Welcome to Gaia! ::

The silence was promising. ...Still being alive was even more so.

"Joliette." Her voice was less hurried- more soothing, calling, now. "Joliette, you came out into the woods. And now here you are. And here I am. You ran into your friend. ...Say hello, Joli. Say hello." Something told her that if she could just get the woman to say something... anything... that she'd be able to snap free of the Komodo's control.

"Hi Joli," Em said, her words small, soft, and relieved. "It's okay." She forgave her up front- and would speak no more on it. "Just... help me up. I should get this looked at." She extended an arm, and a smile, grateful beyond words that the danger had passed.

Emelyn followed the direction of Joliette's vision- but she was more concerned with how difficult it seemed to be for the woman to become upright.

"It's alright," she said, not only for the sake of the miniature attack, "I can get up on my own, I think, if you can't make it." Emelyn turned onto her hip again and planted both furry hands onto the earth. She repositioned her weight to her right leg, and got herself half-standing before she collapsed again. Even without putting the left foot to the earth, dangling it down was enough weight on it to make her entire leg shake. She sighed, and probed the skin around the wound gently, wiping off where a leaf had stuck on the last fall.

Emelyn then gave an apologetic look and stuck her arm out again for aid- this time, with the palm of her furred hand stained with her own, fresh blood.

"It's okay, sweetheart. I understand." Her words were not patronizing- nor were they thickened with a syrup of sweetness. If anything, they were kind- yet stark, as Emelyn realized that her shock and fear at the impending attack had pushed the thought of her pain from her mind. Now that the hedgehog in her had gone silent, however, she realized that the throbbing in her ankle was only growing.

She allowed Joli to take the brunt of her weight, but put her right foot back, flat on the ground, to try and push herself into a standing position. She hissed as she stood- a hedgehog inclusion to tell Em that it was in pain, as well.

"I'm fine," Em said, allowing herself to be repositioned, "Just a little surprised. ...How long since you changed?" In the state she was in, Emelyn didn't have the chance to regret being blunt. Her ankle felt like... well... a komodo had clawed it.

"I'm sorry. ...Whoah. Hold on a second. Ow. I think I moved it the wrong way." The two halves of her speech took two very different tones of 'pained'- emotional and physical. By the end of it, Em was practically hopping on her right foot, trying to regain balance on her own without having to rely too heavily on Joliette.

"Ow, Joli- you're hurting me. Not so tight. Just balance me up on..." her words caught in her throat at the sight of those inhuman eyes, and a lump of death curdled, deep in the pit of her stomach, and bile flooded up in terrifying vapors. Every inch of her torso began to ache, and Em had only time to wonder if this was the opposite of shock: if, when you died, you felt everything that hurt- plus more. What if the body gave itself one last desperate chance... to feel something- anything, in those last moments.

...Even the most agonizing pain you've ever known?

"Joli. You're human. Joli..." She tried to push away, but those claws were immovable vices. "Oh god, Joli, no."

Without the added support to stand, Emelyn's temporary forfeit of gravity was rendered null, and she fell back to the jungle floor. She landed flat on her back, alerting the infant spines to an unhappy pressure, and causing a hedgehog-like hiss of pain and fear to spring forth from her lips. Emelyn's mind was a terrible blank, except to be keenly aware of one thing from either side of her 'psyches'. The human Emelyn was practically unravelled at the sensation of the blood drying around her toes and in the fur on her foot... while the hedgehog screamed at its body parts to move, to roll over- to run...

For its belly was exposed.