[open] The dark of December

[Pteron]

and since you’re the only one that matters,----------------
----------------tell me: who do i run to?

She snaps at him, and Pteron freezes despite that wide distance still between them. It is not that he is fearful of her (in this state he could probably knock her over with a single tap of his wing), but rather that he respects the space she demands – even if it is a rather impressively large amount of space. But then she doesn’t move again, and so he comes closer, his head lowered to try and meet her gaze beneath the bloodsoaked flop of her mane.

“Neverwhere?” he repeats. There is no part of her large enough that he cannot touch without bloodying his muzzle, and he doubts she would want him to, even to rouse her. She’s drifting in and out of consciousness, Pteron is almost sure of it. “Neverwhere!” he repeats louder, just before she asks about her ears. The brown mare is certainly not fine, but Pteron is not sure how to convince her of this if she can’t even focus on him standing in front of her.

“Wake up!” he demands, his voice raised against both the wind and whatever keeps pulling her under. “You need to wake up, and we need to get you to a healer.” Pteron has no idea where a healer might be found, and he realizes this as the words leave his mouth. He’d taken Vastra to Day in the Pampas, but how likely is the gifted mare to still live there all these years later? And that seems quite far away, especially if he cannot even wake Neverwhere, let alone get her to walk that distance. 

There seem to be few options, but the only one that he is certain of is the one to simply leave her here. That one is not acceptable. He wonders briefly if that choice would disappoint his mother, but he scolds himself for it afterward. She wants the North, not dead Northerners, not even their queen. The stallion leans down, nudges her bare pink nose with his teal one and says: “You have to wake up. You can’t sleep here.”

@[Neverwhere]

-- pteron --