The coyote kept his whimpering to himself as the girl continued her prodding at his ear. It had not hurt so badly when he himself had inspected it with his human-form fingers, maybe because he had known what he was planning on doing, which was just a light touch. The girl's touch was not light and it lasted much longer, though he thought in her own way she was trying to be as gentle as she could. First she was scrubbing at the wound, then doing something else which he didn't really know, like poking or dabbing. The scrubbing-cleaning part hurt the most, and he kept his nose carefully tucked, as if that might help him not hurt so much.
He tried to lay relaxed the whole while, but he ended up tense through most of it, and that made him even more tired. He no longer thought about trying to run back out around the city to look for a proper gate. Now he didn't know how far he would be able to go. Could he make it back outside the city? And what if they shot at him again with their nasty human-form weapons? He couldn't dodge another. Not even to save his life.
"Soon done," interrupted his thoughts, and a small hand took his paw from his nose. Reluctantly, the coyote pushed himself once more to his belly, thinking that she wanted him to move. He got up to a sitting position, then watched her blankly as she showed him a roll of cloth, too small and strange to be a sort of clothing. Bandage, his human-mind told him, but he was not thinking clearly enough to remember much about them. As far as he knew, he had not ever had a bandage used on him for any reason. Except wait. Maybe once, when his knee had been hurt before, bitten, swollen-red. The bandage had gone around and around his leg, if he was thinking right. So maybe it was a sort of clothing after all?
With a sigh, the coyote shifted, the brightness as soft and temporarily insistent as the flickering of dozens of candle flames. When he was human-form again, he wearily reached for the ragged pants, which had been lying in a discarded heap nearby, and pulled them back on, one leg at a time, clumsy. "Soon done," he said, recalling her words, then pointed at himself, "Done." He yawned again, started to reach up to touch the stinging ear, then thought better and put his hand back down. He remembered how she had not seemed to like him, or maybe not trust him, when he was human-form before. He watched her as carefully as he could now, to see if she would act like that again.
She had helped him with his ear and that was good. He thought of her as a friend, yes, because anyone who helped must be a friend. And of course he was a friend to her. But if she didn't like him...
Slowly he staggered up, confused for a second about the flaps at the entrance to the tent-place, which he hadn't really noticed on his way in. It was still light out, the sun high above, and he thought maybe the light would help his sleeping body and mind both wake. He made it a few steps forward, out of the tent, then noticed the horse standing nearby, looking at him, and stopped. Maybe he should go the other way. Kyo turned, maybe a little too sharply, and his muscles gave a shiver he didn't like. He stopped to put his hands on his knees, bent slightly forward, head down, breathing deep. His legs shook underneath him.
He would not make it to the edge of the tent-city again, not now. He should not have stopped running and hid and rested like he had. Somehow the resting had made it worse. Now it ached so much to move. He had thought he could push past the full-body soreness and stiffness. But he couldn't. It was bad.
"Ruari," he croaked out, as if to ask something, but then didn't know what to say. He shook his head, lifted a foot and forced a couple steps, then had to stop again and reach out a hand for balance. Eventually he gave up and sank down to his knees, panting and grimacing, to rest again. He didn't know why, but he felt compelled to apologize, and so he did: "I'm sorry, sorry."
