Completed An Eye-Opening Harvest (Nolan/Inoadar)

[Irriari]

Irriari allowed herself a chime before she struggled to her feet. Her first attempt failed miserably, and she tried to ignore the pain that surged through her shoulder blade as her muscles to move against the dented armor that dug against them. It was even harder to dismiss the throbbing pain that radiated from her broken finger. Every movement triggered a new sunburst of pain somewhere in her body, and she snarled weakly as she pushed herself to her feet. She swayed briefly, and opened her wings for balance. After a few seconds, she moved towards the wolves. Thankfully, they were all dead. The zith doubted she could have fought for a minute longer, and she thanks Rhysol that her wings had remained relatively unscathed.

After checking the surrounding area, Irriari made her way to Torrel. She gasped slightly when she saw the extent of the damage his body had suffered. Blood soaked the grasses and moss surrounding the man, and she was unsure if the majority of it had come from the wolves. From her quick appraisal, his leg seemed to be the worst off, though the zith was unsure how much of the armor the wolves had gotten past.

“Are you okay?”

Irriari regretted the words seconds after they left her mouth. It was obvious that he had seen better days. Still, he wasn’t dead yet. Irriari knelt beside him and grimaced at the gaping wounds. While she has witnessed her colony mates severed to bits by Akalak, it was still jarring to see the wounds up close.

“I don’t know what to do to help you… What are we supposed to do?”

Irriari shook his shoulder lightly. If Torrel passed out, he would take any knowledge he had with him, and she doubted that would be able to do anything aside from kill him faster due to her ineptitude.

[Inoadar]

Amid the swirling delirium of blood loss, Inoadar heard Irriari's voice. He couldn't quite make sense of the words. He couldn't keep his focus if he tried to lift his head, but he needed to look at the leg that felt so numb, and so cold at the same time. He lifted it and wasn't sure if his vision was clear. It seemed that one leg of his pants was much darker than the other.

It sparked a memory. A memory of a visit to The Healing Hand in Ravok to try to get some supplies. He remembered being shunted aside rudely as a wounded man was brought inside. The man's leg had been opened nearly the entire length of his thigh and his leggings had looked very much the same as Inoadar's did now. The medics had mentioned something called a tourniquet. They, of course, had a professional set with crafted components, but the concept was simple enough.

He told Irriari to break off a branch and to tear two strips of cloth from any of his clothes as she could, one long, one shorter. It seemed to take her forever and her branch needed to be broken to about a foot in length. He continued to hold his leg up as it seemed to bleed less when he did so. Feeling started to come back to all his other wounds as he gained more focus on his situation, but he ignored them as best he could.

"Now tie the cloth to one end of the branch, near the middle, but off center some." He started to swoon again, but Irriari's insistent demands for instructions brought him back. "Okay, now wrap the cloth around my leg...ABOVE the wound...Now tie that end to the branch the same way...no, closer to the other knot." He couldn't see anything wrong with Irriari's final result. "Now twist it with the branch...again...more...keep twisting...until I...tell you...Aaagh..." He was sweating heavily and his eyes were screwed shut in pain. "Until I tell you...to...aagh...to s-sstop...Stop....Aaagh...STOP!"

The bleeding was just a trickle now as he flopped back on the ground, panting. "Okay now...Use the other cloth to...to tie the branch in place...so it stays twisted. Just a...a knot on each end...and...wrapped under my...my leg like the other one...should do." He waited while she completed this. The branch began to turn back, but only got about a quarter turn before pulling the second cloth tight.

"Now I need a crutch, can you find another branch that I can use?" He gave Irriari a rough smile to hide the grimace of pain. "Thanks. Sorry to stick you with all the doctoring." He knew the walk back to Ravok was out of the question. He'd never make it in his condition. His only hope, long as it may be, was to track his horse, so he could ride back.

But he no longer heard the howling of the wolves that had been chasing his horse, 'Handy'. His thoughts turned grim, 'Had they caught him? If they've dragged him down, I'm petched!' His resolve reasserted itself instinctively. 'No...I'm not giving up...I'm not going to let this Zith see me lose heart. I'm representing humans here and I won't give them a bad name!' He struggled to his feet, his savaged lower leg numb below the tourniquet, throbbing above, and worked himself onto the makeshift crutch.

Practicality fought through the dizziness. "Cut off those tails, they're good for collecting the bounty back in town."

