Saddle

 They call it the shifter’s plague, although Larkspur knows that’s malicious rumor and perhaps propaganda; the shifters are immune, but she and Snow never saw any way they were responsible. Not that that stopped the mobs. Or, eventually, the killings.

The process... That internal, infuriating pain, like a sore tooth or a gimpy nerve, all over, all at once, the need to soothe everything, to chew everywhere. Screaming, but hurting her own ears. Larkspur lies where she eventually fell in the trail when she could no longer lean on Snow. When there was no Snow to lean on.

Her nose is full of him, and herself, in a vexing mix that makes her think he’s just out of sight. The new fur, his fur, is a warm hug and a suffocating heat.

Slowly, with bones of iron, she tries to pull herself off of the ground. She cannot feel her limbs; it isn’t until her hands are in front of her face as she crawls that she realizes that she has functional fingers. Claws are new. Paw pads are new.

Larkspur takes slow, measured breaths as she tries to make her body work. Her lungs protest. Her lungs are perhaps malformed. The glimpses she sees as she tries to gather her limbs... there must be something wrong. Even more wrong. She cannot be this fortunate.

And then her pins-and-needles fingers clench on the leather of Snow’s saddle and Larkspur freezes. Her dog is gone. Snow is gone. Each moment, each breath, he is with her, but he’s gone. The sobs wrack her body, but she has no outlet and no tears. Her piteous sounds remind her too much of Snow in the midst of the meld, and she forces herself silent.

Larkspur uses the saddle to lever herself to her knees. He’s gone. There are bits and pieces of him with her now—paws, face, fur, maybe a tail she can’t feel right now—but the only thing left is the saddle.

It’s that saddle, its leather later worked into bits on her new satchel, that comforts her when her caravan starts in again about the success other victims have had with a true polymorph spell. She grips the strap-that-was-a-stirrup and nods until they go away.

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