She didn’t notice Soljor until he was nearly touching her, and started slightly when he finally broke through the heavy curtain of numbness around her. Mercury gazed at him for a moment, eyes wide, before bumping his nose in return. What’s wrong?

She still felt a level of numbness, and assumed this would allow her to tell Soljor what had happened without the words tearing up her throat, but she was wrong. “Caliber --” she started, and choked. The words just wouldn’t come out, and she bit her lip and held her breath until she felt dizzy to keep from crying. She didn’t dare try again, only shook her head a little before shoving her nose into the warm shelter of Soljor’s mane.

“Felony,” she tried after a few minutes. Her throat allowed it, but barely, and nothing more. Mercury hoped it was enough to get the basic message across. She shook her head again; it was over, it was over, there was nothing they could do. “I tried.”

She felt sick. So tired and so sick, too sick to eat and too tired to sleep. There was a tiny voice of reason that told her this would go away someday, that she’d be alright, she’d survive. But it was drowned out by the despair that seemed to slosh around in her head, making waves and currents no matter how still she stood. That only added to her feelings of sickness and exhaustion.

And what could she do? She was stuck her with her pain for however long it took her to die. It might fade, but it would never leave. She might hunt Felony down, and kill him, and bring Caliber home, and it still would have all been her fault. Her head slowly fell toward the snowy ground, her neck too tired to hold it up. Tears made hot little tracks down her cold face and dug round little holes in the snow where they landed.

You love me, and I froze in time
Hungry for that flesh of mine
But I can't compete with the she-wolf
who has brought me to knees
What do you see in those yellow eyes?