Qeya River i'm fixing a hole

Set for the 18th

That was that. She'd done it, left the Sanctuary at last. It had been something she'd been thinking about for a while, but her conversation with Alarian had brought it to a head. It was clear that home was no longer home. . .maybe it never had been. But there was a place she'd once called home, and she was confident they'd welcome her in with open arms.

She tried to eat the rabbit Alarian had given her, but the thought of food turned her stomach, so she'd pushed it away. Saving it for later. She was, however, quite thirsty, and the banks of the Qeya called to her, the bubbling stream music to her ears. 

Carefully, she made her way down the bank, lapping at the icy water. The wind on the open area ruffled her pelt, and she shivered. She suddenly longed for her warm den, tucked in close to her friends. Lily sighed, breath stirring the surface of the water. 

Rustling nearby turned her ear, but she paid it no heed, continuing to drink. A moment later, out of nowhere, a rabbit burst from the brush right beside her, hopping down the bank. The movement startled her so much she slipped, catching her weight on her left forepaw. . .the ankle of which promptly twisted and broke with a sickening snap.

Before she could even so much as curse her bad luck, she lost her balance and tumbled into the water. With all four legs intact, she was a competent swimmer, but her left front dangled and burned, useless. The swift current tugged her under the surface, and she held her breath, lungs burning until she was able to break her muzzle above the water again. She had a moment to gasp before she was submerged again, careening down the rapids. 

There was no time to think, to reflect. She was dying, and unless she could muster the strength to swim to the bank or was rescued by some Good Samaritan, she would leave this world drowned or frozen.

Likely both.

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.

vilkas's teeth grasp onto lily's soaked fur and scruff as the stranger lets go; but lily's body is limp with unconsciousness ( or, at least that is what vilkas hopes what it is ) and the current still tries to to claim her. the firebrand wants to be gentle but the reality is he pulls her onto the bank with some struggle ( thankful that she is as petite as she is ) he's not as gentle as he'd have liked to have been. he releases her scruff and circles tightly around lily, ears alert as he stares at her flank struggling for a moment in the rush of adrenaline and the pound of his heart in his heart like an insistent war drum to determine if she's breathing or not. she is, he deduces with a rush of relief a moment later, but they are small and shallow draws of breath. trepidation and concern immediately make their play by seizing and conquering his very brief moment of relief.

vilkas understands abruptly that he's out of his depth. he takes lives: he does not know how to save them. there's a good possibility that she's gotten water in her lungs and that if it is not expelled she would drown despite being on dry land. "stay with me lily. you're not allowed to die." he murmurs to her and then looks wildly for the stranger, suddenly remembering that they were not alone. his gaze lands upon the other — also a woman — who looks to them with ragged breath. "she's breathing but not well," the raptorial firebrand speaks to the unknown woman ...the woman whom had fearlessly thrown herself into the raging waters to save the shadow-kissed woman at his paws. whether lily survived or not vilkas realizes that he owes this stranger a serious debt ...but there would be time to talk about that later. lily was his most pressing concern.

"you wouldn't happen to be a healer, would you?" vilkas inquires, glancing down at lily shortly after. he hates to ask for more help, the stranger has already went above and beyond. with ear cocked in the stranger's direction to catch her response, vilkas attempts to rouse her to consciousness with nudges that vary in pressure and small licks to her face. it's what instinct tells him to do. for the first time he doubts his own instincts with lily's life hanging precariously in the balance.

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.

vilkas's ears slick back against his skull as the stranger admits that she's not a healer and he looks from her back to lily, brow furrowing as he notes the odd angle of her ankle. he thinks to mention it but doesn't. not yet, at least. her broken ankle wouldn't matter if they didn't rouse her to consciousness. the firebrand is out of his depth but there is no time to let the wound that admitting that created to smart. he is immediately frustrated as he feels the pressure of time he fears he does not have bearing down like an unbearable weight on his shoulders. the stranger adds that it seemed what he'd been doing before had been right — and vilkas hopes that her and his instincts are right. he's never not trusted them and thus far they have yet to steer him wrong but this situation, it's severity, his lack of actual and helpful healing knowledge and his feelings for lily — fledgling beyond companionship and friendship — threaten to make him dangerously despondent.

nevertheless, trying to rouse her with licks and nudges seems the only course of action available to him and he resumes the action with a draw of his tongue over her ear, and a nudge of his nose to the corner of her mouth. he is not a gentle creature by nature and though he applies pressure to each nudge he ultimately touches her as if she is a fragile thing that he is terrified of breaking because, currently, probably half drowned and broken she looks pretty damn fragile to him.

Some tended to think that unconsciousness was a dark, endless void, but it was more a blink of an eye, from one moment to the next. All of the sudden, Lily was awake, coughing, trying desperately to expel the water from her lungs. She hacked and hacked 'til her throat was ragged, gasping for breath, sides heaving. She was drenched and exhausted, weighed down by the ordeal. Her eyes slowly peeled open, her blurry vision revealing two figures before her.

Lily blinked, trying to make sense of it all. One was very familiar, and she grasped for the name. . .Vilkas, that was it. The warrior, from the north. Her gaze slid over to the female, but no names came: the face was entirely unfamiliar. She was wet, too, and Lily wondered what had happened. The dark-furred girl tried to rise to her feet, but a blinding pain in her left foreleg brought her back down with a hoarse, agonized whimper.

What happened? Her mouth opened to ask, but no words came out--not even sound. She smacked her lips together, trying again--and still, nothing. Her vision still swam, and her breaths still came short. All she remembered was water, lots of it--but even that gave no real clues to the situation. Her eyes strayed to her paw, set at an odd angle, and she shivered, fear prickling down her spine.