Departing to Seek Mamá

//Buckle up, I'm giving you another slow, emotional chapter. It was going to be longer, but then I realized the next scene would really be an odd break from the end of this one. You're welcome~<3 And welcome to the new guys.

"Sophia?" Sonata murmured, placing a hand on the little girl's cheek.

It had been hours since she'd woken up. "Woken," that was an awkward word for it, because she'd tried hard to stay awake. She was far too scared to sleep with the current state of the little girl by her side, and spent most of the night breaking in and out of a heavy trace to constantly snap out of it and check on Sophia, making sure she was still breathing. She didn't want to sleep, and so when she found herself waking up, her body against the cold ground and the soft morning light barely illuminating the cave, she did it with the jarring terror that Sophia was dead.

But she was here. Alive, unconscious, consistently sick and stably getting worse.

Sonata's chest clenched unto itself. Her shoulders trembled as she tried to pull herself together from a heavy emotion that kept pressing down on the back of her chest, threatening to spill everything out.

"Sophia? Please? Wake up." Her scared voice rung into the cave as she lightly lightly tapped her little sister's small reddened cheek.

Nothing.

She tapped it a little more firmly, her breaths quickening as she leaned down to make sure she was still breathing, but it was hard to do over the sound of her own loud breathing and the jittering of her bones. She pressed her head down on Sophia's chest, listening for her heart, and was relieved when she could hear the faint rumble of her dragon heart.

Sonata's knees sunk down. She was alive.

"Sophia? Are you okay?"

She tapped at her small, feverish cheek over and over, trying to get some sort of response. The doll-like princess continued to sleep unresponsively, her reddish lips slightly open, the seconds between the small shifts of her chest barely moving up and down beneath the blanket enough to scare the eleven year old cold. But she wouldn't wake up. She'd been trying to gently stir her for hours, now, a cycle of panicking and gently trying to rouse her and then recoiling in the fear of being too rough all over again. The little girl didn't eyes didn't move behind their lids, and her throat didn't make those pained sounds that told Sonata she was at least a little conscious, when she coughed or sneezed.

"Sophia...I don't know what to do." She held the sleeping child's tiny hands in her own. They were so pale and delicate, curled passively into into themselves, tiny enough to fit into Sonata's hands and be covered by them, surprisingly hot for their tiny size. She felt salty tears drip down out of her eyelids and off her cheek. One of them landed near Sophia's jaw, and she wiped it away. Still, she didn't wake. Sophia was usually so ticklish at the delicate skin around her neck area. Something was so, so wrong.

"Please," she whispered, not even sure if she wanted to be heard. "I want help you, but I don't know how. Someone tell me how to help you...someone...anyone..."

The only reply she received was the sound of her own quickly-beating heart and the wind blowing against the walls of the cavern.

Hic

Sonata wiped her eyes, arms trembling from the shoulders down in a tremor she couldn't stop.

Hic Hic

She swallowed back the threatening sobs that stubbornly manifested as hiccups. She sniffled back her tears, releasing those tiny hands and placing them gently back under the warm, fur-lined blue cloak their mother had left with them. Strands of her pale green hair, illuminated to look mildly see-through in the orange firelight and blue cast, brushed against the sandy floor as she wobbled stightly and stood up. She stared down at the sleeping form of her sister as her bare feet took one, then two hesitant steps back, her glistening green eyes lingering on the small smudge of pale yellow in her vision, where the small girl's soft ringlets were sprawled across the ground. It was long hair for her, but if Sonata were to compare it, it would only be about the length of her arm, from root to end. She was such a small thing...

Hic

"I promised I'd protect you," Sonata choked, wiping her face. Her feet lingered as she forced them to turn around and walk. Bit by bit, she fed stronger wood into the flame and built another, separate pile.

Her body felt like an old machine after watching Sophia for so long. She tore herself a large chunk of meat off the roe. She hadn't eaten in a day. She sniffled, wiping her face. Sophia hadn't eaten in just as long.

She blew soft warmth into the second fire as she sniffled back tears and wiped her face, taking hurried chomps out of the half-frozen flesh in her hand. She tore another, slightly smaller chunk of meat off of the leg of the beast (it was nearly half stripped down, by now) and impaled it onto a stick, pressing her face onto her knees as she let the flesh take its time to smoke and cook. Her large eyes that were the only thing peeking out from her curled-up legs blinked back tears, her long, straight hair fallen over her shoulders to make her look not unlike some green, mountainous creature with no form or angles.

She distracted herself with the pushing and recoiling tendrils of the fire, the yellow whiffs and the harder orange whips of color.

