Raven's Watch when eagles halo the earth, i want the ballad of your blood

On their way home, Thuringwethil diverts their direction further inland. She tells @Tirgatao of the Seadogs that tried to settle behind Sleeping Dragon that moved to the ravine when they’d been forced out. She recollects the death of the female alpha once she’d come too close to her borders without proper precautions and her decomposing body—likely a skeleton at this point—is probably still there sans her head. As they continue to go east, however, the scent of in the willows that once held a pack is vacant. There isn’t a trace of them behind and she wonders just how long they’ve been gone and where their leader may have taken them.

Thuringwethil does not linger long in the formerly claimed territory as she begins to head back west to meet the coast. She begins to scale the incline of Raven’s Watch—the sound of birds cawing overhead—and throws her head over her shoulder to see Tirgatao in the distance, investigating at her own pace. She does not beckon or indicate they should move on, curious to know more of these lands surrounding her Cliffside.

When she turns her attention back forward and begins her trek, the ground becomes far rockier than she anticipated and the loose pebbles beneath her feet make it difficult to hold traction. The overlook that watches the lake below has her attention and she continues to push herself to reach and get a bird’s eye view of the land surrounding the mountain. However, before she gets to the edge, she takes a wrong step on unsteady ground and the rocks beneath her give way, causing her to hit the ground and knock the breath from her lungs. She doesn’t have long to try and catch her breath or cling to the ground as she continues down the slope and off a smaller ledge.

For a second time, she hits the ground hard with a sickening crack and another expel of air from her lungs. She sucks in a breath in panic, unable to find her voice to call for Tirgatao, and finds it difficult to regain the supply of oxygen in her chest. Her jaw tightens and she grimaces in pain, trying to move her body into an upright position but the compromise keeps her in place.

They'd become far more comfortable with one another as the days passed. Tirgatao no longer felt the faint tingle of anxiety in Heda's presence, and felt confident in her relationship with the swarthy warrior. Many discussions had passed between them, and Tirgatao spent many hours ruminating, filing, and storing all the information away for future use. Not all of it was serious, of course, but all of it was cherished. Nights were spent back to back, sharing in the mutual warmth, while days were spent walking, talking, and feasting on whatever either party was able to snatch up from the plentiful wilds.

Their trek, so far, had been a roaring success and now that they were nearing the familiar reaches of Drageda, Tirgatao found herself wishing it wasn't over. She would return to her duty as Heda, and Tirgatao would assume her place as Shouna in an official capacity once more. It was a bit selfish of her, sure, but Thuringwethil's quiet, confident, company was quite desirable and Tirgatao felt a kindredship she hadn't experienced since Seageda's fall. A friendship. 

Tirgatao lifted her head from where she'd been investigating a few bolt holes, and looked out to where she'd last seen Thuringwethil who was no where to be seen. One ear cupped forward and she twisted her mouth into a frown. Anxiety flooded her—she didn't like the feeling of not knowing where the Commander was. It was her job, partially, to keep them safe. Especially Thuringwethil. The dusky woman blended in well with the shadows, she knew, but it was curious that she hadn't thought to give Tirgatao the curteousy to tell her she was wandering further off. 

The pale Shouna felt a tug on her tail and she whirled to snap at one of the pesky ravens, where it hopped away, cackling as if mocking her. She frowned, growled, and swished her tail in a show of agitation as she trotted over to where she last saw Thuringwethil. Her nose flared as she sniffed at the Heda's prints, and followed the trail to the cliff—the scent vanished and her heart sank out her belly and slammed into the frozen ground. There, at the edge, was freshly upturned earth. "...Heda!?" Tirgatao called out, looking left, then right, unable to keep the growing panic from her voice. 

All-encompassing fear grips her, and she creeps towards the edge on ginger feet, careful not to disturb the earth further. There below, among the rocks, is Thuringwethil. A lump forms in her throat, and she swallows thickly as tears prick at her eyes. No no no no. "HEDA!" She cries out. "D-don't move, I'm coming!" The earth shifts beneath her paws while she leans further over to get a better look, and she immediately springs backward. Her eyes whip left, then right, as she looks for a proper path down. An immense weight is pressing down on her; guilty, selfish thing. You got your wish. She shakes her head and sprints forward blindly following the same path down to the base. Every scrap of energy is thrown into the kiln that churns her legs while they eat up the furlongs. Please let her live, please.

Tirgatao crashes recklessly down the path, tripping up on a rock and cutting up her foreleg, but stumbling back into her run. She coughs as spittle flies down her windpipe, but carries on until she finds Heda lying in heap, struggling to breathe. "Heda, Heda. S-slow breaths." She croons, hovering nervously over the Commander as she looks her over. It's bad, but that's as far as she can sermise without Portia's expert eye. She forces down her own panic and looks up. The fall was great, but she was alive, for now. "Don't move yet. You might hurt yourself further."

