TRD: The Lion's Roar [Pt 5]

It was raining.

That was the first thing she noticed when her eyes opened. It came down in sheets, the droplets sticking to her fur and running off red, pooling around her head and in between the cracks of the cobblestones. It was cold against her skin, numbing her body, numbing the searing pain on her face; so much that she could barely even feel it as it continued to drum against her pelt. The sky was dark, heavy with the storm that showed no signs of passing, and as pain began to grow between her eyes she couldn’t help but marvel at the colors the raindrops created as they fell towards her and created ripples in the watery blood surrounding her body.

It was raining, and she didn’t know who she was.

As she stared up numbly at the rolling sky, her thoughts lazy and sluggish, a dark shape appeared above her and blocked out her view of the rain. It had a mouth, and it was moving, but no sound came out, and she could only blink tiredly at it. She just wanted to see the rain. Why was it blocking the rain? It was the only thing that made sense in this world. It was the only thing she remembered; the only thing that helped to stop the lines of hot white pain that burned her flesh like brands. The pain was above her eyes, across her nose, over her mouth, stretching from her neck to her ear and everywhere from the chest up. If she had been fully conscious and coherent she would have screamed, cried, anything, but everything in her was muted and dull and hazy – all she wanted was the rain back. It was the only thing she recognized, besides the searing burns spreading across her face.

It was raining, and all she knew was that she hurt.

Her vision began to focus, and after what felt like a lifetime – but was only a few seconds – later she found herself staring up into tear-filled sea green eyes. They belonged to a cub. It was small, and shaking, and its mouth was still moving but she didn’t know what it was saying. Everything was groggy, and wet, in her head and on her fur, and she just wanted the cub to move so that the pain would go away again. But it didn’t. It stayed hanging over her head, staring straight into her eyes, searching, frantically searching, and it was then that she recognized panic blooming in their depths and that it was shaking with fear instead of cold. And something deep within her chest made her mind sharpen just enough that the muffled words suddenly became clear:

“Please wake up, please, you have to, we have to go, he could be back at any minute, please wake up please I’m begging you –“

It was raining, and someone needed her.

So she pushed herself to her stomach. She stared at the blood on the ground, the blood dripping from her face, the face that was on fire despite the water pouring from the sky. Her head swam, and her vision danced, but the cub looked so relieved that for a moment her pain was forgotten just like the rest of her was. The cub came close, and cried into her fur, and she let it even if she didn’t know why or who it was or what had happened. And then she looked down to the puddles of rain-washed blood and the two bodies of butchered cubs and the cracked pendant glittering coldly in the half-light and felt nothing but the pain on her face and the rain on her fur and the warmth of the cub pressed against her side.

"You were dead, you were killed, he killed you but you came back."

It was raining, and she had woken up dead.