if you and I can make it through the night

WAKER

What is it you always say to those in shock, Waker? You've seen it so many times, you've felt it so many times when you've touched their tense necks. You say something like, breathe, everything will be alright, whether they're bleeding out on you or have just received devastating news. Breathe, you think to yourself, the rough bark painfully cold against your wet shoulder, what stupid fucking advice, Waker. Breathe!

You're breathing, alright. You don't think you ever stopped, not even when the cold punched you in the lungs. Your sides can't stop heaving, but it's not a powerful movement—more like they're just quivering, like the rest of you.

Rain tries to overlay your vision. Each time you blink, you hear the roar of thunder, feel it lash your back, but when your eyes flicker back open to a starlit winter night, it's gone.

Your mind's last, desperate attempt to stay sane.

It fails. You're insane now, aren't you? You're.. gods, you're not where you're supposed to be. You could, theoretically, pick the knowledge up, turn it over in your hands, scrutinize it and, perhaps, acknowledge it, but admitting that you're.. no. You can't. You just can't, your body can't.

You smell your own blood. You know it's tracking through your wet fur, leaving red stains, little drops falling to the snow and sealing your fate. You feel the bitter chill bite your exposed flesh.

Defeated, you just stand there, with no plan, as if you intend to stand there until the last bit of light and life flickers out within you.

Until...

She comes like a bit of the moon itself descended from the sky, a silver light in a sickening forest—an angel, if you believed in such, but you don't. You might've, a week ago, but since then, you've seen too much blood and shit and guts and cruelty to think that there's any room for angels in your world. Weakly, your head tilts in her direction. She doesn't look like she's about to eat you, but you never know.

Those you've been fighting didn't look like they would, either, until they painted their faces with blood and earth dyes and came shrieking in the night, leaving a blazing trail of fire in their wake. You're still not sure why they did that. You're not sure if the war council ever figured it out, either. You were too busy listening to screams and moans to piece the situation together.

"Are you badly injured?" the angel asks you, and it forces something in your mind to function. While simply falling over and dying seems very appealing, or ignoring her until she goes away to let you die in peace, you're being addressed, and you've been raised to be a polite boy. "No," you manage to say through chattering teeth, surprised to find that you still have a voice. The cold keeps searing your lungs, frosting your rain-wet fur, and numbing your pain. You consider it a small blessing in disguise, though you're not stupid; if you don't find some way to get out of the cold, you very well might die.

It's just, the idea of moving at all makes you want to close your eyes and drift away into oblivion. You're spent.

You blink out of existence. Your knees buckle again, and you're jolted awake, struggling to right yourself until you're once again making a fairly plausible imitation of standing. You force your aching wings closer, trying to hug yourself, but they're wet and cold and frosty too. Then, one of those things just happen again; you're looking at her, and you try to say something, like, who are you?, or, where am I?, but what comes out of your mouth is this: "Help."