He is silent, a mythical being of the Steppe, staring at her with dark eyes that make her insides tremble. She doesn't move. A part of her feels like she can handle this, she lived alone in the wilds for so long, has seen far worse than this strange stallion staring deep into her soul. Muriel longs to give her family peace and silence in their sleep, feed them hours with which to rest their bodies. So she stares right back, not sure how to react, what to do, how to feel or proceed. Her wings shuffle, her feet prance awkwardly in place, watching him watch her. Suffers, unsure, distraught suddenly. The wind howls on, a hungry beast tearing across empty snowfilled fields. They face one another.

He shimmers. Morphs. Dissolves into something wholly new, and Muriel cannot contain the breath that leaves her, feeling like she's been kicked in the ribs. Muriel knows magic, knows it in many variations, both gentle and gruesome. This is nothing she has seen before, and she stands before it uncertain and a little fearful. Why? Magic has place, has meaning and purpose. It only unfolds to reveal itself when the time is most necessary. She has done nothing to persuade him to flash his cards, his aces and jokers that grin and leer down at her in a way that makes her skin crawl. Something archaic in her bellows, screams and chants its cries to run, to save herself from a danger she can only assume but that she somehow knows is there. Something far, far older keeps her rooted. Protect. Child. Die for him. Die for them. Fight.

He lunges for her, and she chokes, for though her soul is ready her body is not. She sways back on long limbs, easy, but his mark is true. It crashes down upon her body, a little off its original intention with how she careened away. Snap! It echoes in her head far louder than the atmosphere, and her eyes go white with pain, dizzy with shock and adrenaline as her hollow wingbone snaps beneath his weight. It jerks her wing down, and she follows it, going down on the corresponding foreleg as she stumbles in the unforgiving snow, little droplets of blood blooming on its washed out surface. And as she sucks in a breath, unbidden, she can't help what comes next.

She screams.

Fire eats up into her shoulder as her wing spasms uselessly, furthering the damage. Instinctively she reacts, craning her long neck up with teeth bared and brutal, eyes white and scared in contrast. Aims for his neck, his throat, any skin and meat she can reach to make him stop, stop, please stop, it hurts! Muriel had never been a fighter, but suddenly she can sense just how close her son is, just how delicate his body. How easily he will fold, will bleed, will break. And with a new vigor she struggles back to her feet, lunging forward with teeth bared anew, however her last attack may have landed. A new scream tears from her throat, this one angry, protective, vicious. She won't let him hurt her baby, not without giving it her all, not without breaking every bone in her body, bleeding out in slow agonizing death. She doesn't know that's exactly what he has planned for her.