Arrow Lake abbatia

>.>;;

lady @Meadow.

the day that valiria had gone, the day that germanicus lost the last child and therefore the face of ruenna, he had woken with the pain hot and fierce inside him.

a patrol before dawn led into an extended journey and before long he was staring sightless into the glassy iced face of the lake.

his heart raced wildly.  

germanicus wanted to leave mereo, if only for a time. the imperator turned now, his eyes toward the land beyond the sunspire.

east.

badness....

She had sworn to never step place here in the moment of her previous heated ire.The Imperator’s harsh words had resonated much like an arrow piercing a heart—impossible to pull out without bleeding further, and yet there… punctured perfectly within her.

She crooned softly on her journey from the vale to the lake—tongue sliding past her lips as she hushed herself—every so often, she would barely allow herself to graze against the trunk of another tree—knowing very well to leave her lingering scent would be so foolish, and leaving the blanket of warmth and safety Epoch was even more so, but…

…the herbal stash she had maintained so well was missing one very distinct piece for her, and the loss of her control in this matter was what propelled her further. She had seen what she needed—a suppression—was it too late?

That damned lake.

She would reason she had time—a healer at the prime of her age, she should attract very little attention at this point. Her teeth were sharp—her tongue even more so, it seemed. She would find what she needed and make a swift return home—and when all options were laid before her, she could make a decision, if it wasn’t too far past, now.

So of course, when her heated eyes fell upon the oh-so familiar form of the Mereo soldier, she hissed out a breath of disbelief. “Surely there is enough in epoch to keep you closer,” he had ruminated to her—displeased at the mere sight of her their last interlude.

She spun, hoping the distance between them would keep her from his vision, and rather than seek the solace of the lake as she had prior, she loped quickly to the brush nearby, eyes scouring, the prickle of his presence lingering like a sacred itch along her spine and nape.

but a tactician heard the step of a butterfly.

germanicus turned. it was meadow, and shame flushed him.

perhaps it was this that made him approach at once, sharp-stepped and stiff-backed. a soldier holding more than shield and spear but the failure of a father as well.

a wife. two sons. two daughters. gone now.

and not in death.

only from him.

"i know i cannot ask you to forgive me my cruelty. i only ask that you hear me say aloud that i was wrong to speak to you as i did."

only then did germanicus understand the brush between them, and too late did the gravity of it loop like leather through his senses and drew him taut.

the imperator wisely retreated then.

He likely knew she sensed him from the stiffening of her tiny form—nose to the brush, searching—as if she could make him disappear if she didn’t bother him with even a glance. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me, was perhaps the pinnacle of immaturity, but no one would ever accuse Meadow of being a prime candidate of proper etiquette.

A flick of her ear as his words scoured over her—refusing to even look to him now. The man who placed Akashingo upon a throne—who demanded trust and respect from Epoch and its inhabitants without offering an olive branch in return. She did not know him at all—and somehow he had broken something in her one night by a lake—somewhere along the stolen moments they met to know one another, she had bared her soul to a man who had lost his wife—echoing her own mourning of always being left behind. He hadn’t fought for her, at the news of Reyson—and it would have been a lie to say she was disappointed.

But could she have faulted him that? She had taken it as rejection—but never once had she truly given him reason to think them other than friends.

Whirlwind romances did not exist outside of fairytales, and Solpallur had been only the first taste of this realization. Germanicus, another—and now, she, too, the way she kept herself at arms length with Reyson.

She rummaged at the brush with more insistence, a quake in her, refusing the emotion to well up further. She could hear his footfalls retreat—she could not make sense of his words. There was so much she wanted to say—to ask. Instead, she found what she needed, and with a flare of victory, began to pluck angrily at the herbs, pulling them to her—as measly as the supply was. That itching burn lingering beneath—a simmer of a dam about to break—and she idly wondered if it was actually her sanity that was about to collapse with it.

