This content might touch on topics that are sensitive or triggering for some readers. Trigger Warning for mentions of impending death.

The wind howled against that bleak horizon, deafening the swell of waves that crashed against the rocky shore, the flanking of the sea unmatched by the roaring swell of the storm above. It was bitterly cold; a dusting of snow had long covered the ground, and as it continued to spill from the sky abovehead, Tinúviel struggled against its unrelenting frost. She shuddered, shivered. Struggled against the resistance of snow-covered sand as she tried so desperately to drag that half-corpse into this country. The unfurling curls of his mane tickled the roof of her mouth, his sheer size in comparison to her own hindering her, causing her back and legs to ache with each desperate tug. Her breath struggled past his fur, warm suspire fervently escaping through his bloodied locks, before dissipating into the crisp wintry air.

Eventually, the pain grew too great. The cover of night afforded her solitude in that moment, but that was its only surrender. The man she'd been trudging along seemed to have stilled, no longer half-consciously fighting back against her attempts to find shelter. The pads of her little paws were cracked and bleeding, and her teeth ached where they'd bore the entirety of his weight, far too big for such a little lioness to burden alone. And yet—the gentle rise and fall of his chest had given her hope. The small twitches of his whiskers, the flurry of his eyes moving beneath his lids, indicative of dreaming, of living. The herbs she had so cautiously pressed into his wounds had long become undone and filled with snow and old blood, and in the half-light of the moon as it peaked from between the snow-pregnant clouds, she could just barely see that a few had torn upon and begun bleeding once more.

Oh— she breathed, quickly racing toward his side. Unmoving was he, unaware she was ever there. I'm sorry, she whispered, before quickly pressing leaves and mosses back into the wound, applying firm pressure for as long as she could, even as he writhed uncomfortably beneath her. A warmth radiated from him that was far harsher than before, the fervent heat of his breath indicative of fever, of infection (something she could have perhaps staved off had she not dragged him all the way here). And yet, it were only here she knew he may have a chance of surviving.

And yet, part of her knew the chances of that now were slim. He was fleeting. Held together by the thin threads of Tinúviel's hope and nothing more. Perhaps it would have been a greater mercy to let him die.

She could see it in the way his chest rose and fell with those final agonal breaths, the sudden twitch of his whiskers growing stronger and then weaker, his eyes no longer wincing, no longer half-opening. Tears prickled the corners of her gaze, and she waited in that cruel silence, suddenly wishing the winds were whipping all about her once more, with a howl loud enough to deafen the thrumming of her heartbeat violently in her ears. Her cheeks flushed, nervous, frantic. Please, she begged, pressing her paw into his chest, no longer curling and tensing as he once had, Stay with me.

Art by AleTie, table by cala

wither is feeling more emboldened, lately. the bite of winter is bitterly familiar and the curly-furred woman is comfortable among the thick snow drifts and endless chill. the others of the land seem somewhat torn on the topic, some comfortable and others angry. but today, the snow is relentless. and as the night dawns, it eases only enough that her curious nose brings her out to the passage. she'd come through this way before, of course, but there's more of a draw tonight.

and when her gaze slices through the milky-moonlit shore, she sees why. fate, perhaps, or godly intervention.

a small lioness hunkers over a larger, motionless lump. there's something tense and mournful about the scene and for a long while, wither watches silently with her dark lips twisted in a little frown.

finally, when tinuviel's little plea carries on the wind too her, she shifts out of her hiding place. her dark form stands out against the bright landscape and she approaches without hesitation. her ears are angled up, trained on where the little healer hunches against the cold. her trained eye scans the form, the wounds, the stillness. and as she comes to a halt just in front of the pair, she exhales quietly.

he's finished. she says simply but not without kindness.

Loss was far and above his most common companion. @Tinúviel had been added to a list he had never wanted her to be added to -- he had looked for her, hoping that she had merely wandered a little too far from the cove. The tiny lioness was a dreamer like that, he imagined she could have been led to fanciful places on a whim.

