Duskfire Glacier Ω Holding onto you while you drag me through stormy weather,

AW but mainly @Blackfell and @Gjalla

the den was crude, gouged from the stone and snow by blackfell’s relentless claws. it smelled of earth, raw and unsettled, mingled with the musk of his labor. she had crawled inside like a shadow, folding herself into the dark belly of it, and here she lay.

scabs lined her shoulders and thighs where the lanzadoii had pressed their claim. the wounds itched, burned, but she had no salve, no soothing poultice. only her tongue, rasping slow across broken skin, copper tang coating her mouth until she turned her face aside.

her breath came shallow. she listened to it, to the hollow beat of her chest where once her children had curled against her. fa’liya, so small and screaming; the others, warm against her belly, suckling. she had been queen to them, mother, shield. now—only absence.

were they still beneath the eye of the sun eater? did their little mouths cry for her milk, or had they been silenced already? she could not know.

morwenna pressed her head to the cool wall of the den, closing her eyes. the ache of her body was nothing beside the ache of not knowing.