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

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.