Finally, her gaze alight, she rounded on him, small—and yet as tall as she could make herself—dappled silver coat glinting in the faint light as dawn continued its creeping wake. “Don’t worry, Imperator,” she offered, her voice tight, despite his retreating form. “I don’t hate you. Maybe, when whatever any of this is is over, we can even be friends again.”

failure.

the failings of a man. the failings of a father. the failings of a leader.

wolves hemmoraged from mereo and fled his rule. arsenio's words sundered in his mind like glass. glaukos had not come home. icarus flung free into his own world.

guilt stabbed his throat.

and beneath it, a bleak red mist of rage.

had he not given reyson all things? respected him? made a place for him to rise? some lessening part of germanicus understood the unfairness of things.

but the eagle was tired of understanding.

so long as he stood there, he could feel the anger stropping to razor's edge against a desire he did not and yet did wish to feel.

"i am going to leave the sunspire." germanicus did not know why he had said it only that now it existed as a first manifestation of his want.

arsenio's voice grated at him. fennec's words humiliated him further.

and valiria.

valiria was gone away, the last touch of ruenna left to him. 

there was no part of him left that was honorable as a man.

the anger rose again, anger at those who had abandoned mereo and the watch to which they had committed themselves, to live in an oasis where a man who had lied as much as germanicus lived an easier life.

he did not know why he did not turn away, why his yellowpaint eyes were raw with self-hatred.

She looked at him—truly looked at him. The simmering gaze—the tension that coiled in him, held back only by the facade he maintain a soldier’s intentions of following an order—or one that imposed them, keeping emotion at bay should it falter the task that required accomplishment.

A downturn at the edges of her lips at his words—her eyes sharp as they moved over him, consideration. She had been a balm to him at one point—that she understood. A pleasant distraction from the leave of his wife when he sought the solace of an ear who held no judgement for a man of his rank having something as mundane as pesky emotions. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you happy,” she spoke—the words soft from her lips, despite the venom she had meant to leech into the statement. Nonsensical—for he had apologized for his previous words. Still—she wore her hurt as a shield.

And he wanted to leave. That arrow shot at her twisting just a little further, digging a little deeper—enough to take her breath away with a shaky exhale, her nares flaring and her lips pinching together. “And where will Mereo go?”

"you did not see me with my wife," came his sharp reply, followed by the realization that the long hurt of ruenna had not all left him.

and that fennec had not replaced her nor could she. nor did he want her to be replaced, the slivers of memory tucked beneath his breastplate like fading charms.

"mereo does not want me as their king." had he armor he might have spitefully stripped it from his wrists now. "my children do not want me as their father." proverbial helmet, thudding to the earth. "and my new wife wants to meet pharaoh herself. she no longer trusts my judgement in that regard."

bare now, stripped of rank. he was imperator in name only. "i will not abandon those who remain. but i have served my purpose in these mountains now."

her scent thrilled in the air, and his jaw was a line of iron. "you do not have to wait for my companionship, lady meadow."

‘And no wonder she left,’ she wanted to bite—the words dying on her lips at the stricken look on his face. He lay himself bare—the very same on the first moment she had met him, and she looked at him—truly looked at him—a man hurting. Was this from Ruenna still?

He continued to strip the remaining of his soul to her—she could recognize that, in this moment, even if she questioned who he was. He had placed so very much doubt in her heart of himself—she sidestepped, a shiver at his words, her eyes straying down to the previously forgotten pile of herbs, her tongue numb—did he know what these were? Her breath hitched— “These are…” A deep pause, her own muzzle then jutting up as she caught herself in the moment, his scent weaving around her still, despite the distance of them. A very much needed distance. “…I have decisions to make.” She shouldn’t have said anything. A raw opening to her own vulnerability that she should avoid at all costs, if only to protect Reyson.

She paused—muzzle tilting up, her eyes grazing the warming sky, gathering her thoughts. ‘Do you tire of tending others over yourself?’ Those words he had spoken to her on their first meeting—he had seen her. She had foolishly thought it had been a man, noticing a woman when really it had been a tactician studying those he conversed with, and nothing more. And it had struck her to her core.

Yet here she was, once more. Finding herself a great deal to worry over the hollow stare he offered now.

