As though the filly had achieved something.
Mostly, what was making her gait so slow and clumsy was not the pain of her injuries; it was a heavy weight that settled on her chest, increasing in pressure with every step, crushing her ribcage the closer she got to her father. It was the tears that welled inside her eyelids, tears that had yet to fall, but was very close to doing so; if Laila did so much as blink, thick rivers of the stuff would surely pour down her face. So she didn’t blink. She didn’t want the comfort of crying like a baby at her first fight, her first loss, because she knew if a single tear escaped into the world, she would start bawling, and she hadn’t earned that right.
If Laila was honest, she wouldn’t be so hard on herself; she had fought, hadn’t she? She had served her duty as a Protector for the herd, doing her absolute best to thwart the enemy from the herdland; it was her first fight, surely, but even so she had performed admirably. In fact, in the scheme of things, Laila had been successful. Her herd was still her own, and in no danger of being overrun with the ragged unicorns of the north; the war was won, and she would live as an Edge filly for another day.
But that wasn’t the rationale Laila saw before her eyes; all she knew was the defeat she met at the hooves of that white mare. That red V would haunt her always—it WAS haunting her this very moment, the rose-madder war-paint seeming to swim within the tears that she so desperately refused to let fall. When her father’s bulk became visible in the mists, Laila had to suppress a sob; indeed, she didn’t quite manage the feat. She only walked timidly towards her father with a gentle gait, barely noticing the gray lady who had already heeded his call.
“I-I’m here, Father,” she whispered, her voice choking despite her wishes to the contrary; she didn’t look at Destrier, knowing as soon as she looked into his gentle brown eyes, she would lose it. “I tried—I…I tried so h-hard and I…I c-couldn’t…” The sob was laced in the words, and Laila finally quit trying to explain. It was too painful, too shameful, and her ear seemed to throb in the rhythm of her embarrassment. What would he think about his daughter? Her ear?
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