Cerulean Cape you'll love her til it all goes dark; you'll love her even after that

in desperation she wrenched him, hauling his frame back from the cold kiss of the stormy waves. still he did not wake; his form was limp between her jaws, his skin taunt as a threadbare tent pitched against makeshift twigs, and his form gaunt as a wolf that had endured through impossible hardship.

he was clear of the water now and as he lay limp in the sand indra stepped back and noticed, perhaps for the first time, how impossibly fragile and slight his figure seemed, cloaked in nothing but his own sodden fur, the skin and fur over his skull a staring, lusterless hue and his eyes sunken.

"tadec," the redleaf urged, stirred in that moment by irreparable panic. she nudged his cheek, his shoulders, his flank -- each brief touch more insistent than the last. "please, wake up."

but whether he was breathing or gone to that listless sleep of the dead, she could not tell -- and in her heart, a mounting sense of grief and panic bloomed raw and as virile as an atomic aftershock.