Ampere's departure doesn't register in her head, too enveloped in this world of grey and black. The cold is seeping into her bones and she's horrified by the levels of crimson that stain the snow around her. At least half the ribs on her right side are broken, she has over twenty lacerations on the same side, her right foreleg is snapped - and if it was fractured to begin with, she fears it did not do so in a clean and comfortable fashion. Her throat and just behind her ears are clotted with scabs from Tingal's abnormally sharp teeth, not to mention the scrapes and clawmarks he'd left all over her hide. She is covered almost entirely in blisters and burns from Ampere's last attack, and her left eye is sealed shut from where the blood had dried and glued her eyelashes shut. And all throughout it, dimly categorizing her injuries, Alice is howling like the damned. It stops intermittently, dissolving into wounded cries and whimpers that hurt far worse than any wound the champion had left upon her body. She doesn't have the energy to move her tongue to verbalize her soft reassurances, but she lets them float down the bond, trailing and hazy. Don't leave, I love you, Alice is crying, because Hotaru has gone from not wanting to move to being incapable of it. The color keeps draining from the world in fits and starts, but the episodes are lasting longer. 

Is this how mother and father felt? Did they die like this, too? Alice's wounded noises return at the word, in utter denial of this fate that Hotaru sees so clearly before herself. No, no, no, Alice is sobbing, the only spot of warmth that Hotaru can still feel, pressed up against and beneath her, trying to keep her out of the snow. Trying to keep her body upright and supported. Tears stream silent and vapid down her cheeks, and Hotaru doesn't know how she can cry while feeling so numb and peaceful, when her face does not even twitch to register any sort of emotion that would correspond with those tears. 

I just got Raeden back. I finally started to be a Lady the Basin deserves. How could Tingal take all this from me so easily? Most of her musings are nonsensical, and interspersed between her fading, struggling thoughts she tries to soothe Alice. It's okay, Alice. It's all going to be okay. But the sun had been setting when Ampere had first arrived and now night is falling, and the cold is seeping so far into her bones that she finds herself giving a short, aborted shake of a laugh. It's ironic, when she rules over the coldest and farthest reaches of the North, to die by the same hand. 

But maybe she's not meant to die today. The sound of her name registers with Alice long before Hotaru, who dismisses it as some sort of hallucination. But then her nickname is screamed across the snow, bearing down upon her from an odd angle, and Alice is whining and barking and howling at her side. Hotaru turns her good right eye to the skies, too tired to move her entire head. Thranduil? she thinks distantly, even though she knows he is not capable of flight like this savior of hers. He had saved her once, she comforts herself, trying to stifle the tiny flicker of hope that burgeons inside her breast. But Alice fights for her when she does not have the strength to any longer, shuffling and jostling her until Hotaru lifts her head and -

He's there. 

She can only see him from one eye, but the tears start anew, and her lips tremble with emotion. This isn't the end. But what she says is, "Mesec." His name is croaked and broken but she's crying with relief because he's here. She's not alone, she'll make it home. Or at least she won't die alone, if it ends up being too late for her here. He lowers himself beside her but she doesn't have the fortitude to try and move towards him, to curl up beneath his wing like she wants to. Like she used to do as a foal, tucked against Phaedra's side, whispering furtively beneath the mare's belly to her twin on the other side until Phaedra would wack them both to get them to shut up and sleep. 

"Tingal...and then Ampere..." her voice is hoarse from screaming, nonsensical names that fall from her lips, clueless to the meaning and importance one would hold for the boy. Alice is staring at the moon child, a desperate sort of sorrow on her face. She can't help her sister here. She is failing her, even as Hotaru heaps forgiveness upon her every moment. But maybe this stallion, who had made Hotaru laugh and smile sincerely for the first time in years, could save them both. 

"I just want to go home," Hotaru cries, too beaten to try and preserve her pride. But she understands dimly that Lucius is fetching someone, and her heart lurches. "Lena," she sobs. "I need Lena." If she could bring an immortal daughter back from death's doorstep, perhaps she could do so again. But this time for the mother, who did not have the gifts of immortality to rely upon. And she's thankful that Mesec is here. Even though her numbed emotions - shock, she tells herself - have cracked and come pouring out passionately, it is better than death. I can't let this be my ending. And so she keeps her eyes trained unwavering and helpless upon his face, afraid if she looks away he will prove himself the mirage she believed him to be and disappear. "Don't leave me, Mesec," Hotaru begs, because even if she does die tonight, she wants it to happen with his untarnished, naive love surrounding her tainted soul. 

She hangs on. 

OOC thingies here