The seconds that tick by defy the laws of time and each one feels like an eternity. Her mind reels back as she struggles to return air into the reserve of her lungs so she can breathe again. The ache in her head and the churn in her stomach come on at the same time and her mouth pools with saliva, threatening to spill whatever contents she had eaten earlier that day. The smell of blood fills her nose and her eyes close, trying to steady the world around her but it does little to actually help. She scratches at the ground to right herself once more but eventually she collapses on the hard ground, listening to the soft lap of water from the lake nearby.

She does not know how long it takes for Tirgatao to notice her missing or that she’d fallen or how long it had taken for her to get to her side. When she shouts, it feels more like a memory of her voice than reality but her ears twitch anyway and she tries to lift her head once more to see where it’s coming from. The world only spins faster when she moves and it is a surprise when her stomach doesn’t reveal its contents. Her head returns back to the ground as her claws dig into the ground for purchase as if she might fall once more.

Heda, Heda. Slow breaths.

Her ears twitch and her fur prickles, uncertain what to do in the battlefield that she is left in. She wheezes a breath, but it still is too painful to try and keep the breath for long.

“Tirgatao?” she hoarsely croaks and slowly opens her eyes. The world still moves but the spinning has slowed and the pale, frightened face of her companion hovers over her. Thuringwethil blinks a few times, trying to move despite the advice but she’s quickly shut back down and still. “Ai slip daun,” she manages with another wheezing breath. This time, and much more slowly, Thuringwethil works to right herself once more and shift so that she may rest sternal. Her sides her and there are cuts here and there across her legs and body, though her fur had managed to prevent too much damage to her skin. Surely there will be bruises later.

Thuringwethil shifts and peers up at Tirgatao with her left eye bloodshot. “Yu gaf in hod op step au,” she murmurs after a few seconds before she has to rest her head on her paws.

Heda lives, but the extent of the damage is yet to be seen. The Commander's bulk moves again and Tirgatao allows her to right herself against her better judgement while hovering protectively until she is settled on her sternum. Her mind balks, and continues to provide helpful, intrustive comments such as this is your fault or you got what you wished for. She trembles as her eyes rake Thuringwethil's battered form for anything severe that needs immediate attention, but she finds nothing. No flash of sickly pale bone, or gushing blood.

She draws in a ragged breath and snaps her gaze to Heda, meeting it just long enough to catch the red blood pooling in front of the iris. The prognosis grows more dire when Thuringwethil struggles to focus, and mumbles something almost incoherent—almost as if parroted, across the space between them before her head falls to her outstretched paws. Tirgatao whines, but stops shuffling around so frantically. She needed a plan, and fast. A head injury would put Heda completely out of commission if she was bleeding in her skull before Tirgatao could do anything to save her.

"Just keep breathing slowly, in and out..." She reassures her with the same smooth tone, though her voice cracks at the final word. The smell of blood is faint, and she's confident any external injuries she recieved during her fall were not too terrible and would mend within a few days. Internal, however. Tirgatao twists an ear towards Heda as she inhales again, and it sounds rasping. Not a good sound. "Is it difficult to breathe sitting up like you are now, or better?" She asks slowly, probing Thuringwethil's mind through the veil of pain and disorientation.

Heda is gone, but he had nothing to fear from her absence, knowing that she and Tirgatao where out on an expedition. Instead, the Rauna went out fulfilling his duties; ranging. The lean body of the coywolfdog hybrid tears up the ground quickly as he leisurely trotted inland. It had been awhile since his hardened paws felt the soft turf of the inner lands, long used to sand and silt as he was. He follows a river, intent on finding its source, internally mapping out the route as he reached the Sunspire Mountains. He is never sure what any of this information would be useful of, but remembers it all the while.

Eventually he finds where the water spills from the mountains above, and begins the climb. As he does, the sound of carrion birds reaches his ear. He watches their circling, noticing the black specks congregating around one spot. Curious, he follows until he sees two wolves in the distance. The Rauna barks in greeting, noticing the prone figure of one. The keen-eyed wolf's worried pace instantly breaks into a run as he recognizes the women: Heda and Tirgatao! He rushes to them, baby blue eyes widen as he sees the blood. He looks to Tirgatao, then to Heda, whining as he knew he was more than useless when it came to physical pains and ills.

Thuringwethil is thankful, for the moment at least, that Tirgatao doesn’t do anything to touch her. She isn’t sure how she’d feel with the slightest brush but she knows she’d rather be separated from anything until her mind can find footing once more. All she wants to do is sleep and there is a vague memory of a cougar in the back of her mind. She’d felt this way once before but her lungs didn’t burn nearly as bad. Only her head had ached and she hadn’t been allowed to sleep. Unable to remember why, and whether or not it is important she stays awake, she closes her eyes and feels herself drift off.
 
Slowly, her breathing begins to return. There is a pain in each intake but her lungs slowly feel normal once more. The question is nearly lost on her but her head loosely shakes and she picks it up once more to peer at her companion. She opens her mouth to speak but snaps them shut when the sound of another hits her ears and she quickly—too quickly—turns to see the small wolf running in her direction. It takes longer than it should to focus on who it is and her lips peel back to show her teeth (as if she can do much more than just lay there) but she relaxes when she realizes it is one of her own.
 
