The Songbird and the Wolf

[ I ] Iron and Silver

Upon a bloodstained battlefield, the Princess of the Fae fights for her life.

Dual blades glint in the late-afternoon sun, sweeping, cleaving and parrying, leaving her opponent little choice but to stagger ever backward. Desperately trying to escape her lethal reach.

All in vain, for it doesn't take long for there to be nowhere left to run.

Her right blade aims true, sinking to the hilt in a clean motion.

The stranger screams, but the sound dies before his body hits hard earth, she follows him.

Kneeling, she murmurs a half-hearted prayer, something between apology and a farewell.

A tradition - one most of her people had abandoned mere months into this.

But Elodie had always felt it was the least she could do.

With a thrash of wings, the Princess is upright again, snatching the wince back from plain view.

After several days, there is barely an inch of her that isn't bloodied, muddied and bruised. The exhaustion a thing that pulls at her bones, heavies them.

Elodie was well versed in this this dance, but even she had grown weary of this tune.

She couldn't remember the scent of the air, untarnished by blood.

What the world sounded like, without the screams of the dying.

What her body felt like, without the ache and pain burrowing its way into every crevice of her.

But there is work to be done before she can earn herself a reminder.

Her eyes graze the battlefield, seeking out the next enemy with an unnerving steel.

But who she finds isn't foe, but friend.

There is a soft, grating sound as he steps, wings dragging across the earth. The metal shards embedded at the tips of each of his four wings scraping past armour, dirt and corpses.

Making his way toward her is Astor, picking his way between the bodies and gore with a careful elegance disproportionate to his bulk.

His pale skin is so covered in a grime that it is barely visible beneath the medley, blonde curls plastered to his skull, the angles of which are gaunt.

Yet when he sets his gaze on Elodie, he manages a smile.

"Princess," is all he deems necessary by way of greeting.

She might have grinned, now a sigh is all she can muster.

Blood staining every part of her, scarlet locks matted to her scalp. She knows without looking that a bruise covers a large portion of her chest and lower abdomen.

If she thinks too hard, she could feel the line of the fracture along her ribs. 

Her wings are tattered and torn, pain jolt through her like electricity with every flutter.

She has never felt less a Princess in her life.

Astor offers her a leather water-skin, which she takes gratefully. She needs to put effort behind stopping the trembling as she lifts it to her lips, taking long, steady sips of it.

It's lukewarm, stale. It is the most delicious thing she has ever tasted.

But she stops drinking long before her thirst is satiated and passes it back to him.

Astor makes to return the skin to his belt, and she sets him with a stare.

No words are needed as, with a grunt, the younger fae relents and takes three, long gulps.