It takes work, to keep my hands steady, to keep the tremors of fear from showing, as I tuck the quilt around her thin frame. She hums quietly, eyes still distant as she watches the fields shiver. "Don't stay out here too late, okay?" I whisper against her temple, trying vainly to ignore the stench of death that has been invading lately. I wait, murmur it again until she nods a little, still watching her landscape. 

I back away a little, only to the doorframe, where I can keep watch over her. My bright and bold Blaze, slowly withering and fading like the harvests as winter encroaches, and I can't help the flutter of fear that flares up again. She's so sick, so frail, and I'm at a loss of what to do to help. I try to focus  on the logical steps, I try to make her comfortable... there's quilts everywhere now. She gets cold so easily now, the warm padding of womanhood melting away as the sickness eats her from the inside out, and it's a small thing, to make sure there's a quilt by the rocker on the porch, a small stack of them on the swing to pad the hard wooden arms, as well as warm her. They lay in wait by her armchair, on the empty third seat in the kitchen, in the truck, a mountain of them in the bedroom. There's one on the stairs, for when she's too weak to make the full flight, when she has to rest on the treads and pant for breath, shivering. 

She's still headstrong, when she's here in the present, still stubborn and refusing help, still snarls when I try to offer comfort. But more often than not now, she's too far gone, eyes distant while she travels inside worlds. She speaks to those long gone, holds conversations with grandparents that have passed, and doesn't seem to realize they're no longer on the mortal coil. 

Yesterday, she spoke with Michael, was so surprised to see him. Sara brought Tyler by the other day, and my Blaze's eyes held no recognition of him. He was utterly foreign to her, nevermind the fact that she was anticipating his arrival more than most of the Pack, that she was the one to hold him beneath his first Full Moon and whisper the ancient secrets to him, to dunk his small digits in the Holy Water. 

I am at a loss to help her, and the helplessness is not a feeling that sits well with me. This illness is eating her alive, and she's content to let it do so, hides in the memories of those gone before, and there's nothing I can do.