BeautyBerry

Button made by the lovely Jyxxie!

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Everything stopped. Her daughter turned and walked away with a sneer, and her mother couldn't even cry out, couldn't even blink sadly at her receding frame. Her limbs simply stopped, then her voice, and then her face. Then there was nothing at all, and she was plunged into darkness. She was cold; the inability to blink caused her eyes to ache and swim when she did try to look.
She realized slowly - she thought slowly. But she was still thinking, and turning things in her mind, and she realized something was happening. It wasn't still, it was slow. She was trapped under feet of ice with no way out, and yet she could still make out the surface of the water if she tried.

At some point, her brain connected with her hand to move one claw, just a bit. She couldn't have imagined it - she didn't see much anymore, only shapes and colors twisting. She had felt it.

Time passed in eternities, as did thought. She forgot her own name, and remembered it. The abstract shapes of her family - her mate and children - filled her with warmth and loss, the feelings spreading slowly through her body. Somehow, it felt as though she was thawing.


She could move more now. Wiggle a claw, twitch an ear. Her fur ruffled occasionally in a dank breeze blowing through the cave entrance.

When she saw a shadow fall across it, she was so sure it was them at last - her family - and she wanted to cry and beg for them to right her, to take her back -

But the frightened eyes that met hers were not familiar. She'd forgotten other dragons' existences completely in the time she'd been slowed, unmoving.