He had looked for her, but she had disappeared. There and then gone, with only the memory of her plush fur and soft touches left behind. Buried in a history fraught with loss, until...

A ghost from his past appeared on the horizon. Bloodied and distraught but so achingly familiar that he was lurching forward before he could put a thought to the action. In the time it took him to cross the distance more information filtered through, until he was slowly to a cautious step by the time he reached her. Torn between the urge to pull her to his embrace and the awareness that there was so much more going on here.

A sideways look to the other stranger, the unfamiliar female, but he barely pays her mind beyond that cursory glance. His focus is on Tinny, her name is a breath from his lips -- "Tin..."

Wide-eyed as he looked at the battered brute on the ground, concern knitting his brow as he takes in the extent of the wounds. The stranger speaks but he doesn't look at her, his gaze sliding back to the thick furred girl. "Let me help." A quiet request, his offer left open to interpretation. He would carry the injured back to the Mire, to a healer, if that was what would serve him best.

Whatever he could do for her.

Recluse, both in name and in his tendency to find himself removed from the general society. He was not opposed to company, but the mind was sharper when left without distraction. His never ceased its wandering, always painting scenarios altered in hindsight. This little lioness @Tinúviel was among many things he dwelt on given her sudden disappearance. She had seemed well enough in the days following the hurricane winds and raging tides, but perhaps she had been ill and succumb to his bite. Maybe the ocean had claimed the life stolen from them in the end. The possibilities were endless, but it remained an unsolved mystery, brought to a close only by her arrival in the passage.

The small male would remain distant at first, observing the gathering group and taking in what was happening. The lion she had brought along smelled of healing herbs and blood, but also seemed to have the cold embrace of death hovering near. He doubted there would be any saving him, and he was not the only one that believed it so. @Wither would voice these doubts they both shared aloud. The most they might do was to remain at his side until he was gone, that he not be alone in the end.

Attention turned to @Alaric then, noting how quickly he had closed the gap. There must be an attachment between them Recluse guessed. He had never met Alaric personally, but he knew of him thanks in part to Asylum. Likely the pair of them wouldn't get along all that well given his deep reservations about the Black line and their unique gifts.

Not wishing to disrupt the moment, he would join the group in silence, eyes set upon the dying lion and wondering what was to be done. The Lagoon was close and the ocean setting familiar to the female, but he had not healer there for a lion in such a critical state. The Mire was not much further, Alaric speaking of a healer within his ranks. Looking at him, Recluse had some doubt that Alaric was at all concerned with the lion in question.

image by moogle/code by saph

She is not alone long in that cold and bitter night. She weeps in silence, the steady fall of her tears dampening the fur of her cheeks, flinging from the fringes of her half-curled tendrils and onto the matted, beaten fur of the lion beneath her. She can feel under her paw the steadiness of his heartbeat, the rise and fall of those fleeting agonal breaths as he writhes. The throes of death were not kind ones. He seemed almost as if he were in agony, though Tinúviel had been generous in her offering of poppy seeds and other medicines to dull the pain, to ease the mind. Her knowledge was still modest at best; the ever-thoughtful presence of a mentor long gone now an hollow thrum, a fleeting memory. She continued to work her salve into his festering wounds, hoping, begging that perhaps he may find the strength yet to live, that her efforts were not in vain. Through her hasty grief, she doesn't take notice of @Wither until the lioness' voice broke the aching silence.

He's finished.

I wish it weren't so, Tinúviel breathed, her red-tinged and weary eyes glancing upward. She is a dark shadow against the backdrop of snow and sand, visible and beautiful even through the blurriness of her tears. I hope I've given him enough to go in peace, she says again, her gaze turning downward. His breathing grew far more jagged, now, the steady thrum of his heartbeat slowing and slowing. She had bore witness to such death a few times before, and it seemed no matter how much her mentor had tried to ease the process, it never seemed quite enough. Tinúviel shuddered, her paw remaining on his chest, and as his pulse there weakened, slipped it toward his neck, where the slight remnants of it remained. And then, she waited.

