When Serpent and Cicada have finished tending to Rowan, she's moved to a more sheltered spot. Maple moves her bedding with her, adding whatever little he'd scraped together for his own nest to hers. She looks so terribly small like this, frailer than even when she was a kit. Lovebug joins them too, lying down next to Rowan. Maple settles next to Rowan, sitting up to try and prevent himself from dozing off. He uses his long fluffy tail to cover what he can of Rowan's body.
During the night, she wakes up a few times– each time terrified and confused, asking him not to leave her side. He promises he won't, and she falls back asleep. The following day passes similarly, although Rowan does wake up enough sometime during sunhigh to eat a mouse someone was kind enough to give her. Maple doesn't eat anything, refusing when Rowan offers him some of hers. Not long after she finishes, she falls asleep again.
Maple can't sleep. There's unrest in the air, tension thick as ice during leafbare. He spends the whole day with the growing feeling that something terrible is going to happen. It comes true a little later– in the dead of night, suddenly fighting breaks out. He hears it before he sees it, and panic builds in him with a dizzying speed. He has to get Rowan out of here. If this fight is about what he thinks it's about, they'll be seen as Hawthorne loyalists, and she won't be safe, and she's already injured– they can't risk staying. He has to get her out of here, take her somewhere safe.
"Ro," he says, bending down to press his nose to her cheek. "Ro, come on– we have to get out of here. Can you walk?" Rowan stirs, and then there's a loud shriek from some cat– she's startled out of her sleep, and Lovebug along with her. Rowan nods, although she looks unsteady on her paws, like when she took her first steps. Maple walks along side her, letting her lean against him. He turns his head over his shoulder; "Lovebug– you can't help her more than you already have, and you certainly can't help her if you get injured too. Get out of here while you can, and we'll catch up."
//
@Lovebug! @carat
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