“You’re most precious memory was holding your children in the quiet hours after their birth,” she whispered then, not looking to him, seeking only the sky, for she feared if she looked to him, she would find nothing but misery. “When I was visiting Akashingo… The Pharaoh boasted of his beautiful palace. Lavish things—paintings on his wall of great battles, fermented drink and spiced meats. Yet sitting there, I had never been in a more empty place in my life… Maybe, with wherever you find yourself next… you try to find something that brings back that happiness.” Even if it took him from the mountains and away.

sigh so angsty

germanicus did not know.

but he knew the look of gathered herbs and the insistence of her scent.

and he was indeed a tactician.

knowledge filtered dully through him but it was muted by his own resistance and the small limits of his true understanding.

meadow set her eyes toward the heavens and in them he saw the contemplativeness that had drawn him first to open. how cursed this all must be, to witness him again. to bear sight to the unraveling that he had not meant to let go.

the warming lake rippled with a soft breeze that carried both the bittering of green things and her own want into a cold swirl around his shoulders. she spoke of his children and germanicus looked away, eyes narrowing. a low sound scudded from his throat, something like hurt but he would not allow it to be.

meadow spoke of akashingo, put her paw upon the thrum of pain between mereo and epoch. between germanicus and arsenio.

"i was a ranger before this." the shadow flooded back to him in stark relief.

another hurting heart in his wake. another stab of guilt. another wave of loneliness. germanicus felt as though one day he truly would bend beneath this but he could not let it be this one.

"i will go back to it." 

meadow spoke of a future for him. but germanicus had brought to ruin three chances he had been offered by the old unsaid gods of editum. the rage rose again, for what he had built and what had had lost. "akashingo is a place of cold things. i am glad you did not become one of them." he felt the familiar taciturn nature of who he had been rising, rearing a formerly tired head with a spark of desperate hope.

"reyson will wait for you to make your decisions if he is the wise man i know him to be."

reyson, who had given his all to mereo and deserved his rest.

and yet germanicus could not foist the anger from him.

He would go back to being a ranger. “Sounds lonely,” she noted, her eyes finally looking to him—taking him in once more, feeling a flush creep along her breast and a shift of her weight, that itching unease pulling at her.

He did not commit to anything regarding his children—her own lingering hint that perhaps he find himself with his family seemingly ignored in his insistence of being stubborn. “You don’t think you can find such peace with Fennec? Does she even want to be a ranger?”  And so she went there—he only ever commented on her Reyson with politeness—who was she to discuss his own relationship? And yet it sounded as if he meant to leave them all—everything.

“I have been in many places, Germanicus,” she offered. Scorn for Akashingo clear on her tongue—“There would never be a time I would find myself staying in a place like that.”

It would have been a lie to say she hadn’t enjoyed the liberations of the drink, despite it’s irresponsible nature—hell, she sure could have used something like that now.

And then—Reyson—the man who no doubt awaited her return now, to home… Wondering where she was. And here she was—behind his back—so desperate to keep certain nonsensical options open to herself, and she felt herself wilt, losing some of that fierce stance now, her eyes blinking back the emotions she always wore so openly as she looked away from him. “Reyson has the patience of a saint.”

when fennec rose in conversation, germanicus leveled his eyes toward meadow. 

he was not certain that she had earned the right to speak of the imperatrix. and then he recognized the cruel futility of the thought.

"no. i do not think she is happy." the cold lines of her body, the absence of the ember that had always burned between them in nights shared. 

"i think i have made her decidedly otherwise." germanicus said quietly. "and i do not expect her to have the patience of any soldier." slowly he was realizing the erosion of his self standing so close. and yet so not. 

his yellowpaint eyes fell again to her herbs. there was a long and bleak moment of charcoal grey which spread. 

"akashingo is changing. there are things set into motion that cannot be undone." but he did not want to speak of that wretched place. he wished ramesses had been killed in his undeserved cradle.

germanicus was watching the epochian now. only as a man to a woman. not with investigative intent. not as a tactician. only as perhaps he had once before.

his eyes were a study in a hundred unsung moments, glinting like starlight. for a long moment he let awareness of meadow fill him, allowed himself a small dreaming second.

this too, playing in the light upon his stoic features.

He looked to her now—maybe in a way she had always desired him to—as, at least, another sentient being, rather than a chess piece upon a playing board. The flame in his eyes when she mentioned Fennec—did he not know that she knew he had taken another wife and so swiftly?

To hell with Akashingo.

Emboldened—he was leaving. She took a pace closer to him, that fire within her not simply from a season looking to rear its ugly head, but from a connection she felt with him from their very first meeting. Her muzzle jutted forward, once more, and again, another step, moving to him, closer still, until her breath would brush the ends of the fur on his shoulder, eyes abashed as they remained intent upon him, her tail giving a final lash behind her.

