C Y R E N E TAKE THIS SINKING BOAT and point it home · · ·
Blood. It was all over her, dripping down her feathers and soaking her wine red pelt a gory shade of crimson. She could taste it in her mouth, sticking against her tongue like ash: the metallic, acrid taste of death. But it was not her own. It never was. The soldier’s wide, gaping eyes made him look scarcely a man – just a boy – as Cyrene pressed a fresh rag against the weeping gash that spanned from shoulder to stomach along his trembling sides. “Can you hear me?” she asked, grimacing as he replied with a wheezing cough that stained the bandage she’d applied all the way through. The spear had missed his lung, but it was lodged too deeply in his side for her to remove safely. Yet each second she hesitated was another subtracted from his life – he was losing too much blood. Not another. I will not lose another. Quickly, Cyrene pulled out more bandages from her bloodstained satchel as she poured a small vial of green liquid down his throat. One of her mother’s recipes – it would keep him alive, for now. “What I just gave you will stem the blood loss, and ease the pain. But I will have to move you,” she spoke to him, as she wiped the sweat from her brow with a weary wing. “Can you try and stand? What is your name, soldier?” She had to keep him talking, had to keep him conscious. He could not succumb to the darkness, not yet. How many had she lost? How many had she saved? It didn’t matter. The answer would always be too many, and not enough. Their lives would always slip from her grasp no matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she begged for them to stay. Mamá. Papá. Cygnus. Don’t leave me. Again and again and again, all they did was die. “You, over there. What are you doing?” dull leonine eyes narrowed as Cyrene fixed her gaze upon a young healer, one of the few they'd brought from Terrastella, hovering motionless over the slashed body of an armor-clad boy. Davke or Solterran – she couldn’t tell. What difference did it make? In a sea of swollen bodies, the dead held no more loyalties. Her tone was eerily soft as she appraised the shaking healer with a sigh. “He is dead. There is nothing more you can do. But him,” she murmured, tipping her head towards the soldier leaning heavily against her withers. “He is alive. It is not too late for him. Please, escort this man to the infirmary and rest while you're there. It will be a long night.” Though the battle raged in another part of the city now, it was far from over. If it would ever be over; the Davke attack was only the beginning, and she would be a fool to assume otherwise. How was it possible that she had arrived with Florentine to a shining, bustling Solterra only hours before? One moment, Day and Dusk had sealed their alliance with the curling signatures of two radiant queens. And the next – blood had been spilled before the ink had even dried. Never had Cyrene imagined she would be saving lives, and losing them, in carnage so horrifying again. Not so soon. Not when she could barely stomach the smell of smoke because it reminded her of the corpses she had burned like kindling, breathing in their ashes until she had coughed nothing but black tar for days. Not when all she wanted to do, was curl in a ball while Cassandra smoothed her hair and hummed melodies she no longer remembered the words of. But there was no time for the luxury of grief. No time, no time. I'll grieve when I'm dead. "speech" | @everyone | notes: cy's cleaning up after all of y'all
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