if you and I can make it through the night

WAKER

You always thought you had an open mind, in both matters of the heart, and matters of the world. You've not been known to judge anyone for their choices, unless those choices brought harm to others, nor have you been known to not believe what you're seeing. But, between the foreign land you've found yourself in and its impossibly foreign sky, you've been pushed to your limits.

So at first, you do not want to believe it when a spirit, smoky and pallid, slips from the frozen crust of the earth. You want to write it off as another figment of your exhausted mind's imagination, a piece of this all-too-real dream, and for a moment, you're imagining the conversation with your mother: how you'll both be laughing at the bizarre experience, and the comic disbelief on her face when you tell her that you hallucinated a spirit-caller, of all things. No! she'll say, aghast, then laugh. Silly Waker, with his head always in the clouds...

But you don't feel like laughing when the smoke wraps around your body, slipping like the devil itself across your frigid skin and stiff, numb muscles; you try to lean away, a white band of terror around your irises. Not an angel, after all, but curiously, the spirit recedes without having done anything to you—you're too tired to notice that it has patched your split skin back together, too numb to have felt your flesh close.

She hadn't moved, much. She hadn't changed, much. Desperate, you decide that she didn't see the spirit, that it wasn't her fault it came, that she had nothing to do with it. Either it was the land, or your mind, or anything, but not her, because you need her to save you. You force yourself into delusional practicality, and it all melts away when she smiles, anyway. It's like you just gave her meaning in her life, like she needed your permission to save you, because once you've asked for it, she's not wasting any time. Quickly, she's by your side, her body so unrealistically warm once the winter fur compresses between you, but you barely feel it. The wing stretched over your back hits awfully close to home, and while you've not been taught to hide your tears from your Mama, she cautioned you to not cry in front of strangers—and besides, you're not too keen on letting your body waste energy on that kind of thing right now.

"Lean on me," she says, and you're about to, but you realize you already are. You've anticipated what comes next, an order to march, so you've already shifted your weight to brace against her instead of the tree. You swallow. You weren't a soldier, but you've learned something of their bullheaded hardiness. Besides, it's not like you have a choice, so step by halting step, you let her move you.

She could've walked you for a lifetime, and you would not have noticed—or ten seconds, and it would've felt just as long. Your awareness is on the back-burner, because that's the only way you can keep putting one foot forward. But, she wants your attention again, so you oblige, and—agonizingly slow—slot back into your own consciousness. She's led you to a hollowed-out tree, a massive thing that must've died a long time ago. The bark is bleached to white, ominously sharp in the light of the moon and the stars and your rescuer. The snow hasn't blown into it much, and only by deciding that it is light-years away do you keep yourself from collapsing in relief. Just a little further, Waker, you tell yourself, and stumble forward.

At last, the two of you pass beneath the lip of the tree's hollow, and you still have enough energy to think the unwelcome thought that maybe it's not a tree, but a predator disguising itself as a tree, and you're both going to die.

But as you haltingly make it to the far wall, nothing has devoured you, and with pathetic gratitude and relief you gracelessly fall to the floor. You've somehow managed to buckle your knees, and thrown your wing out to avoid breaking it, but there you are, suddenly reduced to a pile of Waker on the crisp leaf floor. You blink in the silvery light of the stranger, but your shallow breath and shallow pulse doesn't let you speak just yet.

[ Apparently, Waker has been raised to be afraid of spirits?? Dx I'm sorry. Also this is vaguely reminiscent of when Moth had a heatstroke in Helovia, when Onni found him up in the Heavenly Fields. :c ]