Hoshor Plains caught me in it's whirlwind, left me black and blue

she's slipped outside the border while the sky is still tinged by night. it's not often she's awake this time, the earliest touch of dawn coupled with the melodies of newly awakened songbirds somewhat otherworldly. it's the frustration that wakens her - frustration the boils into anger when she looks at Dragomir's broken form, at the empty space where her father should be. 

and so she finds herself here, opposite a tight bundle of dead bracken roughly half her size. she snaps at it like a viper, swiping at it with her paws to get it moving and striking at the frail branches. it feels good, and ultimately, she seizes the bundle in her jaws and whips her head back and forth until the thing falls apart, branches sting her neck and muzzle. pausing, and letting the thing drop from her grip, she sets upon the smaller pieces with renewed vigor, intent on reducing them to nothing.

Saarthal's eyelids flickered open. The sky was dark but a strange dark, a different sort of dark than she'd expected to see. As if all the normal colours of the sunset had been shifted a few shades darker or lighter and so everything looked about right, but also absurdly wrong. It took more than ten seconds before she realised that the somber bruised colour of the horizon was because of the sun rising rather than the sun setting, and a lump formed in the base of her throat. Saarthal ignored the constriction in her chest or the too-familiar pang striking at her breast and stumbled to her paws; she forced herself to walk, one paw after another, as if she could magically chase away the nagging thought curdling in her brain: that yesterday (yesterday?) she'd been overwhelmed with exhaustion, her limbs heavy and had settled down for a nap just a few hours before noon and now...
Her thoughts were cut short by a strange cacophony of noises; her hackles bristled, the guard hairs lining the length of her spine prickling as a rush of sickening anxiety flooded her veins. She considered turning around, uncharacteristically not in the mood for confrontation, but a wolfish scent flitted past her nostrils and Saarthal, ever so curious, found herself venturing forward. A few seconds later, the low curtain of plants parted to reveal a young wolfess, not even a year old tearing into a bunch of dead bracken. Saarth, shocked back in time by the scene, found herself staring at ten-month old Saarthal, angry and disillusioned, doing something similar. Except the dead bracken had been a living wolf and the consequences were- well, let's not get into that. "Hey," Saarthal said quietly, unable to keep the undercurrent of 'hey kid, i'm worried about you and the dead bracken but i don't want to infringe and frankly i don't know how to handle this and angry kids are scary but are you ok? from seeping into her tone. "What's going on?"

it is with reckless abandon that she set on one of the tougher knots of bracken, though her whole body stiffens a moment when one of the hardier branches pierces her gums. the pain takes her back, the sharpness of it, but she does not stop, because compared to Drago - she shouldn't be allowed to stop. 

then she's not alone anymore, and she drops the bloodied lump from her mouth to stare at the woman. her eyes catch her attention for a moment, bright and fiery, but then she returns to giving the stranger a once over. she doesn't return the greeting, but her question has her still - she hasn't heard that in a long time. "nothing," comes her reflexive answer, but a beat later, "fuckers got my brother." it's the name she's given them, after hearing her father scream it, and it sounds harsh and fast and fitting.

Yep. Saarthal now had absolutely no idea what to say. This was not the type of situation she liked: you know, the types where all she had to do was flirt and tease and laugh and even if she made a fool of herself, the scene would end with Saarth getting what she wanted and people liking her despite whatever idiocies she'd inevitably committed. fUCk what the fuck am i supposed to fucking do now, what the fuck did you get yourself into saarthal what the fuck-
"Fuckers? Which fuckers?" Saarthal shifted her weight between her paws and gazed at the younger wolf with a questioning tilt of her head. Then panic set in, and oh shit - "Wait, has someone kidnapped him?" Shit, shit, shit, should she go now? on a rescue mission? nO - wait, calm down. Saarthal's eyes zeroed in on the girl, then flickered downward to the chewed up bracken on the ground, then back at the girl; she could taste the faint metallic tang in the air, blood.

when she opens her mouth the second time, her teeth are stained red. "don't know." that's what's must frustrating - all her hate, and anger, is directed towards a faceless, voiceless void where a wolf should stand. her expression twisted at the question, and she dipped her head curtly. "then they left him and he was almost dead. and now-" she face screwed up in tight anger, unwilling to discuss Dragomir any further. 

"the fuckers got away." she admitted, and even though she wasn't really aware the word was a curse, she spat it like one. she supposed they where out there now, doing even more fucking, or whatever it was fuckers did besides hurting her brother.

Saarthal could guess how she felt. Having her own share of brothers, one of which was prone to warfare and consequently, loads of injuries and death, she knew what it was like. "You're hurt," Saarth noted instead and took a small step forward, trying to gauge her reaction. "I'm a medic, I-" and then feeling like that wouldn't help the situation at all, the roman exhaled softly, wanting to offer some sort of comfort but knowing that whatever she did, it still wouldn't help. "They're bitches," she said instead, "those fuckers deserve hell for what they did but ripping up plants until you hurt yourself isn't going to do anything but give those fuckers satisfaction, because instead of hurting just one they've also hurt you. And they want that - you can't give it to them." Yeah, she could feel herself making everything ten times worse...ah shit.

"you're hurt." "it's ok." it throbbed, but her hurt wasn't as great as Drago's, which meant that it was nothing at all. she expression tightened, attempting to will away the hurt while ignoring it at the same time. 

despite herself, when the woman spoke, she listened. she fidgetted with her skewered fang, chewing her lip, but stayed planted until the woman finished speaking. "I - I'm angry. all the time." she admits, not certain that what she wanted to say when her mouth opened, but what had come out all the same. the anger stemmed from her helplessness, the feeling that the wicked went unpunished and there was absolutely nothing she could do, because she wasn't strong enough, smart enough, good enough to punish them, to have saved her brother in the first place.

She said she was alright - Saar doubted it. On the other hand, she didn't have the guts to confront the angry teenager about it...she'd been there before, sometimes wallowing in pain was the only way out. Of course, sometimes it wasn't, there were many times when it wasn't...when it lead to the spiralling path of agony and darkness instead but Saarth's 'expertise' told her that this wouldn't be such a time. 
"It's hard," is what Saar said instead and shuffled into a more comfortable position. "It's normal to feel angry. It's hard not being able to do anything and...wanting? Needing? Wanting to do something to help. But...life is...like this. Rarely anything is up to our ideals or standards...it's not a terribly great world....sorry..." That deteroriated into shit. Pure shit. Instead of making anything better, Saar had effectively dumped her own baggage onto the girl's own troubles, turning the original pile of shit into a gigantic dump of crap. Ugh.