As strong as the seas are stormy.</style>
Fate had played her hand like a violinist playing the strains of her favorite melody, with a surety and a buried reasoning that Hotaru could never understand. How it was that she'd ended up in the Meadow that evening was not something she could ask of the quiet skies above, for no answer would be forthcoming. Maybe it was her excitement to be free once more that led to her perusal of all the lands she'd never taken the time to enjoy, or maybe it was the same pull of responsibility and purpose that had brought her to the expanse of flowers and sweetgrass that had also ended with her presence at the Blue. Whatever had summoned her, it was clearly looking out for the little life curled in the grasses, calling out for a mother to raise a child who had never even known the smell of her mother's flesh before blood and death had ripped away that chance.
Strands of silver and gold draped over the flora around her, catching and tugging harmlessly as it sparkled beneath the dusk light. Each movement was slow as she found herself enjoying the scenery, the beauty of the Gods all coming together to paint an image that would not soon be forgotten. Hotaru's thoughts are elsewhere, thinking of Arya and Mirabella, of the hesitant ideas shared between the Throat and the Basin. Everything seemed to be lingering on the edge of something, be it the murders that she had been inexorably tied to or the held breath even she was experiencing while the memory of her daughter's near-death before her very eyes plagued her. There was no way Arya could have survived, Hotaru knew that, and she thanked the Gods every day she awoke for having given her a new span of hours to treasure the gift Arya was to her.
How it happens is rather anticlimactic. She nearly stumbles over the prone form curled underfoot, harshly thrusting her foreleg over the body to catch herself without crashing down upon the poor thing. Suddenly left winded with her surprise, the lady tilted her crown to look down upon the tiny thing she'd nearly kicked, her horn like a glimmering spear pointing rather like a compass arrow towards the child that meets her eyes. The breath leaves her, until she is left gasping for it, and with a kick of her legs she is over the prone form and collapsing to her knees beside it.
The mother in her is caught in tangles of fierce protectiveness and panic, seeing a child clearly fresh from the womb collapsed and shuddering, alone, in the grass. Logic kicks her brain into gear, and in a sweep of shimmering starlight she casts her plume upon the child's frame, moving as close as possible to share her body heat and curling her bodice around the little thing in her tender grasp. "Hush, little one. I am here. Everything is going to be okay." It curls from her lips in a coo of tender promise, breathing hot puffs upon the moist skin of the babe and cursing the fall of the sun she had previously been admiring.
Arya was fresh off the teat, and Mira had not required such sustenance for a while yet, but Hotaru knew her body could supplement the child should she require it. The thing is alone and helpless, and though it is perhaps unrealistic to take a third child beneath her wing when already two remained in need of her at home, Hotaru could not simply leave her to die. Briskly she rubs her muzzle across the child, hoping to use the friction to warm it and dry it further. In time she urges at it, hoping to make the little girl stand on her baby legs.
"You have to eat, I need to get you somewhere safe. Please stand for me, little darling. I'm right here beside you, I just need you to stand." She is tugging and propping the nameless child up as gently as she can, but it is vital that she moves the babe to real shelter in case the spring rains come overnight. Hotaru knows she will not be returning to the Basin that night, moving the exhausted baby is not going to be feasible. She just prays that it's not too late to save it.
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