Broken Boulder sometimes i wish i'd stayed inside my mother, never to come out

it is by all accounts a beautiful morning.  the sun is bright, the sky is blue, and the air is filled with the sound of birds.  

the dying girl cannot see the beauty in the morning.  her eyes have finally crusted shut.  she has lost fur from around her eyes from desperately pawing at them.  she cannot hear the twitter of the birds, for the ear infection had finally stifled her senses.  the tips of her ears are bleeding and flybitten.  her lungs are filled with fluid.  every rattling breath she takes shakes her bones.

she coughs, a wet noise, and mucus sticks in her throat.  she can't breathe.


oh god, please, n o, i can't leave him too

please no

not yet, please not yet, not yet, not yet, please no, no, no , no ——

 

 

i'm not ready yet

but she doesn't have the energy to fight any longer.

He stirs to the sound of his sister's coughing, having spent the past few nights at her side rather than @Delight's. The sound chills his veins, and he doesn't know why, but it takes him a minute to come fully to consciousness. A minute too long, he'll tell himself later. All he can think now is: something is wrong, something is more wrong than it's been —
As he scrambles to his feet, it's more silent than it's ever been. Eris, He croaks, nudging her, expecting a reaction. But there's nothing. It's so quiet, and she's so still. Eris. The air freezes in his lungs and he's not breathing, he's not thinking, he's falling —
Eris, no, please — Eris, I — But she's gone. But she can't be. It's too soon — it's too empty. There's no full life to reflect on, no comforting memories of warm times to hold in her absence; she'd lived briefly, harshly, a victim of her circumstances as much as he was — no, more so. She'd been so strong in the face of it all, maybe more than anyone. She'd been meant to escape it all, to find real happiness. And now...
Now her only escape is death.
I'm so sorry, He chokes out, burying his face in her still-warm fur. It feels so wrong. Like she's only sleeping, and any moment she'll wake coughing and retching and spitting at him to get off — but she won't. She won't.

one-post cameo

There was a small list of wolves she must say goodbye to before her departure. Chief among them were Alarian and Eris, and with the latter in such poor health, she thought she might find them together, or at least close to one another. She entered the dens, holding her breath as the odor overwhelmed her almost immediately.

But it was the sound of pleading that stole the breath from her altogether.

Lily rushed forward, taking blind, quick steps into the darkness, finally coming to a halt in front of Eris' den. Her brother, hunched over her, crying. And her form--too still! The labored gasps were gone, the coughing had ceased. The unthinkable had become reality.

She crumpled against the entrance wall, the scene in front of her blurring as her eyes filled with tears. Several sobs escaped her before she could hold them back. "Eris," she whispered, a tiny, plaintive sound. "Lana."

The two names she'd known her as, but Lily knew there was a third as well--

Friend. She had lost a very, very good friend. . .and now she knew for certain that she must go, before anyone else died, too.