Shame burned under her pelt at being so easily found out. There was no use in hiding it, if he had already guessed.
Her tail shifted, revealing her paws. It was only the toes, and only a few of them, but the way the impacts had made them grow crooked contrasted greatly with her unnaturally immaculate appearance. One of many strange things the two-legs did to her....
She felt Hawkbite's gaze lift to find hers, and so she looked up to meet his, trying to ignore how her paws had begun to shake. If they weren't so firmly planted to the ground, it might have been visible as well.
"Maybe I'm just... Too weak, from my time here. I was never very strong to start... But, I don't want to be wrong. I don't want it to fail just because I underestimated...."
Her voice trailed off, and her head hung from it's place on her neck as her shoulders sagged. She stared for a moment, two, and then another before picking herself up to once again press herself against her best friend.
Her head found his chest and she laid her ear against it, listening to him breathe, to his heart. The sound of it grounded her, kept her from spiraling.
"I doubt the state of my shoulder helped," she mumbled.
She might have been healed with the aide of whatever magic these two-legs had, but it did not erase what was done. It did not change that whatever had burrowed into her flesh and shattered her shoulder had left something lasting, and taken something she would never get back.
Woollyfeather stared, unseeing, into the horizon as every polite sense absorbed as much of the tom as they could. She sat like this for as long as he'd let her, for as long as this dream lasted before they were once again drawn apart....
How long until she'd see him again after this?
The thought of being left alone made her heart squeeze painfully and panic and anguish churn in her belly.
She wanted out, so desperately, but the idea of being plunged into isolation again, for even one more day, made her want to claw away the feeling, claw her own skin until there was nothing but blissful emptiness. But if she did not let him go, there would be no end to this ever-present state of limbo.
The only thing that drew her out of her stupor when his voice, drawing her out of her head and the sea of tumultuous emotions within. Her jaw clenched, and eyes pricked, becoming watery as she was plunged into new waves of desperation and longing.
Even Dawnstar wanted her to come back....
The idea was so foreign she almost didn't believe it. Even more foreign, was knowing at one point she would have felt blessed, honoured even to know the leader wished for her return. Now, it only left an empty feeling in her belly as her thoughts inevitably wandered to Vulturefang and their children together.
Did they miss her too?
...
Why hadn't Vulturefang come for her?
With a choked sob, she turned her face to bury herself into Hawkbite's fur, her mind whispering soothing words to explain away the absence of the one who should have been first to coming looking for her: He was busy, of course. There was the Clan, their kits, all duties more important than a single missing warrior.
And yet, none of it made the burning bitterness, the aching realization any less bruising to the fragile skin of her heart or the tender and shattered recesses of her mind.
No, she realized he didn't care. Either never did, or he gave up on her.
....
A less tormented Woollyfeather might have understood, might have forgiven him.
But she could not, would not when she'd spent all these moons wanting most to see
him, hold
him, raise
their children with him....
She'd dreamed and wished and prayed to get a chance to say words so precious to her, so dear to her heart to a man who hadn't even given her a sign he hadn't given up on her. The idea, the hope of what could be had been a tether for her when Hawkbite was away....
And she didn't even know if he'd tried.
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