The tigress follows the scent south, through the badlands, though the chilly sands. It is something promising, she thinks. Something she could truly test her mettle against and drag home - only if to fill the hole in her heart even sleep can’t escape her from.

The wind is bitter against her spine as she moves from open sand to the relief of the gorge’s walls. Leila had been here before, if only briefly, on hunts. The river at it’s heart had been near-dry last she had seen it, and it gave her the confidence to hunt despite it’s proximity. So she follows the scent trail up and around and down the winding paths. It must be goat, judging by how it moved.

The rocks were faintly dusted in snow, and deceptively slippery. Leila kept her claws carefully pinched into nooks on the paths, sticking to wider shelves and grittier sections of the stone channels. The scent of goat, musky and faintly grassy, prickled at her nose as she ducks into a stone hollow just out of the wind. Peering at the snow, she could see faint hoof-prints. It was closer than she had expected!

As she steps back into the howling wind, she spies it atop a higher ridge, a dark and curled-horned thing. It stared at her with it’s oddly-shaped pupils, nostrils flaring. But it didn’t flee. Did it not think she could get to it? Perhaps the beast was more used to lions - who were not usually adept climbers. Tigers, however…

Pinning her ears against the scream of the wind, the noise was enough to drown out the heavy, powerful rush of water to her right, and Leila couldn’t yet see it. Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t have risked edging out onto that blustery ledge, seeking a little vantage point to work her way up to the bold billie.

Leila’s first leap is easy, finding purchase and hauling herself up to the next ledge. The goat paused its chewing.

Another hefty leap, the wind whipping her thick winter coat and stinging her eyes. She gritted her teeth and leapt again, closing the distance steadily but surely.

It is the last ledge that catches her off-guard. As she bounds to it, the surface is not snowy, but icy and she scrabbles for a grip. She forgets the goat in that instance, digging in her claws and scrabbling wildly until she found purchase. With a wildly beating heart, Leila hauls herself onto the flat.

With a bleat, the damned beast charges, and Leila feels the hard impact of it’s horns against her right flank. She tumbles backwards-

And slips.

Leila hears the wind whistling past her ears for only a moment before she connects painfully with initial, shallow, ledge she had come from. With a cry of pain, she tumbles limply into the deep, rushing water that swirled hungrily at the bottom of the gorge.

art © wilthking

Dragos has begun to realise he doesn’t know who he is without war. Without battle, without an enemy to fight against, without -

He isn’t anything.

So he throws himself into something - anything - that is distracting enough to keep him busy for a few hours. Patrolling, hunts, training with his siblings. Things that keep him active and distracted. The title of prince is familiar but so uncomfortable. Before, prince was secondary to warrior. It was more important he fought and survived than served as royalty and did those duties. Now… he is expected to remember what being a prince means. And he is trying, Mother, he is trying.

When the Hollows becomes too much, he wanders. Not far - never far enough to be gone long enough to be noticed. His time being… away is over. He has duties and responsibilities and his place is in the Hollows, at his father’s side, at the beck and call of the Savante. To what end, he has no idea. Alexander has better sons, better children, that could be placed where he is. Dragos has never tried to be a good son, but he was always a good soldier. His devotion could never be questioned, even at his worst.

Dragos carries himself carefully down into the gorge, his trek entirely aimless. His throat is dry and there’s a stream below, swollen from the winter rains, and he has never been to the bottom before. Why not? It keeps him busy, focusing on putting one paw in front of the other, avoiding the slippery ice stubbornly clinging to the rock as the sun rises to melt all that grew overnight. He nearly loses his footing once. His claws scramble to lock into the rock and keep him in place. He’s no climber, not really. Leila had teased him about that often while she all but flew from tree to tree and he ran underneath trying to keep up with her -

No, no. He is not thinking about her. It’s easier if he forgets her entirely, impossible as that is. But recoiling from the memories, mentally hitting himself for letting his mind wander, is the best he can do.

It should be comical, the timing. Dragos curses himself for thinking about the tigress, and then she falls behind him as if summoned by his thoughts. The whistle of the wind nearly carries her scream of pain away, but he hears it. Dragos leans over the edge of the cliff in time to see Leila plummet into the water. Dragos reacts before his consciousness has even caught up to the situation.

He jumps.

