Armed I am with love. Disarmed I am.

Fluttering movement—feathers? Nay, just leaves—drew Noah’s bulging, bleary eyes towards the vibrant canopy and the sinister gloom beyond those neon-hued leaves, the sky which looked so heavily pregnant despite the torrents of rain pelting down, filled his heart with a horribly ominous feeling. There was no sign of the familiar, though overgrown, forest of Helovia; neither scent nor sound fed his desperately grappling hope, and the shadows that should have been mere shade beneath the trees was moving! The eagle’s creamy-white chin tucked apprehensively and his well-feathered forelegs thrust down hard treads as he hesitated and reversed. The slow, seeping tide of murk, it seemed, had drawn hither to surround him entirely to discourage any drive to escape, and as he stood—quite terrified—above it, a vision of razor-toothed jaws lifted like a rogue wave above his head. Noah’s ears flattened backwards and hideous horror mangled the painted expression below them; his eyes clenched together along with his densely packed molars, and he wrestled his flailing resolve, entirely preparing for the agony of such a death to descend. But the end never came. When those sandy-blonde lashes peeled apart next, the reddened gaze beneath was startled to find no trace of the jaws which had been— still stranger, the blinking, unnerving shadows which had all but engulfed him, were really nowhere to be seen. His gut, twisted painfully, relinquished the weight of trepidation and at once a small pressure was lifted from his shoulders. The stallion released the breath at length, which he hadn’t noticed he’d been holding. Quickly drawing another, forcing his thoughts beyond the booming sound of his own pulse, he staggered forward, yearning to discover the fate of his beloved mate. “Nora!” he cried out dismally, please, “where are you!” It felt as though he’d been hunting through the labyrinth of tangled vine and vegetation for many hours (in truth it had been minutes). Hope was bleeding from his mind as quickly as the adrenaline dissolving from his bloodstream, and exhaustion was swiftly drowning his capacity to cope. Tears, hot and bitter, were spewing down his cheeks, blending with the channels of ceaseless, saturating rain, and spilling into the puddles which yet formed beneath his listless stride. In those moments, however, when the savage note of his determination was beginning to waver away, the lilt of her sweet voice touch the burdened lean of his ear. All at once the fire in his core reignited, and a harrowed smile lifted the corners of his mouth. Nora stood little more than three lengths from his position—he could see her through the timber—encouraging his numbed legs again to hasten. “My dove,” he whispered as his whiskered jawline lunged forward towards her neck; the mammoth stallion (in comparison), sought to bundle her beneath the embrace of his rising throat. “Are you hurt? Are you alright?” His voice quivered with concern and his offered touch lingered barely seconds as he recoiled his huge face and buried his attentive eyes beneath her darling contours.

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