Hic

She thought the hiccups were over. It was a little painful for them to go on for so long.

Hic

The roe was about cooked. She wiped her face, standing up and resting it with her hand. It was still quite a bit hot, so she blew on it, tapping it with her fingers to try and ease the heat away.

"Sophia?"

She began to tear a minuscule morsel of flesh off the stick.

"Sophia? Please, you need to eat," she called hopefully, prodding the small pinch of slightly charred, brown flesh against Sophia's lips. She tried forcing Sophia's mouth open and slipping the meat in, but when she tried to make her chew, her tongue got in the way. Was she really that deep asleep? How would she even make Sophia swallow, if she somehow managed to make her chew?

Realizing her sister wasn't going to wake up anytime soon, Sonata placed the meat gently down besides Sophia's head.

Her heart throbbed for the tiny princess below her. Sonata felt the ache of the muscles she'd exherted almost crying and fighting the urge to cry for so long. Not realizing she was frowning so much, not realizing her eyes were squinting into the darkness.

The dragoness took a deep breath and pulled back to wipe her face, relaxing all her facial muscles until the muscles that had been crying out seemed to sigh.

She vaguely remembered that thing once again, the thing her uncle had done with an infant Sophia that made her stop crying and calm down. How had he done that? The only clue she had was that he touched her forehead with his hand and then her scales stuck out a little bit. Had that been some sort of dragon magic? If it was dragon magic, she could probably do it. Though she didn't completely understand how he'd done it and exactly what he'd done, now was as good as ever a time to try.

Let's see...

Sonata laid her shoulder against the ground so she was at eye level with the sleeping princess, and pressed her palms to her cheeks. She couldn't feel anything happening. It wasn't like she hadn't touched Sophia's face before.

Sonata closed her eyes, trying to imagine what a dragon's spell like that would feel like. If she wanted Sophia to feel better...warmth. She tried to imagine warm light moving down from her chest to her palms, not fire, just the energy part of it, just the warmth aspect that had a healing feeling about it when you sat by a fire, and the light that could calm you down to see. She thought she could feel a bit of a tingly sensation around the inside of one of her elbows, but it could have just as easily been a small lapse in muscle weakness, or a complete figment of her mind.

She pressed her forehead to Sophia's, squeezing her eyes shut, trying with all her strength to accomplish what she didn't even know she could achieve, to do something she'd never been taught to do.

I give you my strength. Take it. Hang in there for me.

Nothing happened except the realization that she was probably gripping Sophia's cheeks a little too tightly. She released the palm-sized mounds and pulled away, rubbing her eyes and stifling a small yawn. There were a few faint chapped-lip-like scales that had come free from their usual binding, but they quickly faded as Sonata's eyes recovered from her momentary lapse of sleepiness. She couldn't tell if Sophia's expression was any calmer than it'd been. She hoped whatever little comfort and strength she'd somehow managed to give her would be enough.

She glanced back at the fire. A lot of spare wood, a spare fire, check. Food in case she woke up, check. Sophia's current state consistent and not suddenly taking a turn for the worse?

Sonata brushed her hair out of her face, abruptly aware of the singularity of her presence in the large, empty cave. Without company, the cave seemed so big. It was dark and cold and lonely.

It was just her choice if she stayed or left, if Sophia lived or died. If she decided to stay till the end, or she left to take the chance of saving her. Even if she stepped too clumsily and fell, or dropped a stone her way as she walked, Sophia didn't even have the strength to duck out of the way. She wasn't even awake to acknowledge her if she left.

"S-Sophia," she began. It was weird. No one was even listening to her, all alone on this distant corner of the forest, with a sister unconscious with a fever. But her voice struggled to come out.

"I'm going to go...find Mama...someone... I promise I'll come back from you. I just...don't know what else to do. And I don't know how to save you alone. I-I d-don't want" her back stiffened, her leg was twitching with the pent up energy to turn and run.

Sonata filled her lungs with air, took a deep breath, and let it fall out.

"I'll find her somehow."

She stuck out the edge of her tongue. She didn't want to leave, not really, but with the pent up energy she'd focused on her legs, it was hard to keep them from breaking out into a run. Her stomach clamped into itself with the fear of leaving her here. But at least for now, she was as safe alone in the cave as she was with Sonata here with her.

Even if I have to run and keep running until I can no longer feel my legs, I'll find her. I promise. So...

"Wait for me."

And before she knew it, she was running out into the blindingly bright snow, leaving the darkness of the black cave.

Do not stray far from the cave.

Do not let anyone see you, let alone in your dragon form.

Do not, under any circumstances, give out your true name.