River’s mind was still half full of fog, even as the harsh noise of metal scraped her ears.  She could only half-remember what had happened until she forced herself upright.  It all came back in a flash as she looked around her cage: the bloodstained field, the strange army that cut through the hills, and the bizarre figure that plucked her out of her hiding-spot in the trees as if she were merely an apple.

Almost reflexively, she felt her hair for her Mother and Father, and she breathed a sigh of relief when they met her fingertips.  There was barely any feeling in one of her wings.  She must have slept on it.  The feathers were filthy and out of place, and she longed for a bath, but she’d find no such thing in this prison, and the sounds of clinking metal, voices, and opening cells filled her with newfound urgency.
  
As she exited her cell, still flexing her tingling wing, she almost immediately came across a small group of people gathered around the smallest of them.  The little-one barely spoke except for mumbled repetitions of what the others were saying.  If it weren’t for the Human and the other Winged-Woman, River would have said that the little-one was somehow the least strange out of all of them; one woman looked like a corpse for goodness sake!  River stared at them, silently for barely a moment before the shock of them all wore off.

“If this is a jailbreak,” she said, striding up to them, “shouldn’t we be moving a little quicker?”  She crouched in front of the little-one.  “Can’t you stand?  Are you hurt somewhere?  We need to get moving fast if we want to escape.  Here,” she moved slightly, and shifted her wings, “you can nestle in there, and I’ll carry you if you can’t walk.”