The very idea of him leaving hurting—it shouldn’t. She had a place to be. And so did he, more so than even her,

But still….

“Do you want to know how many bonus points if you don’t leave, Imperator?” The thought of him gone—it hurt. It hurt too much.

bonus points.

there was her own soft tactics here, meadow offering him remnants of past warmth between them. was it for the sake of peace or for her own sense of closure? the eagle tensed as she approached, offering a touch that perhaps would have only warmed him through as if it were a sip of the heady stuff he had been given his first night in akashingo.

as it were, given the nature of the very air that sparkled with hunger, he was moved more and vividly.

"germanicus, meadow." his title was heavy and wrong somehow; he wanted to lay it aside. the yellowpaint of his eyes which had until late been so flat in affect now roved to her own. he did not touch her, aware very sharply of the danger that might bring.

and yet his gaze was devouring. "how many?"

A lifetime.

That was the selfish response, wasn’t it? The one that laid the cards bare for everyone to see—and there were so many players involved in such a dangerous game; herself, him… it surpassed even their partners and right to children and friends.

He watched her move closer. He did not move from her—he did not move closer. He simply remained—and like a trained soldier, he asked her. From curiosity sake, perhaps—pr, maybe, it was something more.

Was this magnetism only felt singularly, by herself?

She hovered—her breath hitching, daring so much closer to graze against the hairs along his nape, his shoulder—breathing him in and her own lashes fluttering down, knowing in this very moment she was not empowered but weak.

The sun was on the rise, painting the sky brilliantly above them, but it was the way her breath curled in the air so close to him that held her transfixed. He was in her reach and yet so very untouchable. And so her eyes sought his—delving for an answer. “So very many, Germanicus,” she murmured, ambiguous in so many ways… and yet with that, she pressed forward, seeking to press an ear to his chest—wanting nothing more in this moment than to feel the man’s heartbeat—because surely it thrummed as heavily as her own?

germanicus did not think he needed to say more, to remind her of to whom they would each return. to whom they now should.

not to duty, not to obligation, but to a future wherein love might exist.

he would never set foot in epoch again. and mereo would become something else than what had been known.

this was a farewell, germanicus perceived, a goodbye that held ramifications so fiercely comprehended that he knew it was the height of maliciousness to continue. the upright and stiff-backed soldier who had been raised with a hundred mores, lifted his arm to fit her shoulders.

it was not a beginning. not for him. 

for a long moment he was still. his heart galloped beneath her listening ear.

"i cannot stay."

he would not allow her to receive another promise. germanicus had found he could not fulfill them. he would make no false adulations. he would not stay in the feral teeth of stoneways he had long traveled.

but in this moment he was only himself, sundered by the final breakings of final things. germanicus pressed a questing kiss to the underside of meadow's jaw, one as unassuming as the feathering touches she had yet given.

He would not stay. Perhaps, he truly could not stay. She knew nothing of the intricacies of his life—not truly. 

What she did know was the way his arm fitted across her, how it sent our own heart throbbing in her chest as she sought to hear his own. She was still for that moment, the quiet thump thump grounding her for the stolen moment and she found her muzzle snaking closer to him, drawing against the hard planes of his chest as her eyes glanced up, only to catch him dip down and steal a chaste kiss to the underside of her muzzle. 

She lifted her arm, looping it delicately to his own, her eyes stealing to his as she held him there, searching. I know it feels broken right now, but… I promise you your heart still beats. A gentle whisper—hoping that in whatever he did in the next chapter of his life would bring him the peace he deserved. The happiness.

And then, she tilted her muzzle up, slanting a kiss along his jawline—inhaling softly as she did so and feeling a shudder wrack her. Goodbyes always had a way of tearing her asunder.

chastity and purity. no one could accuse them of either. and germanicus no longer wanted the careful sidestep of their meetings. the eagle saw his shortcomings written in stone across the halls of his heart and veered away from it into the comforting brusqueness of the exquisite craving wrought in him.

meadow whispered. her voice was the promise of a future which he felt squandered now.

and ever in his mind, arsenio's words reverberated, tearing open the scar tissue of longheld control. if there was redemption in her, he sought it now, surrendering to the roseate thrum of her banner-shout in the air.

not a ruler. not a father. a nameless man who acted in the selfish reclamation of title and of revenge and maybe a silver taste of what that beating heart wanted to do, how it wished to act in disconnect from his flesh and spirit.

his mouth moved over her brow, her ear, her throat. he wondered if reyson had touched her in this way and felt a darkweave satisfaction to do so now. 

for she belonged also to arsenio's care and to the vale.

his embrace was tightening; a wave of warm breath filtered into her hackles as he tried to gather himself with a ragged breath.