The world rushes past as Dragos falls, wind in his ears and eyes before the water comes up to meet him, and he sinks into the icy world. He was half the distance to the ground as she fell, but everything still hurts with the impact. Air is forced from his lungs and water tries to take its place. Dragos kicks and struggles, opening his eyes in the murky water. He has no idea where he is, no indication of how deep the river is, but it doesn’t matter. When he opens his eyes, Leila’s blurry shape floats before him, carried further away by the current. The lion heaves himself forward, never an amazing swimmer but a decent one, as big cats tend to be.

But Leila can’t swim. She’s terrified of water.

His lungs feel about to burst when he reaches her, wrapping his forelegs around her shoulders, sinking his teeth into her scruff and kicking for the surface. His vision begins to fade -

They break the surface, but the current is still strong, the water is freezing cold. He can’t feel his limbs. Please, he begs silently, Mother, please. He can’t remember the last time he bothered praying.

Somehow, Dragos finds his footing on the side of the river and uses whatever strength he has left to drag himself and Leila from the river. Water clings to their bodies, falling from them in thick splatters, painting the dry ground. Dragos manages to clear the river entirely before his legs give out on him, but he doesn’t stop there.

"Lei -" he wheezes, crawling to her side, pressing a paw on her chest. "Leil -" Coughs wrack Dragos’s body, cutting off every word he tries. Dragos wheezes, spitting water, panic coating his rasping voice. "Leila!"

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

The air was driven from her lungs as she makes hard impact with the rushing surface of the water. The splash is eaten quickly by the hungry torrent as she sinks, almost immediately. She chokes on water, the air driven from her lungs by the impact on stone and then icy, churning river. Leila kicks out desperately, fear and pain poisoning her mind as water fills her mouth and nose.

Which way was up? Everything was dark, bitterly cold and she reflexively gulps more water in a desperate fervour to fill her lungs. It had been waiting for her, a famished thing just lurking in the canyon below. She had dreamt of this before; awful nightmares that awoke her gasping, crying out. But she has no more breath for the thing she fears most as it carries her downstream.

She doesn’t see nor feel @Dragos's paws about her shoulders, nor the rescuing jaws hauling her against the current. She is a dead weight, head lolling and whiskers dripping icy water even as he finds purchase and heaves her clear, stumbling up and away from the sapping cold. In the depths of the chasm the distant waterfall and the mighty winter-fed river roared.

Leila doesn’t stir as she is dragged ashore, unfeeling and limp. Her pelt lay thin and clung to her small body. She is cold as Dragos’s paw presses against her chest, unresponsive with her muzzle to the frozen sand and those brown eyes half-lidded and far-seeing.

art © wilthking

The rocks under Dragos’s body press into his skin, cold and biting, but he hardly notices. His chest aches as it forces water out of his mouth, and he spits it up with a hacking, painful coughing fit.

@Leila doesn’t move - she doesn’t make a sound. She isn’t breathing.

His paw presses harder, more insistent, squashing her ribs down into the ground. What little he knows - from idly watching his aunts and cousins and half paying attention to their lectures - is put into work now. He hates himself for never bothering to listen better.

"Leila, please," Dragos begs the unconscious girl, pressing down again and lifting his paw, willing to break her ribs in order to force the water from her lungs. He doesn't know what else to do. Giving up on her is not an option.

"Please," the Savante rasps between coughs, a mantra and a prayer and a broken order. Water slides down into his eyes, joining the salty tears that spill down his face. "Please, come back."

There is no answer to his desperate pleas.

The wind whistles, the water roars. A small bird flits across the canyon. The world feels still and yet unbothered by this miniscule moment in the history of all things.

It is then a shudder and a gurgle lifts from her limp form and Leila chokes up water. It felt like she'd swallowed the whole river into her lungs and she retches and shakes til she can finally take a rasping, desperate breath.

The light is blurred, the scent of frozen earth and damp all about her. Leila barely has the strength to lift her head, squinting at the pale form standing over her. "Dra-gos..?" she wheezes.

It was trickling back to her as she struggles to look about. A dizziness and tightness of her throat comes lurking as Leila takes in her wet pelt, the steady rush of the water. "Wh-?" she croaks. She felt bitterly cold, and even with the rasping breaths she was now managing, it felt like not enough. Her vision swam - blurred and teary.

