if you and I can make it through the night

WAKER

You're not sure your impressions of that night will ever be anything but a jumble.

The low roar of the wind and the driving rain; bodies sleek and slick and soaked with it. Had it been daylight, you would've seen the blood pooling by their hooves, the rain running pink and red as it ran through their wounds. You smell the salt of their sweat, though, and the bold iron of their blood.

But you won't remember their words. You'll just remember the tension in their weary necks, the heaviness lacing every single thing they said—you've been under assault, for days. The rain and the storms have put out the fires, but the scent of burning flesh is deeply imprinted on your mind.

The sight, too, but you try not to think of it, an awkward boy on the outskirts of a war council. You're not fighter—you're a healer.

And that's why you're there, you suppose, because there's not a whole lot of you left. You blink, trying to see through the sheets of rain. None of them have asked for your help, and, weary to the bone, you haven't tried to impose it on them. It's clear, even to your untrained eye, that they want something else than you, on your knees, too exhausted to fly out again.

A messenger clatters by. You smell her particular brand of sweat and iron, too. You won't remember her words, either, or maybe you don't even catch them.

"Waker," they say, or maybe they just said healer, but this you'll remember, perhaps for forever. Your blue-rimmed ears clip forward. "The southern rampart is cut off." You go over the implications in your head. "They need relief. You're all we've got." And you, you're dog-tired already. Your head is aching. Your spirit is aching.

But war's war. And you do as you're told.

You hug your mother—she's old. She's part of the last line of defense, the most desperate measure. She's old but she's proud and she loves you, and you love her. She tells you to be safe. You say, "bye, Mama," because frankly, you don't know when—if—you'll see her again.

Could be, you're flying to your death.

Could be, she'll be the one to die.

You swallow your tears. You swallow your exhaustion. You spread your black wings to the black sky, and you fly into the storm's teeth.

You never reach the southern ramparts.

---

You're not quite sure when it happened—you're not even sure if you were awake when it did. Your existence the past few days has been reduced to rain and screams, and for a moment, you suspect you've actually fallen asleep while flying. That this is all a dream; a bad, bad dream that is so much worse than the reality you've left behind.

You're gliding, under a perfect, starry sky. Gone are the dark, dark clouds. Gone is the hail, the incessant rain, the constant, fickle downdrafts you've been battling on weary, weary wings.

The forest beneath you is unfamiliar. It looks wrong, it smells wrong, and you force your aching wings to turn you around. It doesn't make any sense, but you must've passed the southern rampart, somehow, only—

The stars are all wrong, too.

And your breath, it pools in white clouds. Frost covers your whiskers. The cold wind blows through your thin, rain-slick coat, and freezes at the tips of your feathers. It burns in your lungs, and the world tilts crazily—and that fuck-all wrong forest is reaching for you, and you're powerless to fight it.

Your descent into the snow is graceless. You clip some trees, earn some cuts, spill your blood on the foreign land as you land on shaking limbs that can't quite hold you. Your knees buckle and you stagger sideways, not stopping until you're suddenly leaning against a tree. Shivers, of exhaustion and of cold, rack your body. Dazed, you don't find it in you to do anything but stand there, shaking.

Foreigner!

Magic:
Healing: Can cause thunderclaps; the healing happens when the soundwaves from the rumble connect with a body.

Mutations: Fangs flank his incisor teeth.