if you and I can make it through the night

WAKER

Warming up is not a pleasant experience. You've known this for a long time, but until tonight, it has, mostly, been a theoretical knowledge. You've been rain-soaked and shivering many times, but the discomfort has been brief—your strangely numb skin itching, cold beneath the tentative touch of your plush muzzle, yet it felt as if you were on fire. Your homeland is not a cold place, but you've heard tales from wanderers, about the dangers of the snow and the freezing season. How, as your body temperature drops too low, you'll actually feel warm again, too warm, and, perhaps, mistakenly stumble out of whatever shelter you had.

You don't think you ever came to that point today. You think, but you're not sure, that you stopped shivering for a bit, but as the fire breathes life back into you, you certainly started doing it again. It makes you feel very strange. There's just too many sensations, and they contradict themselves.

Taivas doesn't answer after you give her your name, twice. You're not sure you expected her to, and somewhere, you agree with her, that maybe it is for the best. You are, after all, awfully tired and worn.

Eventually, she looks away from you, back at the little fire she's made. You gaze absently at her face a little longer, before you follow suit. Your eyelids droop. The flame flickers beyond your eyelashes.

You don't want to admit to having failed, to having lost; you don't want to let go. You want to shake yourself awake, to force yourself up on aching, stumbling legs, take wing in the dark winter night and fly back the way you had come. You want to make it to the southern rampart, you want to do what little you can.

You don't want to waste time.

But you have to.

You're not going to just swallow that you're stuck here, but for the moment, you definitely are. You've been unable to save patients before—it's a bitter feeling coursing through your veins as life goes out underneath your touch, but in those cases, at least you did something. You were there, even if you were too late.

Now, you're not. It stings. You let your eyes close against the soothing fire, pressed tight in denial. You know what you should do—you should forgive yourself, and drift into the darkness of healing sleep, but you're afraid to. What if you can still return, but your chance will be lost in a few hours..?

It is a pointless argument. You can't even stand, Waker. Tears sting the corners of your closed eyes, mixing with the rain and sweat and snow drying there, and silently, calmly, you cry yourself to sleep.