Tin...

The sound of his voice was almost disembodied, some ethereal ghost of her past who now haunted her. Even as the scent of him drifted upon the wintry wind, Tinúviel could scarcely believe he were here, he were real. Let me help. She turned, and saw his form standing there against the darkness, illuminated in the glittering glow of the moon and the light of the snow. All of a sudden, his familiarity washed over her; his scent, his heat, all of it. Had Tinúviel not been half-lurched over a dying lion and desperately weeping at the woman before her, she might have tried to find the comfort of @Alaric's embrace, too. Instead, she held back her choked cry, though her tears fell notably harder now. I don't think he's going to make it— she breathed, and just as the words escaped her, the man gave one more shudder, and stilled. I—...fuck. It seemed almost a cruel irony to try and blame her newness to the practice on such a thing. A lion lay here dead, now, and it was hard not to blame herself for it.

Her head lowers, shamed and grieving. She'd not known the man; she'd come across him by happenstance, long already lost of conscious by whatever scuffle he had found himself in. She had forced her medicines down his throat and he'd given no resistance when she'd tightly wrapped his wounds. It had taken all her strength to drag him here, and she regretted it now; perhaps it would have been a greater mercy to let him pass where he had fallen.

She briefly catches a glimpse of @Recluse as he arrives, fleeting memories of that day thrust into the ocean washing over her. The makeshift raft he'd made, the way he and Corinthian had wrenched her free of the water. The way she'd felt so powerless back them, the way she'd always been so helpless. And though he still smelled of that familiar ocean, something had changed. Something was different. Recluse... she breathed, raising her head, and yet she couldn't find the strength to ask what happened to the Cove, what had become of it since she'd left? Despite the questions that thrummed through her head, endless and unyielding, it felt almost a sin to ask it now.

Art by AleTie, table by cala

the woman is sorrowful and wither looks upon her with the closest thing to sympathy she can offer a stranger. her tail twists, the curled tip moving to brush against the other rogue's haunch in a bit of comfort - but it's short lived. her hushed admittance brings a sharp smile to her lips, though the expression entirely lacks any true humor. it never is. she says and though the words are bleak, her tone is bland. she's ended enough lives herself with, perhaps, the same herbs the medic has used to know that death is never a kindness. it is never peaceful. no matter how they go, they are never quite ready. who would be?

@Tinúviel presses a paw to his chest, moving it carefully to his throat, and the woman is content to wait with her while it seems to stutter, to slow, to drag as he marches, endless, to the end.

but even as she settles at her new companion's side, they are interrupted.

she's not fool enough to think that this passage is anything less than a claiming ground; the overlapping scents and faded tang of blood is enough to tell her. but she had thought, naively, that the weather would be enough to keep them away.

there's a stillness that comes over the woman and wither stills, too, though for a far different reason. her instinct screams danger! and she uncurls herself to step subtly, carefully, between @Alaric and the lioness. he might have said her name - or so she assumes - but there's a keen predatory threat in her gaze as she levels it steadily upon his face. he offers to help and her brows tighten, suspicion dances openly across her expression, but tin curses and her ear twists back to catch the words. there's no sound from the new corpse on the ground and her lips turn down. just as she's about to dismiss the man, there's another. and she presses her lips into a deeper frown at @Recluse.

a glance over her shoulder at the rogue lioness and she tilts her head to study her. you know them. wither says it as a statement, not a question. her body is tense, one ear still turned out towards the two pride lions even as her attention settles gently on the other woman.

It took every bit of strength he had to stay in his place. Alaric wanted to rush her, to pull her in to his arms and breathe deep of her smell. To reassure himself that she was alive, breathing, well. Healthy. Safe.

Hell just knowing she wasn't growing cold somewhere was enough.

