louve knew nothing but darkness and pain.

there was no more ability to compartmentalize; no way to block her mind from this agony. it was a new kind of ruin she faced as she stumbled away from the challenge, flailing wildly.

she ran, blindly. tripped, blindly. fell, blindly.

panic rose up her throat and gripped it tight, smothering her, stealing away her breath. the roots of the jungle rose to wrap around her ankles, planting fear in her chest as she fled.

until finally she burst from the thick foliage and ran more easily, her head swinging from side to side, blood splattered across the dying grass. and when her paws met water she finally gave in, collapsing at the edge of the watering hole and shoving her bloodied face in to the pond.

code by scorpixia♡︎ | art by Spu

There wasn't much that could have spared her from what she watched. Her blood boiled as she watched the fight, unable to do anything. She had hoped her sister would come out as the winner but the larger and older male had won. With his victory, he took something from her sister. Shock and horror kept her rooted unable to fight the male and it wasn't until her sister took off running that @Elaine ♔ was able to move.

She had never seen her sister move the way she did and for the moment, she didn't know the extent of what had happened. She stayed behind her sister making sure that the male didn't come up behind them. @Louve ♔ ran into the water and Elaine stood guard at the edge. Once she was sure they weren't being followed, she called for a healer any healer to come to help her sister. She didn't know enough for such a deep wounds or in such a tender place. She needed help. They both did.

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She had not been at the challenge for Firnen when the call had come out; two stranger voices Tinúviel did not know vying for their stake of Amaryllis just as she had, once, drunken and unsure of what freedom truly meant. Tinúviel had been gathering herbs near the watering hole, desperate to save what bountiful plants grew alongside its shores before it would be trampled by animals migrating from the northlands, desperate for warmer weather. The Scillan Queen's presence was demure and quiet enough that even the prey animals that gathered close did not shirk or frighten at her appearance.

It was only until @Louve ♔ burst through the underbrush did they turn running, the sound of frantic noise and splashing water quickly drawing her head from between the reeds.

@Elaine ♔'s call for help quickly spurred the Queen into motion, following about the water's edge until she reached them; and with horror, she saw as the stretch of blood-red waters whirled about the disturbed waves, the eyeless form of a lioness struggling to find her way through her newfound blindness. Tinúviel's heart fluttered in her chest; a nervousness settled as a cruel pit deep in her stomach.

Gods, she gasped, shedding what hesitance she may have held before to hasten her approach; steadily, did she reached forward, careful to guide Louve free from the water in an attempt to bring her back to land. I'm here, it's okay.

Her gaze then turned toward the star-speckled Elaine. I left my herbs a few feet away. They may be able to help her.

But with this brutal an injury—

—There might be nothing I can do.

louve is unaware of her sister. there is pain and darkness and nothing more.

nothing else.

sound seems to suck away from her world, melting in to a vat of nothingness, consumed by a frantic fear that claws relentlessly at her throat.

when paws touch her she reacts out of instinct, whirling, snarling, defensive. it is sheer luck that protects the tiny medic from her slash of claws and snap of teeth, keeping her (hopefully) just out of reach of injury.

I'm here.... help...

words reach her as if underwater and she stumbles in the direction of the voice, collapsing back on land, bleeding heavily. a low moan becomes the background to their chatter as louve's face twitches, a vain attempt to blink away the darkness that has consumed her.

code by scorpixia♡︎ | art by Spu

Elaine's call was answered and the princess watched the stranger closely. Her icy gaze leveled heavy on her as she moved closer to her sister and a low rumble started in her chest before she pushed it away as she looked at her sister. The pain for her flooded through Elaine and she stopped any aggression toward the healer. If she was going to help, Elaine would do all she could to help. Who are you? Elaine needed a name to add to the scent of the Lagoon. They didn't have any direct ties to them but she knew that they weren't at war with them and that was enough. She nodded at the mention of herbs. I'll be right back Louve. She told her sister before going to fetch the requested items and bringing them back a short while later. She set them down near the lioness and backed away a little. Will you need anything else? I can try to find it. To anyone else, her voice was steady but she knew that her sister was likely picking up on two things, the fact that she was talking more and the hint of fear that lingered. Fear that her sister wouldn't be able to see anymore and some in their family could see it as a weakness.

*feel free to skip/assume she got stuff*

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@Louve ♔ lunges, but Tinúviel expects nothing less. To go from something so resolute, something so seemingly taken for granted, to suddenly have it taken away all at once was something insurmountable, something akin to a type of death. So despite the lunging and the frantic fray of her movements, Tinúviel gracefully helps to ease Louve onto the ground, steadying her head against the softer parts of the muddy earth in an attempt to angle her face to get a better look. Elaine questions her, and Tinúviel hastily gives her an apologetic glance, knowing perhaps it seemed rash and wrong to have approached with such haste; but with things like this, they had little time.

