It was the whispering that woke them from their sleep— be it the snow or the tendrils of clustered willow shifting in the wind, as they woke they felt the stirrings of life caught in His breath; sussuration, like a sigh, which crept down their throat like the forbidden serpent — twisted, next, as if to constrict the heart of the vessel. There was pressure as they woke; yet as the eyes opened and beheld the white of this nowhere-place, that breath pulsed from them in a gasp, and they knew life again. 

The head lifts, eyes blinking, and they hear the snow collect around them where they lay exposed—bundled, bloodied, yet bare here beneath the swaying of the trees. Watched-over, much as she might have once done the watching. The brisk winter air fills the lungs of the vessel and as a plume is exhaled from parted lips, she cannot help but think — 'What have I done?'

Why has she fallen — and how far? Where is her father?

There comes another sound, repetitive too yet clamorous, sharp to ears that had survived so long on silence. Something was moving across this idyllic winterscape and coming closer. She rises in panic and the vessel's limbs react in conjunction to the panic of her new heart; instinct tells her to look, listen — but she feels the pain of her new body acutely, a searing sensation along her back where the ribs curve up and meet the spine. Warmth nests there, streaking the silver coat of the vessel with red (diluted and fanned in to the snow around her), and she is immediately distracted by the shocking sight of it.

Forgetting the sound of someone approaching, of the silence as they stop at the crossroads, the fallen is ultimately too distracted by these new (sublime, terrifying) sensations to do much beyond pant in the snow.

Breathing comes easy enough regardless of how it made her feel; this uncontrollable process that forces the lungs to expand, the cage of ribs to shift (painfully, one might add), then cease and withdraw. If she focused on the feeling too much she would be stuck at a stand-still; this is certainly what transpires as the stranger draws closer. The sound—then the sight—of their approaching silhouette gives those eyes something new to trace. She follows the shape as it corporealizes; ears shudder at the deafening sound of the voice until she realizes that she understands. Not all the sounds, but most of them. They carry a weight although she cannot discern what the intonation truly means, and the vessel's eyes narrow, confusion replaced by scrutiny.

Hurt—she knows this word. It is not an experience she remembers. The strange creature is looking at the vessel with an apprehensive aura that stitches them in place; they do not come too close, just close enough to see the streaks of red, to study the vessel which Djinn has made her home. Where...—the voice is grating, it is rough, deeper than one might've ascribed to them, but really it is the act of making any sound at all which makes the fallen pause.

She must be here for a reason; father must have cast her out—No, he would not do that to her—but she hurts! Thoughts are a jumble inside; a frown creases the vessel's wide face and then she, piloting those eyes, looks to the strange shape of the other wolf and commands: You will fix this. There is a flavor to those words that is confounding for all of its minerality, and as she comes to notice this, the vessel's tongue draws across a pointed snout and leaves a streak of red behind—blood?