With a splash, she fell face first onto the rain-soaked forest canopy, an arrow protruding from her back. She lay there, struggling to move, to lift her body up enough to find him, to see him. Footprints thundered past as she weakly gasped for breath, the mud rising to her mouth as the ground gave way to the weight of her body pressing against it, as if attempting to consume her. Her fair Elven skin already masked by the dirt and blood of the battle from which she had just fallen, the mud threatened to hide it forever. Through sheer power of will, she managed to prop her body up on one elbow, barely enough leverage to scan the ground in front of her.
There. Hardly a few feet from her, saved from the trampling feet of others like her fleeing the carnage by Gods she knew not existed, was her son. Not more than a few months old, wrapped in a thick woolen blanket to protect him from the elements. Her free arm reached out meekly, trying to reach him. To hold him one last time. Her strength was gone though, she could not muster enough force to move another inch. The arrow had paralyzed nearly her entire body. She would never see him again. Never see his eyes again. She knew not what lay in store for her people nor her son, she just hoped that he would live to see their survival.
A large boot landed next to the bundle of wool, followed by another on the other side. Two hands reached down and grabbed the child, hoisting it into the air, above her head to where she could not see the fate of her son. Extending the frost-bitten fingers of her outstretched arm, pleading for her child to be returned to her, she sighed her last breath, succumbing to the earth's grasp.
