Bramblepoint Bring that summer on your shoulders

@Shrike so sorry for the wait, bebe!

Her breath quickened – did she hear the faint crunch of paws upon the ground? Was she imagining it, or was someone approaching? The panic continued to rise in her chest, her nostrils flaring as if she were a deer in headlights – and just as her muscles coiled, ready to release and spring away in the chosen art of flight, for she had nothing left to give in the form of a fight, her eyes snapped in the direction of the soft whine – and there she was met with an overwhelming rush of familiarity and safety.

But she did not know what to make of it. Her aqua eyes roved over the mask painted upon his face – the gentle demeanour of his posture – those silver eyes she had grown to love. Her lips parted, her body began to quake. Could he be real?

She had longed for him. He had spoken of his love for her, and for the first time in moons, she had felt as if her life would begin to fall in to place, despite the demise of her father. Her, Cypress and Shrike would have been a family – and then she had been taken.

“Shrike,” she tentatively whispered, her voice hoarse from its disuse in that moment – and she waited for him to disappear, as if a dream. “Shrike.. I was so lost,” she quietly voiced, her slender body visibly quaking now, though she could not move toward him. Dared not to.