thousand times I've fallen

KIADA you kneel and say your prayers with shaking hands and a mouth full of metal but the blood in your mouth tastes nothing He doesn’t do anything while she’s searching him over, while she’s removing a few of the furs to see how badly she’d gotten him with her talons, to see if there’s any bones that had popped out of their sockets she could try to piece back together. Auni is at Korbin’s other side, the luxere curling up around Korbin’s head, his own antlered head resting there as if he can help give some sort of comfort. But Korbin continues to say nothing, to look away from her even, and Kiada clenches her jaw as she runs her hands along him, hissing as her side throbs. “Korbin, look at me, please...” She says, her hands running up to his shoulders, pressing her thumbs into the hollows below his collarbones. “I’m sorry.” She utters again, fighting through her frustration to focus on him and what she could do. So she withdraws, peeling away the furs from her own body, rolling it up to give him a pillow to rest on, to give him some kind of comfort. Something. nothing, like holy wine as it drips from your tongue during confession and your hail mary feels h o l l o w in the face of all that r e d