The Sentinels wham bam thank you m'am

it was Casmir who found her, torn as he was from the teeth of the coastal wolf. he had lost his left ear in the scuffle, the stub of it bloody and clinging to the side of his head. the boy stumbled through the sands, covered in all manner of bruising and lacerations, in a haze compounded by the muzziness of a beginning fever. his tongue lolled from the side of his mouth; Casmir's eyes were half-lidded against the brightness of the sun upon the snow, and he almost did not see the small body tossed bonelesly into the sands, salt-rimed and contorted in the last throes of life.

it was this sight that at last put the boy over the edge; he had moved slowly and desperately in the direction of home, but here he could go no further, and sank to his belly alongside the girl. "Behati," he croaked from a throat long gone dry with thirst, from between lips chapped by the merciless sun, and not a single tear could eke its way down his salt-charred cheek.

Casmir did not stop to think about the why or how of it -- only that she was dead, and he had hurt her the last time that they had met. it was his fault! "my fault!" he cried out, staring at her brined corpse in shock and horror, the last words he was able to utter before his voice cracked into oblivion.

he lay beside her and did not move.