@Dragos

by hinter

There’s nothing but silence to answer his pleas. @Leila doesn’t respond. Her body jerks with each push on her chest, but nothing else. She stares out at the water, unseeing. Slowly, Dragos’s paw stops. He sits back, body trembling, staring down at the tiger’s body until he can't see anything. The rushing water grows so loud it's all he can hear, pounding inside his head.

Anya, give her back. I’ll give you my life. Give her back. Kérem.

"Dra-gos..?"

Dragos starts, shoving off the ground to hover over Leila’s crumpled form on trembling legs. She looks around, half blind, confused, but alive. He chokes back an ugly noise.

"Leila -" he sounds like he’s drunk all the salt in the ocean. "You’re okay. You’re safe. You fell." He thinks, anyway. How else would she have tumbled off the edge of the gorge? "You need to stay still. Keep your head down, to the side." At least if her body brings up more water, it’ll drain easier this way.

He lets his legs give out, dropping to his stomach before her, head hanging heavy. But he isn’t done yet. "What hurts?"

Leila clings to to sound of his voice like it's the sweetest thing she has ever heard. He sounded hoarse, panicked. She'd never heard Dragos sound like that before, and it scared her. She's okay, she's safe, he insists.

It's now she remembers falling, a sharp breath whistling on an inhale. "Yes- I-I slipped." she agrees foggily, brow pinching into a frown. She had been climbing, in the gorge. "The river." she coughs, distressed. She didn't remember falling into the water, but she remembered struggling in it, fighting to reach the surface whilst water filled her lungs-

A fearful groan lifts from her chest, and despite his instruction Leila tries to right herself, wanting to be as far as she could from the rushing water. Half-up, her ribs protest in a furious, stabbing pain that sucks away her breath again. Leila cries out and staggers forward, but that foreleg somewhere near the elbow somehow hurts worse and she crumples to the cold sand with a wail.

@Dragos

by hinter

She doesn’t listen; Leila tries to sit up, and just as quickly she falls. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out her panic stems from being close to the river, just someone that knows her. Dragos lurches forward, his own body protesting as he tries to catch her before she hits the ground too hard. His foreleg slips around her chest, gingerly holding her weight.

"Hey," Dragos murmurs roughly, trying to calm her. He has no idea how to help her, let alone get her out of here. Dragos glances around, looking for a sign of life or help or -

There’s a cavern not too far away, dug deep in the side of the gorge. It’s big enough to be a den.

Leila is freezing in his arms, somehow colder than even he is. "I’m going to carry you," he warns, hating that this is likely going to hurt her. There’s no choice, and he doesn’t give her time to think about it before he carefully pushes her onto his back, leaving her dangling over his sides, and limps her toward the cave.

This content might touch on topics that are sensitive or triggering for some readers. Trigger Warning for description of panic attack symptoms.

A paw catches her before she strikes hard sand and Leila leans heavily into his support. Leila can't help but bury her face into his mane, her body truly shaking. From cold, but mostly from absolute fear. Her heart felt like it would surely leap from her chest and the tigress's breath came quick and shallow.

All she can hear is the water.

The world was growing dark at the fringes of her vision.

Distantly Leila is aware of Dragos's voice, but despite his attempts to soothe her she can't seem to breathe. She doesn't show much sign that she'd understood. It takes a few coaching movements to pull her away from his chest. Once moved though, Leila doesn't resist as he heaves her up, onto his back. She gasps in pain but bears it, pressing her forehead into his fur once more to blot out the hated sight. "Okay." a hoarse whisper.

The river is the only thing she can focus on.

@Dragos

by hinter

Leila’s weight is… heavy. Unusually so. Likely just because of how his body had taken a beating in the river, and strained muscles ache in the aftermath of dragging them both to the shore. Dragos staggers, nearly crumbling halfway to the cave, but he catches himself and pushes on until the safety of the cave covers them both.

It isn’t deep, nor is it small. It is enough to keep the wind off their backs and protect them from the worst of the cold. Dragos carefully slides Leila to the ground, trying his best to help her with her injured leg. It’s probably broken. Dragos has no idea how to fix that. He has no idea what he’s doing, other than following some instinct to get Leila warm and safe. Everything else… his mind just can’t think that far ahead.

Dragos crawls around so his back is to the outside world, becoming a buffer against the cold. He curls his big, brutish form around the tigress with utterly surprising gentleness. "I’m sorry." He whispers, pulling her into the warmth of his belly and chest. Even still damp, he is warm - it’s better than nothing.