I am Tinúviel, Tiamat's sister-Queen, she replied, unsure if she would know of either of them or not, certain only that they were tenuous friends; they were allies of Ecrosia, and thus allies of the Lagoon, in a strange way.

But politics never mattered in situations like these. Even if Louve was her enemy, Tinúviel would be hard pressed to leave her agonizing in such a way.

Where once there had been eyes, there were now nothing more than a cruel, gruesome nothingness. Tinúviel took a sharp inhale of breath, before her gaze turned, spotting @Elaine ♔ as she approached with the herbs the Scillan Queen had just left behind.

Perhaps it were the wills of whatever Gods that she had what she needed.

Thank you. I will let you know, she breathed with quiet urgency, before turning her gaze back toward her patient. Quickly, oh so quickly, did Tinúviel knead the poppy seeds into a pulpy mixture. This will ease your pain, she instructed Louve, but knew it was likely that the lioness may not hear her over the agony of her wound.

still she wants to fight. the touch is gentle, soothing, but louve jerks against it every so often, trapped in a black world with only her remaining senses to navigate. ears that seem to barely work, everything muffled beneath the rush of blood through her veins and the pound of her heart. it is too loud, and the soft words (the back-and-forth) do not register for the maimed matriarch.

on edge, on guard, ready to fight again if she must. to protect her life if she must, if they came for her now when she bled so freely. there were other wounds, gouges along her shoulders and hindquarters, but they do not matter. there is nothing that compares...

ease.. pain

desperate she reaches, opens her mouth, gaping. there is nothing that could compare to this pain, and she will not deny the small healer of whatever commands she gives. consuming whatever herbs were shoved down her throat, swallowing quickly.

still her face twitches.

blink, blink

code by scorpixia♡︎ | art by Spu

The fury with which @Louve ♔ fights her is met with a skilled gentleness, a kindness in the fray Tinúviel had long practiced, had long grown mastery. She works quietly with the ailing lioness instead of against her, and each jerk is met with a reassuring shhh, each moan of pain eased with gentle words of reassurance. As she readily consumes the poppy seeds, Tinúviel waits with bated breath for them to work; but it is all she feels she can really do. To heal one's entirely missing eyes was unknown territory for her; but the least she could do, she figured, was to clean them away, to keep them from getting infected, to close them off from a world that would seek to harm it further.

Quickly, Tinúviel began to work on another salve. Peppers mixed with other numbing herbs, hoping to burn away the exposed and ailing nerves that caused her so much pain. She waited patiently for the poppy seeds to take effect, to hopefully lull Louve into a blissful slumber and spare her the pain that was sure to come from saving her wounds, saving what was left of her mangled face. Tinúviel pressed the salve into a few reeds hastily woven together, stitched with large leaves from water-dwelling plants that surrounded them. Then, she attempted to fasten them like a blindfold around Louve's face, covering the Dieudonne's eyes with the goopy mixture.

It was all she could do. And Gods, did it feel awful to be so powerless.

---

Tinúviel is attempting to heal Louve.

Rolling 2d10: 6 + 3

a calm settles over her as the seeds begin to work. suddenly the fear slides back down her throat along with the herbs and a strange lucidity drapes over her shoulders. louve is hyper aware and yet feels as if she is watching from afar, as if she can see herself (bloodied, ruined) and the medic and her sister.

from time to time she twitches but the pathetic attempts to blink have stopped, she becomes still beneath the talented paws of the miniscule queen. as if it were only a delay in processing she knows exactly who works on her, and finally releases a quiet exhale as she nearly slips unconscious.

code by scorpixia♡︎ | art by Spu

Something felt wrong, something felt incomplete.

Tinúviel felt as if her job was only half-finished, as if there were pieces missing that she could not mend, she could not find. A solemn silence fell over the healer as she watched Louve's motions turn less jerky, more eased. A subtle sigh exhaled from between her lips, sparing a gaze toward @Elaine ♔ before turning back toward the ailing @Louve ♔. Her jaws tensed, shoulders squared, and the breath she'd not realized she'd been holding continued to inhale and exhale in heavy, breathless gasps.

We should get her back home, she finally said, after that long silence.

If only she had gotten there earlier, if only she'd been there to stop what was happening; even for a stranger, she felt that innate and strange desperation to have stopped this all at once. Her lips press into a firm, thin line, before glancing over Louve one more time to assess that all was okay, that she had not given her too much of the poppy seeds, that the salve lay within the hollow husks where her eyes once were and that it eased her pain, that it burnt away all that may linger there to harm her. Even if she could not take the memory of it away, even if Tinúviel knew innately that she could not save her sight when there was nothing to save at all.

Or so she thought.