"I'm fine! I mean it-- you're not... I don't mind that-- w-we, we've gotta go, ok? We've gotta go, we... please, c'mon, we, we gotta, Hyra please! Let's run!"

It's difficult in the best of times to get a wolf to run when it doesn't want to, and these? Not the best of times! And Hyra's not exactly your average wolf, for that matter. The way she wraps her arm around Yue's space, the way she plants her feet and points her gorgeously shining sword up toward the Evil Tyrant Qiu, the way her beautiful, perfect, oh-so-wiry-and-firm muscles tighten, anybody with eyes and a brain not overwhelmed by fear could tell without even trying very hard that Hyra was ready to break herself here and now if it meant protecting Yue. Running wasn't even a word to her anymore. 

Maybe it's because Hyra is a handmaiden and a good packmate, and guarding precious things is what she was born to do. Maybe it's because she's a proper hero (unlike [i]some[/i] people we could name) and impossible odds make her blood quicken instead of causing her heart to shrink and her legs to knock together until she can't stand up anymore. Or maybe, and you should probably have considered this first Yue, maybe she's in an impossible spot where if she's good and brave and willing to lose the moon will stay in the sky and she'll get to keep being herself for a while longer. Just a while longer, Yue! What's so hard to understand? 

But Yue is mean, and cruel and selfish. This is twice now she's been in the part of the story where the protagonists make a daring last minute escape and it's twice that she's found it way less fun to do than to read about. Maybe someday somebody would write her story down too, and if they do she really hopes they sit down and talk with her first so she can explain how awful this bit is. She hates this feeling, actually. It stinks to be so weak and useless. It stinks finding out you've got it in you to stand up to the great evils of your time but then not have anything left over to stick around and deal with the consequences. 

But what's she supposed to do, huh? Qiu is, with one possible exception, the greatest princess every to pick up a sword! Everybody says so! And then everybody else says that they heard so! And Yue's a beginner! Not even a beginner! She's very sorry, beginners, for implying such terrible things about you! Every time she thinks about her sword form she falls on her face in practice, and she only just this morning managed to figure out the first hand position for the spell of flight. This is, if not the biggest mismatch in history, then at least the saddest. Her heart trembles and her stomach squishes like she's in the car on the way up to this palace. The hairs on the back of her neck won't lay down for all the polite asking in the universe. 

It's mean to do it. Outright nasty, even. But Yue does it anyway: see, one of the best ways to control a wolf is to make eye contact and hold it. It's dangerous, 'cause that's also how you challenge them to, like, wolf duels or whatever, but there's not much risk of that when the stare Yue's giving is so filled with liquid and so pitifully pure that you'd have to be brainwashed to misunderstand it. It's manipulative and awful to cut off the debate in a way that doesn't even give Hyra a chance to defend her ideas. But the time to start running was [i]at least[/i] three minutes ago, and ohhhhhh gosh do they need to run, so she looks. And she grabs Hyra by her perfect moonlight arm, and she tugs.

And when Hyra sees her and goes slack? She's off like a bullet. She doesn't know [i]how[/i] she does it, let alone why, but Yue bounds away through a forest of oddly slackened ribbons like she'd been waiting for this exact moment her entire life, and as she does she wraps her arms around Hyra and... no! Is she really? She couldn't possibly! When did she even get so? The very idea that she could even! But... oh! Gosh. She really did just grab Hyra by the waist and lift her off the ground to carry her, princess style, as if she really thought that [i]her[/i] legs were gonna be the faster ones. 

...D'you ever wonder how you can tell when something's meant to be? Well, turns out? The real trick of it is that sometimes you'll find yourself in a situation that, if you're honest, you've got no earthly business being in. You just came to say 'thank you for the opportunity' and then go home, right? So how'd you wind up running through a whatever-thingy in the moonlight in the middle of the afternoon with a bunch of assault ribbons nipping at your calves with a beautiful warrior held in your overwhelmed and desperately straining arms? 

Search me, sister! But if you ever [i]do[/i] wind up in a situation just like that, the sign you wanna look for that tells you everything's gonna be ok is when that whole crazy situation happens? The proud and powerful woman in your arms doesn't struggle or glare at you, but pulls herself closer against you instead. If she doesn't try to move except to adjust her weight to make it easier for your poor twig arms to keep holding her long enough not to get you get free and not wind up in super-jail or whatever. If, when she looks at you again, she rolls her eyes and smiles? That's lo-- d'yaaaaahhhIiiii mean, th-that's the sign you made a good choice. Yup. Yup! Sure is a sign, haha! A sign of positive decision making, to be clear!

But what about the creeping warmth that fills you until there's [i]almost[/i] no room left for all the fear? Is that a sign of something too? Asking for a friend.