Almost immediately Corvus felt something like dread begin to weigh heavy in his chest. At least for Abaven, the effects of the volcano hadn't been quite so.. observable. Sure, it had uprooted the entire pack (who knew how temporary that might be), and the change had been jarring... but nobody had been injured quite like this. Thankfully, Corvus thought silently to himself, finding it hard to ignore the way the sight of the cat made his stomach turn. But it wasn't just disgust, but something else he was feeling.. pity? Empathy? Imagining that one of his packmates had gotten too close to the eruption, imagining that someone he cared for might've end up like this if they hadn't evacuated quickly enough, simply made him feel sick to his stomach.
"I'm surprised it made it this far, to be honest," Corvus said quietly, noticing too now that its eyes were visibly damaged. For a moment he wondered if it could even hear them, let alone understand them. Luckily, Theory voiced what he was quickly beginning to realize, and at first he just nodded. "I.. yeah, you're right," he concluded, his voice even lower than before, nearly a whisper now. He didn't know enough about healing to say for sure if anyone could help it, but it was hard to imagine these kind of extreme injuries healing well on their own, not with so much exposed. He tried not to cringe at the thought.
"I don't think it will live much longer. If it does..." His voice trailed off. It was hard to imagine the amount pain the wretched thing was in; surely if it had anything to live for, or anyone, it would've had found its way all the way here, all alone... right? He didn't know enough about cats to say for sure, but he had a feeling that it wouldn't be all alone out here if it had no other option. "Do you want me to do it?" He asked after a moment, his voice serious. He'd do it, even if he didn't want to, for her - and because it was the right thing to do. It felt different than taking down a prey animal, somehow, and the thought felt suffocating.
|