after offering the news to Valette, she'd cut due north until she'd once again found herself encased beneath the shadowy foliage of the Maplewood. but for some reason she could not quite explain, the comforting closeness of the trees felt more like a trap, a squeeze.
and so she didn't stop, heading north until the branches thinned out and another plain stretched out before her; this one cut through by a watershed and hedged in on one side by a towering mass of rock and ice.
she'd been here, of course, and made her slow way toward the river, bringing to mind the spots at which the bank was most accessible. she made her way towards one of those now, tail still at her hocks as the guilt from this detour began to trickle down her spine. she ought to turn right back and head home.
she approached the river anyways, for her throat had been dry since speaking with Valette. it was not a moment after she bent to drink the mass came careening down the bend. a mass was the past way to describe the dark thing, for she couldn't immediately determine what it was. her ears folded back, twitching, and suddenly the mass lurched beneath the water's roar. the gasp was just enough, heard barely above the roar, to tell her that the thing was alive, and too big to be some prey species she couldn't find herself caring enough about to throw herself into the river.
yet she did, and was caught suddenly, violently, in the torrent. it was easy enough to angle herself towards the thing, the river aiding her in that. it was somewhat harder to grab hold of it's pelt, and it was hell to hold herself and the thing (at least, partly - Dawn had never done this sort of thing and most of the torrent seemed to be crashing into the thing's face) above water. legs kicked out against the current, angling for the opposite bank (it seemed easier than turning herself, and the thing, around)
if anything needs changed/anything seems to power-played in this post just give me a nudge and i'll gladly edit it! :-)
there was never a moment that vilkas thought he shouldn't be following lily's scent trail when he came across it leaving the sanctuary's borders. she's free to come and go as she pleases, of course, and he waits ( going about his business ) but she does not return and his concern for her blossoms in his chest like blood blossoms on a shirt after a gun shot. he cannot staunch the worry that creeps into his stomach where it pools like ice and whispers dark, nagging and undecipherable nothings in his mind. he trusts his instincts more than he trusts anything else and everything within him tells him to go after her. he listens. he steps over the unnecessary borders of the sanctuary and keeps his back to the pack as he follows after lily's staling scent trail.
as he nears the qeya river it grows fresher and the firebrand quickens his pace in response. he's too far away but he hears the sickening snap of bone with a quick cup of his ears, alert. by the time he reaches the bank of the river where lily's scent is the freshest she is gone and his heart lurches into his throat as he feverishly looks right and then left to see her head bobbing above the current. "lily!" he snarls out her name and scowls at the rapid current of the water as it carries her quicker away and threatens to pull her head under it's surface. he's never been a strong swimmer and before he can launch himself into the water there is another splash — the distinct sound of a body slamming into the water and he looks left with a feral growl to see that someone else has jumped in after her, downriver.
fire dipped hackles bristle and he takes to the bank with ferocious vigor, heading up river, searching furiously for a place to cross without getting swept up in the torrential waters as well. he finds it, eventually: a thinning of the two opposite banks and a trunk that looks ...rather unstable. he crosses it, teetering with a low curse as it rocks against the rush of water and the two boulders jutting out of the river that it balances precariously on. he is running out of time, he knows. by now, lily and the stranger could be drowned. he runs across it and takes the leap, skidding against the earth, rolling to cushion his collision. there is a sting of burn from where the landing had rubbed his left, hind leg raw but he uses the pain to fuel him forward as he runs down river, searching furiously for the two bobbing heads: shadow kissed and pale.
he finds them, lily's fur gripped in the stranger's grasp as the other appears to be attempting to swim diagonal in the current towards the bank where vilkas waits like burning flame twitching with anxiety: at trusting a stranger, at lily's condition, at if the current would best the wolf that is attempting to swim her to the shore. anxiety that he cares enough to know that if a stranger wouldn't have he would have made the leap without a second thought after lily despite that he wasn't a strong swimmer. he doesn't examine that too closely as he fidgets on the bank, beguiling the pair to come nearer. "get her close enough and i'll help you onto the bank!" vilkas raises his voice to the stranger over the roar of the water, hoping that the stranger hears as he prepares to grasp lily's scruff when they are close enough and pull the pair onto the safety of the shore, hoping that his plan will work and the stranger will implore the same trust to him that he has no choice but to give them.
Wave after wave crashed over her head, and her three remaining good limbs were growing heavy. Each gasp for air grew shorter, more shallow. Above it all, a sense of regret.
I shouldn't have left. I'm being punished... by someone, or something... for leaving.
She was vaguely aware of voices, but thought them only to be the murmurs of her conscience, frightened and guilty altogether. It was over, for her. She'd left, and no one would come find her. The vultures would pick at her flesh. And it was her fault.
Just as teeth sank into her pelt, the yawning darkness that began as a blip in her blurry vision and grew, grew, swallowed her up. Exhausted and oxygen-deprived, Lily fell into unconsciousness, just barely clinging to life.
she made out the shouts of another just barely over the river's roar and learned then that the thing was in fact, a she, and a wolf. she made out the male and renewed the strength of her kicks, pushing against the river, gaining-
her side thudded against something solid beneath the waves, eliciting a gasp as the air slipped from her lungs, her grip on the woman suddenly precarious. the cold and pain burned, but the sterling envoy pushed her rear limbs against the mass, offering enough momentum against the waves to make it just in reach of the male. the howling of the river roared in her lobes as the male grabbed his hold, and she released just as quickly, reaching into some deeper reserves to grasp at with desperation something to fuel her.
launching at the bank, she drags her front end from the current, but does little more than cling to the shore when suddenly she is drained, and works to recover the breath she never fully gained after her collision. the huntress knows that her forelimbs will hold her for now, and her gaze veers back towards the stranger and the near-drowned (or so she hoped) she-wolf, breath ragged.
she pulls herself from the river in the manner of a very ungraceful seal, offering a stiff shake of her coat, briefly, before padding near the pair, hanging back a moment as she watches the two. this is no random stranger; she ought to have expected someone offering their assistance to have some relation to the lump - Lily - or in the very least do so with the expectation that they would be rewarded.
he turned to her then, as if struck by the sudden realization that she too existed, and she watches the girl carefully, the breaths that seem too shallow and too sporadic to be capable of sustaining her for long. "no," she answers, low, but continues with. "what you were doing early - it seemed right. she shifted, shoulders hunched as she wavered in her step, gaze on the dark woman before flickering back to the man.