Duck Lake burning cities and napalm skies

he laughed, he goaded her, unsteady. there was an edge to the cruel laugh that made it seem paper-thin, and his words were left unreplied. but he was - alone, that was - and so was she. there was an odd sort of kinship they shared, then, two leaders fallen and alone. his muzzle lifted and the feeling passed; she watched him evenly as his gaze traced her. his next words lacked that desperate edge, and she answered after a beat. "I should ask you the same." but his question did not go long unanswered, and she drew further from the lakes edge to regard him better. 

"fire. it burned down much of plains. some perished, most vanished." she paused, hating how sterile, cool the words sounded. she'd delivered them so many times they'd started to take on a clinical air, something removed, something only touched upon carefully as not to open the ugly wound. "I went out to search for the missing. I did not come back. when I did, more died and Morningside had fallen." his gaze was on the twisted scars on her chest; her legs, physical embodiments of all the raw pain she'd felt that day and all the days after.