His response to her ignited her—of course it did. He was a flame—had been, if she were honest, perhaps the day she had first saw him, the fateful time he had found her in the woods, fainted. Serendipitous, he had said, that they had met once more by the lair—a man who had needed a kind ear, and she had… she had been looking for affirmation, she could only surmise. That was all she ever seemed to do.

He held her tighter—closer. A kiss along her brow—chaste enough. The simmering of her own flesh coming to life beneath the next kiss—her ear.

And then undone, when his mouth fell to her throat—from her lips a soft sigh and sob mixed in one, because she knew in that moment it was wrong, and even then she was still a goner. She had never been kissed like this—she had tested waters with Reyson, surely, but the reserved man had held himself from her—as if he was afraid he would break her like a delicate china doll.

Germanicus, it felt, in this moment, would devour her.

Her leg hooked him closer, lifting his own limb to hook at her side, pulling him backward, softly to the ground, her mouth roving across him, exploring—because never before had she explored the hard planes of another in such a manner, and that fire in her belly—-it coiled. It lit aflame. It tore at her.

Then, when her eyes opened, they were to meet the dawn breaking the sky—and with it, the gaping jaws of a hissing cougar, intent upon a clean and easy swipe tot he preoccupied man she held above her.

She gave a strangled cry then—“Germanicus!” And  with as much might as such a lissome creature of her stature could, she shoved him from her, away from the feline’s jaws that snaked forward, and instead, her own side was gripped in its piercing jowls, and her shriek would echo across the lake.

he went willingly, almost atremble as meadow pulled at his hard frame. her slender figure moved beneath him; he felt the clench of her arms and met the fevered roaming of her lips with his own, wanting to hear again her throated little sound, to make it more.

meadow was in all his senses; a handful of seconds left to them, his teeth moving gently over her shoulder in a near-possessive nip —

and then meadow was shouting his name and awareness flooded back like a knife to his skull as he landed nimbly and saw too late the cat upon her.

her scream felt as though he had swallowed glass.

whatever guilt he might have felt for being the progenitor of the moment which compromised them both was washed aside in the cold narrowing of his mind. he did not wait another second to strike, aiming teeth at the base of the animal's skull with bone-breaking intent.

murder shone in his eyes.

perhaps the creature would be the scapegoat for the juddering red rage that rose again to choke him.

Where Germanicus’ weight had given her warmth, the cat replacing him had doused her in ice. Where his kisses had branded her in an awakening that would haunt her, so would the fierce glare of the cougar, it’s amber feline eyes meeting her own wife-eyed terror when she saw blood— and then witnessed the satisfaction reverberating from the creature almost victoriously as its lips became painted with the crimson of it. 

And then there was Germanicus—fierce ire and so quick to strike that surely neither her nor the cat had expected it. His jaws would crush, snapping the cat backwards in doing so and the silver Epochian would be thrust aside with a slash of claws, cast away as the cougar wove its dying claws for one last swipe to the man who drained its life. 

Once more her mind would become the static of an old school cinematic tape on replay on black and white—the way his teeth had begun their exploration, pulling her to him as she writhed under him. And now her blood began to pool against the snow underneath. This is what you deserve…. This is what you deserve…. This is what you deserve.

She reached for him, terrified.

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the cat was at once sinuous and desperate and unwieldy as his teeth bit toward brain stem, through spinebase and flesh. meadow this time was the one flung aside, germanicus dragging the animal backwards and away.

but it twisted, and fire filled his body from right throat to right shoulder. a dying blow, one that rang true and immediately welled in thickly running furrows of blood.

germanicus kept his grip, comprehending that perhaps only his rage had saved him from more. he shook the cat's limp body with a hard jerk that snapped bone audibly in the light.

he threw it aside and returned to meadow. the man did not panic.

but in her reaching arm and horrified expression, in her bloodied body and the thud of her heart, he saw the dozens of boys and men flung into the mud of old battlefields, and his throat constricted as her figure became theirs and then another and another, rapid-fire before his eyes.

germanicus swore a latin curse and grabbed a pawful of mud from the lakeshore to slap over his shoulder. he had done this before: a man treats himself first before he puts his hand against the bleeding wounds of the other, scarlet welling up between the digits in a sickening rush of warm crimson.

his eyes were empty as he packed her wounds with moss and lakemud, the only immediate things available for a field dressing. 

