Ravensblood Forest before the devil knows you’re dead

Perhaps due to shock and exhaustion, Lotte’s outburst was short-lived; although tears continued to course down her cheeks in dirty rivulets, she grew unnaturally quiet and still in Arturo’s embrace. He gave her exactly what she needed — a safe harbor to shelter in and an anchor to ground her. Tipping her head back to look in wonder at the Ceannasach for a prolonged moment, Lotte allowed her moonbright eyes to drift slowly shut, a new set of tears spilling over as she issued a soft, hiccupping sigh. “Sinä olet täällä,” she croaked, her small, triangular ears flattening in displeasure at the grotesque ruin of her voice. Lurching unsteadily to her paws, she distanced herself from her protector and coughed — a great, wracking paroxysm that dislodged the fluid from her lungs in a viscous pink-tinged spatter. Embarrassed, she covered the evidence with sand before turning back to Arturo — and Dakarai. Her expression was quizzical and bewildered, her intuition dull and sluggish, but eventually the glimmer of a smile shaped her lips.

“Hauska tavata, Dakarai,” she intoned. “Kiitos avustasi.” Turning then to Arturo with the ghost of her old vivacity writ upon her black-masked face, “I have come early to Teaghlaigh,” she joked lamely, but the cheerful expression she tried to maintain crumbled at the edges as she lamented, this time in the common tongue, “Arturo, everything is gone — everything is burned.” She trembled, and the heavy weight of her weariness caused her long legs to splay in a knock-kneed, ungainly way. She looked toward the forest of ravens with a certain urgency, and uttered with uncharacteristic nervousness, “Is — is there room in Teaghlaigh for a bard who lacks a pleasing voice and a scout who lacks sound paws?” Acknowledging the gravity of her wounds was embarrassing and painful, but the singed songbird had little choice in the matter. She looked ruefully down at her singed flesh before regarding the wolf who held her fate alongside her heart within his powerful jaws — fully aware that she was asking Arturo’s Family to accept her on promises alone, but completely unaware that Dakarai had done the same and prevailed.