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There was too much blood, too many morbid pearls of carmine blooming like roses that heralded death on the snow around her child. Just a baby, too young, with too much life left to live in a world that sought to end her. Her own cries were agonized, feeling as if every piece of her soul and body was being burned with a sure, torturous hand and a flame too pale to be anything pure. Hatred warred with her despair, and she burned, burned, burned beneath the weight of her denial. No, she couldn't lose her baby, her life, her love. Her reason for living. But even her eyes could see that it was too much, there wasn't a way for a healer to bring her back, not realistically. Not even a world imbued with magic and second chances. So when Lena answers the call, desperation pouring out of her like rain from an evergreen branch, she cannot be consoled. She is convinced that Arya is lost, that Hotaru will be left in a world that will burn before her grieving heart and tortured eyes. A world she will no longer see the purpose of living in. Arya was all she had left, her meaning, her purpose. Without her, Hotaru was lost. Broken.
Except, the wound on her neck closes, and the whimpering pleas of her daughter shred her heart like a rabid wolf. She sobs freely over her body, blind to the blood that coats her breast. Red, red, red. Red like her pain, like her rage. Red like her daughter's passion. Red like blood, like what her enemies will bleed in vengeance. Red like her broken heart, her shattered life.
But breath is sucking weakly into tiny lungs, and Hotaru stares uncomprehendingly down at the body sprawled in the snow, helpless but...but...healed. Is she mad already? Has her psyche been broken by the loss so soon, deluding herself with the idea that her daughter, her core, could have been saved?
Tentatively she lowers her muzzle to her daughters, and when she feels the warm exhale that signifies life, Hotaru chokes and sobs. Gratitude slams into her, until she is slumped and crying in relief over the warm, alive body she has nearly encompassed in her grief. Her eyes are shot with red as she lifts her head to look at Lena, her mane clumped in blood but spread soothingly over her child's skin, keeping her veiled, warm. Protected. Her body is posturing as fully as she can manage over her prone form, something she had not done since Arya was young and small enough to easily slide beneath her belly on straightened legs.
Words come out rough and cracked, black holes of so many possible endings leading down into the crevices as she speaks. "L-Lena," she chokes. "Thank you.". Tortured but sincere, with all the passion she can muster. Lena had saved her daughter, impossible as it should have been. She owed the Songbird more than she could put into words, but it pulsed in her eyes like a promise, like a debt. "Thank you."
And she turned to cradle her daughter, tears slowed but still dripping pathetically down her face as her visage turned to pin the other youth in her gaze. "Thank you, child, for not leaving her alone. For calling." It quivers with pain, with gratitude. The filly had been brave, to stay by her daughter's side even in the face of such a macabre scene.
Words clogged up in her throat, useless, she bowed her head over Arya and merely cried.
@[Lena]
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