Dawnlark Plains ι

standing by Star Eater <3

If anything, Other Shore was confused. But as she listened, the confusion ebbed away and left only something foreign in her heart.

She wanted to know why - why everything had become like this so quickly. 

Again, she thought of the night Star Eater had given birth - the rage, the raw rage that the mother held. Except then it had been exhaled through howl and pain. Here, now, it was something that boiled, so deep and bitter it burned her alive. Other Shore watched Star Eater reject the herbs, and slowly began to grasp the enormity of everything whirling around her. This was something no herbs could soothe, no water could cool.

She wished. She wished so dearly that she could say something that would ease Star Eater's pain and erase it. But all her life pain had only ever been hers to bear, and bear alone, and it was she alone who could mend it. Never had she witnessed another woman in so much seething agony and felt as if she could do nothing. This was not her war, nor had it ever been her war, but it was Star Eater's, and it was a war that she knew ignorantly little about. Other Shore did not know how to fight, but now she wished she did.

Desperation. Too much of it.

Star Eater appeared as if her bones were about to collapse beneath the weight of everything. Other Shore carefully shifted towards her. Star Eater, she whispered gently. I am here. If you need to, let me shoulder some of the burden you carry. 

She wished she had one of Sun Eater's dewclaw amulets just so it might be easier to pray to whatever caribou spirits dared to linger by the conflict now.

One of the two wolves of Winsook regarded Star Eater not quite with hostility, but... uncertainty, perhaps? Disdain for the woman's sharp words, and perhaps a hint of suspicion. But he did not know the sheer suffering that the chieftain's wife now bore without the support of her husband, or Gjalla, or the man named Blackfell. The man said something to the Winsook woman in a tongue she did not recognize; 

Other Shore tensed, waiting. She could not say much. Any attempt by her to negotiate, she knew, would not be of much aid. It was Star Eater in command here, not her. It will be okay, she murmured, hoping her heartbeat would cease to rattle her head, hoping Star Eater could hear her and feel even the smallest sliver of peace. It will be okay.