"You did all you could," he seeks to comfort her without moving, without breaking the space between them, uncertainty clear in his expression. He wanted to, more than anything, but beyond that he did not want to press his luck. Alaric knew nothing of what her life had been since she had disappeared, he did not know her relationship to this strange man with all the injuries.

@Recluse appears but he does not know the man, and spares him little more than a passing glance. It is only when @Wither steps so protectively between @Tinúviel and himself that his attention finally shifts from the thick-furred girl. "I am only here to help," he assures her, green eyes steady even in the snow.

They shift back to Tin and he extends his paw once more -- "we can bury him, if you wish. I can carry him." All the way to the Mire if he must, whatever will help her.

Despite the heaviness of @Wither's words, there is a strange comfort in the way the lioness' tail curls upon her leg, and Tinúviel lets out the breath she'd not realized she'd been holding. The quiet death shared between them all leaves a heavy silence, broken only by their whispers, the gentle lull of their bated breaths. Her gaze shifts, desperate to catch the deep green of Wither's, hoping to find refuge in her stranger face if only because it kept the pain from creeping. Should she look at @Alaric or @Recluse, she may very well weep more than she was now, overcome with the grief of her departure and the time that had been lost in the wake of it. All that had changed, all that happened, lost to a woman who'd frolicked just outside of this country without abandon, reshaping and reforging all she had once known.

And despite all that change, she couldn't save this one soul.

There is a tinge of redness in the whites of her eyes as Wither pulls away, the stark absence of her shared warmth longed for all at once. She steps between herself, Alaric and Recluse, something Tinúviel would have endlessly been grateful for had these men been strangers to her. Oh, she grieves silently, if only you had been there when it had been Viridian coming for me. It is only the aftermath of this man before her that stays her paw, keeps her fettered to a foreigner she had wrenched from his place of dying and forced his final resting place in this strange land. You know them, Wither says, and Tinúviel responds, Yes, I do. She wavers—her voice breaks.

Alaric's voice scarcely registers, and Recluse's continued presence is noted only by his lingering scent. Her eyes are focused, now, unmoving. Was I wrong to bring him here? she says aloud, her voice trailing on the end of Alaric's offer. Should this man be buried here, in land that he'd possibly never known? Tread over by strangers come and go, claimed and fought over? Her gaze briefly trails westward, toward the sea, watching as the moon glittered over its soft waves. If they were to take him there, would the ocean usher him to his rightful place? Would it guide him to gentler shores?

Art by AleTie, table by cala

@Alaric tells her that he is here to help and her eyes tighten at the corners. the word of a stranger means nothing to her - especially with such honeyed tones as his, directly in contest to the scars littering his frame. her tail tip twitches faintly, claws unsheathing to gently press into the cold sand beneath her feet. she tilts her jaw thoughtfully, an ear angled back to @Tinúviel as she speaks. her voice is pained and something in her chest tightens. she glances over her shoulder to rest a steady gaze on her newfound companion, the curls of her chest fur shifting with the cold wind. for a long moment she waits, careful, until the girl speaks again.

it is not the living men who have her voice trembling so.
it is the dead man.

finally, the watchdog relents - her dark form shifts, her head slinging back to level a pointed stare onto the two kings. but she's silent, her tongue pressed against the inside of her teeth, as she circles around behind tinny to stand at her shoulder. they look down upon the man together before their gaze finds the ocean.

let the sea have him. she offers, flashing the edge of a fang in a vague smile. may his soul go where it wants.

Alaric is silent, mostly. It is not his place to speak, it is not his loss to shoulder. He was here for her, to help in whatever way she would need him to. Alaric pays little mind to @Recluse, his attention shifting only briefly to @Wither and the protective way that she hovers.

Were they friends? They seemed strangers and yet... familiar. More familiar than he was able to be, right now, and he was not bothered by that fact.

"Whatever you want," he says quietly, in the wake of Wither's suggestion. It was a better one, he thought, despite his own discomfort with the sea. Alaric had learned to find some appreciation for the rolling waves, even if he would never find kinship with those that believed a God to live in it's depths.