Regret. Shock. Anger. Horror. Disgust. Depression. Loss. Hopeless.

She felt many things...too many things as she burst from the cave. Everything hurt. Her body hurt, her mind hurt, her very soul was quivering with pain. It should not have happened like this. It could not have happened like this. They were supposed to run in, screaming for blood, torn Rift apart, and went back to their tunnel, victorious. They were supposed to win.

Well, they had won. They'd gone in and done what they were meant to do...but it shouldn't have happened like this. None of it should have. Huckleberry had fallen to protect her, screaming and writhing in glowing plasma. Cloudberry had fallen...somehow. She had not seen how one of her youngest had been killed. Yewberry had been taken by that black cat, who had then fallen to her. And Elderberry, poor Elderberry, gone forever. Crushed into dust, the dust crushed to nothing. And she would have fallen into the same fate.

Tears were streaming from her eyes as she ran and flew, but she was too weak to go any farther. She tripped and fell, collapsed, moaning as the wounds across her body flooded her senses. The burns she had endured, the teeth that had bitten into her, the antlers that had stabbed into her body. She was in so much pain, she could barely see. Her vision was hazy and the tears made it worse.

She had been in this tunnel once before. A long, long time ago. She had been a child then, egging on a little white snake. Suffering from pain after its venomous bite. Not as much pain as now, but to her it had been the worst.

And then...a little creature had found her, paralyzed, curled in pain. A little moose, full of life and enthusiasm. He had healed her. Him, a gentle soul, a good creature, he had given her herbs to soothe her pain because he had thought her cool, dangerous, but someone to be revered. He had offered himself, he'd give himself to her, because he thought that she deserved him. That he could follow her and be her ward against danger, against evil. To protect her, the cool goose with the scars and the bite.

She did not deserve him.

As she lay on the ground, magic long forgotten, long unused, flooded into her system. The burns began to alleviate and heal, the stab wounds and the bite marks clotted and scabbed, although they did not heal completely. Her tail, mangled and destroyed, only quivered as the magic passed through it. There was no repair for that. Some of her pain went away, but the real torment was her mind, the terrible knowledge of what had happened. Her son was dead. Her beloved Son. Blueberry's son.

She found herself in a crevice, a familiar little cave, a hole in the wall, really, that she had found long ago. The bed she had once lain in was still there, much too small for her now. The whole place had gone undisturbed for the cycles she had been gone.

As she settled herself in the bed, she arched her neck down and pushed her beak into the moss. It was dry and old and any scent that Blueberry had left was long gone. The knowledge that he was not there, his absence, his horrible absence, it crushed her, like the dark hole had crushed his son. She had not seen Blueberry in so long. Her love, her one love, where had he gone?!

She sobbed as the weight of her loss fell onto her shoulders. Regret. Horror. Hopelessness. They were what stayed and stabbed at her heart like no claw or antler could ever do. She sobbed into her feathers, into the bed where Blueberry had once lain and despaired.

She didn't want to leave. She never wanted to leave. She wished she had died out there with Elderberry, body crushed into nothing. She would rather die then live without Blueberry. He had been gone for far too long. She didn't know if he would ever return. She wanted to know where he was but she couldn't bring herself to care. She didn't want to live without him.

And as she lay there and despaired and fell into a state of complete depression and loss, from around her head, a crystal began to form. It traveled over her body, even though she was healing, until it curled her up and encased her in a deep blue prison. She cried into her sleep until she was taken by darkness. A darkness filled with dreams of the past, of Blueberry and of her children. Of the happy times where she was surrounded by love before it tore it away and threw her into nothing.

*exit