At first, Tiamat doesn’t want to look—she doesn’t want to see the blood or the carnage, she doesn’t want to see the pain and the suffering of someone she holds so dear, she just doesn’t want to see it. Her mind screams at her to look away, to turn her head, to run. Anything to hide this bloodshed, this butchery from her innocent, childlike eyes. Her mind clings to its purity, so bright and uncorrupted by the true damnations that poison this immoral world, denying with a fervor the reality of what her eyes are telling her. In her mind her thoughts demand for her to move, but the blue mare finds herself numbed, detached from her muscles—still, her mind screams.
Maybe if she turns her head, maybe if she runs, it will all go away.
Like it never happened.
But from somewhere beneath all the numbness and the dazed stupor that has melted into her heavy bones, Tiamat feels something—something stirring. Her heart does not allow her to accept what her mind is so desperately crying. Is this not what she believes herself destined for? To help? To aid? To mend others? Has she not been preparing herself for a moment like this? Now, shoved into this scene of anguish, blood, and trauma, she cannot possibly allow herself to recoil away from the very obligations that are entwined into every beating fiber of her young, benevolent heart.
“Will you help me, Tiamat?”
The stallion’s words, despite their frailness, manage to weave their way through the cold air and pierce the murkiness of her struggle. As the haze cracks and parts, she feels released, encouraged, his plea beckoning movement into her muscles where only stillness had been, pulling her forward with a gentle but unyielding hand. Tiamat allows herself to be carried before she can stand on her own resolve again, her eyes closing before she looks to Ashamin’s face. “Yes,” she gasps, her voice hoarse and thrust in a croaking whisper from her chest. “Yes!” She repeats after swallowing against the raw thickness in her throat, more confident this time, the beat of her heart rising to thud in her ears, beckoning her onward into this terrifying unknown that she has prepared to discover.
“I’m going to help you, Ashamin! I’m going to help you, everything is going to be alright…everything is going to be alright,” the mare’s slender chest heaves, not entirely sure which one of them she is trying to comfort more, swallowing in a gulping gasp as she drives herself to move. Move. Cloven hooves squelch in the wet mud as they lift from the lake’s floor, her legs as heavy as lead, willing herself to maneuver through the icy waters and around her fallen friend.
Tiamat hesitates when her gaze lowers, witnessing the blue hue of her brother stained to a red that swirls and marks her legs with a grisly omen. The fear and the doubt begin to rise again, clenching her chest with its tight claws until she barely feels the strength to breathe. The terror in the back of her mind begins to scream once more, demanding that she turn away, save herself from this horror, but still her eyes follow the bleeding trail—eventually wandering to the gruesome gouges and mangled flesh that oozes its bloody, doomed liquid. Is there any hope? The ocean mare clings to the last thread, clutching to it like a salvation as she had of Ashamin’s face, she can’t let go.
She can’t give up on him.
Almost as if he senses her terror, the wounded stallion begins to speak, his raspy words drifting and sweeping, reaching with his last strength to lift her up. Tiamat’s knees shudder and threaten to give way beneath her, and tears sting her eyes—not because of the fear, and not because of the horror, but because of his kindness, his comfort, even in the face of death. She admires his strength, and despises herself for her selfishness—because she needs this, his encouragement, his stalwartness, to carry her forward, and she clutches at his strength when she should give it back.
She needs him.
Wrenching herself upright with a hoarse groan, Tiamat finds some flickering power of will, and refuses to let go. “I’ll be right back, Ashamin, stay with me—don’t you dare leave,” she sighs to him with a breathless fervor before lurching forward, fighting through the muck and blood to return to the banks of the lake and release herself from the icy waters. Wildly she looks for any familiar plants or herbs, trying to wrestle memories from the haze of her mind and remember what she’d been taught. The world spins and she stumbles, gravity both aiding and combating her as the ground sways back and forth beneath her hooves. She doesn’t know how long she searches, but it feels like a breath before she is plunging again into her brother’s freezing arms, several leaves clasped between her lips.
Dropping them onto the lake’s surface, she offers one to Ashamin. “Eat this, my friend,” she says with a voice that is intended to be comforting, but wavers in time with her racing heart. The herb is meant to help numb his pain—if she has remembered correctly—and she brushes her muzzle against his cheek (her breath warm, labored, frightened) before returning to his ghastly wounds. Snatching some more of the leaves, she pauses, exhaling and blinking against the threat of tears.
These leaves will burn, they will sting, but they will—hopefully—clean and inspire his flesh to heal. A necessary process in spite of its agony. I’m sorry, she thinks despairingly, blinking away the first tear that streaks down her cheek, wishing there was another way, before she places the leaves on the trembling sinews of his exposed muscle.
notes; I won't cry I wont cry D':
tag; @[Ashamin]
“Speech.”
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