“Hush,” she murmurs through half-lidded eyes, forgetting Tirgatao’s question entirely.

In the static of her panic, she is able to find that thread of logic and reason. She reaches out and grasps it firmly and allows it to slowly center her, grounding her anxiety on facts. Thuringwethil was not dead, yet, and though she was injured, she was still breathing. It gave her options and room to decide on the right course of action. She could run back to Drageda, leaving the injured Commander alone, and find Portia. She could call out for help for any stranger in earshot, and pray for a friendly soul. Or she could do her best to mend whatever hurts were proventing Heda from standing and help her back to the borders alone.

The last option was, in truth, the only option.

But as soon as she turns back to Thuringwethil, she sees that the battered Commander is losing consciousness. "Hed--!" she's cut off by the sound of footsteps. Her ears twist towards the sound and she whips her head around, teeth bared, and hackles standing to full height. An impressive sight, but wasted on Hush who approaches with a whine of concern. Relief floods her and she sheaths her aggression immediately while she strides over to press her nose into his shoulder with a strangled noise of concern of her own. "Hush, she fell," she breathed, "from the cliff. We have to get her back to Portia but she's having trouble breathing. I don't think she broke any limbs..." 

She trailed off and pulled away from Hush to return to the Commander's side. She looked down at the dazed she-wolf with her mouth twisted up with concern. Tir did the unthinkable then—she growled at Heda. "Heda, stay awake. You cannot sleep yet."

He is snarled at by both women, the hybrid sinking into submission as he watched them relax as they realized who he was. The man rises to his feet, eyes flickering between Heda and Tirgatao, wondering what had happened. He listens carefully as Tirgatao explains. He sniffs her body quickly, not as perceptive as Portia would have been, but trying to be helpful all the same. Eventually he goes to her side, attempting to nudge the woman up and keep her from falling into an eternal sleep.

Thuringwethil hears Tirgatao speaking above her though she struggles to understand the words as she begins to drift off to slumber. It would be easy to keep her eyes close and rest for a little while but it is short lived as Tirgatao objects and growls at her. Her ears swivel, perking up to attention, and Thuringwethil mimics the same growl in return with no aggression behind it. Had she forgotten how to growl? Her brows knit between her eyes and she’s distracted a moment later when Hush nudges at her.

This time, she growls a little deeper despite the whine she has to fight from her face. He presses into her side a little too hard and she can’t move away fast enough as it shoots a bolt of pain through her body. If she can’t sleep, she can at least try to stand to avoid being prodded at again a second time. On shaky legs, Thuringwethil begins to put her limbs beneath her. She shimmies up into a sitting position, drooped low and tired, and slowly lifts her rump into the area. For a few seconds, she manages to stand still, but her legs tremble beneath her own weight and she’s plopped back down on her butt rather quickly.

Tirgatao balks instinctively when Thuringwethil returns the gesture, but realizes quickly there is no bite behind it. That only serves to further inflame her anxiety and desire to get back to Drageda immediately. She isn't Portia; she has no training in the healing arts, and can only assume that she knocked her head pretty badly during the fall. There was a little voice that threatened her, nagged her—it yanked on her ear and whispered intrusive thoughts as her brain continued to block it out and rationalize. She's breathing, she'll be ok.

Hush makes the first move and boldly moves to stand beside Heda, using his own frame to help push her to her feet. Thuringwethil growls, deeper this time, and attempts to gather her trembling legs beneath her. Tirgatao only manages a quick: "Not too fast now!" as Heda stands for a few seconds, until she collapses again onto her butt. But she wasn't all the way down. It was progress. 

Encouraged, she moves towards Thuringwethil's other side and ducks lower so that the Commander can grip onto her scruff and use it to right herself. Pressure from both sides of her wouldn't be of much use now. "Grab hold of me, I've got you." She ecked out from the lump in her throat, which was now incredibly dry. She looked across the space at Hush and nodded, eyes full of gratitude if he were to look her way. She didn't know what she would have done without him.

He whimpers apologetically, simultaneously trying to be her wall as well as a coddling mother. He tries his hardest to make sure that Heda is comfortable on her way back, but he soon realizes that may not be plausible in the long run. He considers for a moment sliding underneath her body to prop he rup, but his body is too frail compared to her bulk. 

He nudges against Heda's rear, to jumpstart her movement, knowing that it was all up to Heda to move herself now. He looks up at Tirgatao for a moment, snorting with mutual respect for the woman. He was lucky that he found them when he did, or else this might have gone down a different path.

She stares at the back of Tirgatao’s neck for a few seconds, eyes glossed over and peering right through flesh and bone. The build on the back of her tongue is lost on her until it clicks into place and she watches onto the woman. Her mouth waters and she pulls—at first, for desire—and slowly works her way onto her feet. With her limbs shaky, she holds on for a moment until she feels she can stand without falling over. Hush’s movements beside her do not go unnoticed but she does not turn to thank him, uncertain what may actually slip out of her mouth, after she lets go of the shouna’s scruff.

From there, and slowly, they begin their way home.