Like an equine tail brushes away flies, the group appears more or less, to deflect his pained threats - more still, they harry the wounded’s defences with swarming words, and logic that hasn't a hope of penetrating the stubborn wall of epinephrine; fight, not flight… neither bargain and die. Stuck fast in the overbearing heat of the moment (and that of the late day), terror still ripe in his trembling mind, he has no rationale or sensibility - no reason to back down. That is, except for the agonising, near-crippling wrath of his shredded shoulder.

He is a paltry child, wrapped in the dress of his most favoured hero; that facade though, is crumbling. Nausea curdles his conviction, bile turns and tumbles inside, and he wavers there before them like a leaf flicked by wind; he is succumbing to injury and he cannot find any more strength to resist - try as he might.

The ferocious fire in his gaze is failing fast, dulling, shifting to the slumped fairy beneath the flare of his own long feathers. Golden wings are sagging slowly at the same time, grimly, until the right-side length lays limp upon the stinking soil, the left, like a stiff blanket above her warm feminine skin; defeatedly, lastly. The gallant heart belting beneath padded breast skips, giant hooves founder clear of her dainty fallen frame, and true exhaustion - numbness, uncertainty, dawns on him like midnight in a cave. He comes to stand well out of their way, panting, ill gulps that never seem to quench the desperate thirst of his lungs. His figure convulses as shock overwhelms, consumes… Four horrifically deep scores mar the oceanic purity he portrays, pristine, white like sand, delivered by the cruel cat’s claws; they’d severed, sliced through muscle like a dolphin cutting sea, and weepy-blood pulses from each midst.

The sing-song melody of voices cloud his closing mind; they weave a picture before darkening eyes far lovelier than the feral scene he embodies, hovers atop; they are decorated with confidence and goodwill, vigour and life. The lull of the dragon-winged mare’s tone soothes his belligerence to wane, it calls a last grimace to weak lips - though he dares not fold to the beckoning embrace of her bosom, lest he tumble down altogether. The steady drum of hooves grows nearer, resonates through his core, a storm, rolling forth across the turbulent black waves his eyes now survey.  There is a light flickering in the distance and his thoughts reach out in vain, hopefully, curiously - do his ancestors call?

Yet it is not the path to heaven that opens, but a dancing lantern upon a cloaked guest.

Great knees buckle at last into the soil, and air gushes tiredly from each lung; he sinks left with the wound exposed above, until his masculine bulk lies still atop the other feathered joint. He trembles wildly, feels the cool, calm wash of sleep descend like a brilliantly fresh shower of rain, and he relinquishes his touch on reality - the pain, the fatigue, the fear and fury, because it feels so wonderful.

[Note: happy for a pash or whatever rolls his way! Full permission given ;D]