[AW] take an angel by the wings

[Samaira]

my spirit's veering flight
like swallows under evening skies.

She woke up screaming with the sound of air still rushing past her ears like a haunting memory. But she was not falling, not plummeting toward the earth and the inevitable destruction of her. She woke up in the night, with the moonlight spilling silver pools across the wet ground and shadows growing in closer around her and she could not remember what had happened after the arrow entered her wing. The scream had died off her lips as her chest heaved with breath and her heart still raced as she pushed herself to more of an upright position.

Both of her wings were sprawled out at her sides and as she reflexively moved to press them against her a sharp pang radiated through the right one. Her wing crooked awkwardly—almost lazily—outward, with the arrow still pierced through the elbow joint. Unable to bend it, it was too far from her reach to properly inspect it. The pain was a throbbing sort of ache if she kept it still, but more than that she worried about permanent damage. What if they had managed to take her wings from her without actually removing them? She couldn't imagine which fate was worse, to have them and not be able to use them or not to have them at all.

Samaira turned her attention from the wing with a heavy breath, and got her first good look around. She hadn't a clue where she was or where the guards had gone. Perhaps she'd been abandoned someplace, but would they just leave her here to die? Surely they would not leave her with a chance of escape, regardless of her injury. Maybe, she thought, she was being observed, and her silver eyes warily flickered over the forest around her. Over the years her family had lived in many expansive, remote forests but this swamp was completely unfamiliar. It was humid, and alive with the sound of bugs. Where had she ended up?

A part of her said that she was taking this too well, that there was not enough flight instinct inside her. The pegasus wondered if she was still in shock, and she half expected another arrow to come flying toward her from the shadows. But it all seemed quiet, almost too quiet. Her heart still raced at the memory of being hunted, of being chased down like a criminal. To them she had been. It had been a crime for her to live at all, despite the fact that she had never bothered anyone. For her to simply breathe and walk was a felony.

Samaira remembered the dark look on Cassius' face as he turned her in to the guards searching her home. She had been foolish to let him in, but even still did her heart remember how it had felt for him. Her skin felt flushed, but from fever or emotion she did not know. Then she had a sudden thought: what if he was here, hiding, waiting, just beyond her sight? There was no way she could know what sort of deal he had struck when he went to the Warden about her location. Then she thought she heard a sound, and all of her muscles stiffened. "Who is there?" she asked to the trees, more bravely than she felt.

ooc things