"meadow, focus on breathing. i am going to call reyson and arsenio." he knew how it would look and he knew now there would be no denial. the wolves of the vale would save their own. and in the end it would not be the epoch woman that shouldered the brunt of their blame.

this was a gambit. 

"better their anger than your life," came the growl breaking in his throat as if it were the first wintry stormblast before an avalanche.

the eagle was smeared with the rich clay and their mingled blood and somehow the moment which had been so aflame had become a worsening arena of two pitched battles, both lost.

there was no deserving. and perhaps it had indeed been a divine justice to smite them both down in such a moment of betrayal. but he would not lose her over any god. germanicus waited to see that she was able to stay conscious before he moved.

She searched him upon his return, a shudder of her lissome form as she moved to investigate him for injury and then rendered useless when her body would not respond the way she intended. He pulled mud to himself, and then to her—and she searched then his eyes, and found nothing in his stare. 

Somehow, that hurt even when the open flesh of her side and flank did not. 

Her cheeks flushed at the mention of Arsenio and Reyson, shame blanketing her and weighing her down, and only then did she relax into the snow, mud and dead grass. It was not their anger she feared, but to watch the realization that should surely come from her soldier when he would realize just what could have been had karma not struck them now. 

And with that the most awful realization and fear: what if this truly broke him.

Nausea and heat embraced her then, and she turned from Germanicus, her body trying to heave the contents of her stomach and yet giving nothing—nothing left. 

There was nothing left, and when her panicked eyes sought his again she finally did feel the glaring pain of her torn flesh—and blissfully, she slipped to a world of unconsciousness as the blood would still sleep through the muck that covered her.

she shuddered and settled into the familiar lines of shock.

the bindings would not hold before the red deluge of her lifeblood continued.

germanicus sat back on his haunches and lifted his stained paws from her side. his breath was a shaking exhale.

war and the shrieks of dead men rang in his ears. his head spun dizzily but still he forced himself to rise.

to step aside.

to call for @Reyson and @Arsenio.

he stood over meadow, eyes cutting through the terrain for any sign of more danger or her pack members, blood and soil sliding hotly down from his torn flesh.

Reyson heard the call and arrived and when he did he was sickened. The scent of a heat coming, germs own musky scent intertwined with his healer and then. Then overwhelming scent of cat and blood.

Breathing came in sharp pained gasps and his eyes fell on Germanicus and he growled though

You're a bastard you know that right.

Then he moved past the asshole that now he absolutely hated. And looked around. He saw some cobwebs nearby and tugged them from the plants they clung to to help clot. Then he'd settle near.

Come, boy.

Arsenio spoke gruffly to his son. The voice on the air was a familiar one and it called out for help. Reyson’s name was on the Imperator’s tongue, as well. The Arche did not know what to expect from the Roman. Their last conversation had been less than polite. He had not liked how their relationship devolved. He had not liked the man he’d discovered beside him.

Two bodies raced side by side - Antigone and Arsenio, seeking to find the place where the Roman had called to them. Their race was to the lake to the east of the canyon. Reaching the place was enough to make the man’s lungs feel like they would burst.

When Arsenio arrived upon the scene, his eyes found Meadow first. He wished he had not brought his son to this bloodbath. Reyson was looking for cobwebs nearby, gathering what he could. The ice of his eyes traveled then to Germanicus.

What were you doing?

The Arche’s lip curled.

Look at her wounds, boy. Quick. He instructed of his child.

Antigone approached her, burning hot with disgust and horror. There was blood and muck everywhere. The man beside Meadow was not a familiar face, but he looked awful. What could a boy do to help this? What might stop the bleeding? He sniffed at her, hoping that she still breathed steadily.

Goosegrass, maybe. He might find some near the lake. The boy set off to find it, hoping that he could help enough to keep her stable. The webs that Reyson gathered would help. He would need to be quick.