Her head hurt.
Silver eyes blinked, fluttering open squinting against the bright sun shafts that cut through the huge pines. No...not just her head, everything hurt. Saida groaned, testing her muscles as she slowly rocked her weight to one side so she could pick her head up. Dark tipped ears pinning back against her crown, alarm rising in her chest as she realized the usual weight of her ram skull was gone. Groggily she looked around, where the hell was she? And...her mask...where was her mask? Blurry vision became more and more clear as she came to, her good eye coming in to focus ─ nothing but dense woodland and huge ancient trees every direction she looked. Gauging the way the light barely filtered through the trees and the air was blanketed in a layer of lingering darkness, it was early morning.
She allowed a light sigh to slip past her lips at every aching muscle, finding in her no desire to rise just yet with no immediate danger to drive her limbs to move. Instead she scanned her surroundings again, searching until she spotted the mass of bone, it was quite a ways from where she lay but she could pick out the stark ivory against the green backdrop. Something to at motivate her to get up. Which proved to be just as difficult as she thought it might be.
Every muscle and joint screamed in protest as she rose, stiffly making her way over to her battered ram skull; cracked and broken in more than one place. Her shoulders slumped, sitting down as her heart sunk as she assessed the damage. The nose shattered off, a gaping split in the seam of the face that had nearly separated the two pieces entirely, and one of the horns ─ snapped off. Memories flooded her, from the attack and her shame regarding her mangled face, to her the man who raised her, gifting her this mask to boost her confidence.
A piece of him she carried with her always; destroyed.
Gone.
❝ speech ❞