[Irriari]

After staring at Torrel’s mangled body for a few seconds, the man spoke in a hoarse tone that showed her just how much pain he was in. At his instruction, she broke off a straight branch from a nearby sapling, taking care to find one that wasn’t too thick. While the stick had small protrusions lining the edges, she doubted it would matter. The branch wasn’t as stiff a branch that had fallen from a tree, but it also lacked the brittleness that came with exposure to the humid ground. After that, she turned her attention to his clothes, and decided to grab a bit of the fabric that was sticking out from beneath his armor. Irriari grabbed the dagger from his hand and used it to cut the thin fabric into two strips. The knife cut through the material easily, but the strips were far from uniform in length. The longer strip was wide at one end, and extremely thin at the other where the fabric was too far under his armor to cut properly. The zith hoped that the uneven strips wouldn’t ruin his plans, but it was too late to consider such things.

After that, she wrapped the longer cloth around the branch and tied it loosely, before moving it to the correct position. He nodded weakly, and she tried placing it above the wound. She had to move the cloth twice, due to the large amount of blood that masked the location of the cut. Once she figured out where to put the cloth, she twisted the branch clockwise until Torrel told her to stop. Lastly, Irriari tied off the makeshift tourniquet and stared at it for a moment, hoping that it was sturdy enough to last. She had seen similar medical procedures in the colony once before, but hadn’t spent any time looking at the wound. Though she was inquisitive, the Elders had shooed her away to monitor the healing of the injured.

“It’s fine. Just don’t expect the best care you’ve ever received.”
Her voice was slightly shaky. While she didn’t fear the blood and injuries that they had sustained, the process of applying the tourniquet had reopened many of her wounds. To make matters worse, the adrenaline that had surged through her during the fight was gone.

It took a few chimes to locate a large enough stick, and she had to bring the first few back to him, so that she could measure them against his body. When she finally found one, she cut another scrap of fabric and wrapped it at the top of the branch, so that it wouldn’t cut into him.

As he recovered, Irriari chopped off the tails of the wolves and laid them next to his belongings. Remembering her own discarded pack and quiver, Irriari decided to go back quickly. The rest of the wolves sounded far enough away that Torrel would be safe for the few chimes it would take to retrieve her bow.

“I need to go back, my bow and pack are back there, and if we run into anything else that wants to kill us, I’d like to have my belongings. Are you going to be okay?”

After he responded, Irriari began the trek back, hoping that her memory wouldn’t fail her.

[Inoadar]

Inoadar nodded that he'd be okay. Irriari left to retrieve her pack and weapons as he propped himself against a tree. He was thirsty, but he had no water. It occurred to him that his water skin was still on his horse. He wondered if Irriari had much to spare. His thoughts also dwelled on the necessity of cleaning these wounds, especially how the time to do it was right now, while they were largely numb. Once the exposed flesh and nerves got sensitized again, it would be much worse.

He had nothing, no water, no pot to boil it in, no clean cloth to use as bandages. The wounds were scabbing up as expected, but he would normally be about the task of scrubbing them out. It would cause them to bleed anew, but it would be clean blood, forming clean new scabs.

He decided he could at least attempt to gather some wood and kindling. There was plenty of dry grass and shrub. Some of the undergrowth would serve as intermediate fuel to build a fire capable of boiling water. The question was whether Irriari had enough water to use some of it medicinally, rather than all as drinking water.

By the time he'd collected a useful heap of grass and kindling and scraped a small spot down to the dirt to place the fire, he was exhausted and some of his wounds had opened again. He thought about starting the fire and possibly cauterizing the wounds with his knife, when he realized he didn't have his flint and tinder either. It was also in his pack, or saddlebags. He couldn't remember.

He took moments to rest between bouts of collecting and separating firewood into what would be used for the various stages of building his fire. He didn't know if perhaps he occasionally nodded off with the strain, but it seemed to take his Zith companion a long time to return.

[Irriari]

Irriari began her trek back into the forest slowly. Thankfully, her clawed feet had left slight indentations in the earth when she had ran to Torrel’s side. She knelt down for a second, brushing a group of leaves away from the small indents. The claw marks for her larger toes dug deeper than the toes to the outside edges. Even more striking was the imprint left by the ball of her foot. When running, the ball of her foot sank deep into the earth, while the rest of her foot was constantly moving with each stride. The tracks were difficult to follow as the twigs and moss obscured nearly all of the marks. The tracks were only clear in muddy areas that lacked foliage, and such areas were nearly impossible to find. Irriari followed the path for fifteen chimes, knowing that any mistake in retracing her path would ensure she lost her pack. At the twentieth bell, the path disappeared entirely. Sinking down to her hands and knees, the zith scanned the ground directly below her chin. Seeing nothing but a few scattered saplings, she turned her head to the left, and then towards the right. Satisfied, she crawled forward again and repeated the process. Each movement caused pain to spike through her broken finger and savaged arm. Still, she continued onward, hoping for the tiny marks to return. After three chimes of crawling, Irriari pushed herself to her feet with her good arm and snarled. The sound wasn’t directed to anyone in particular, but it felt good to get her exasperation out. Left without any options, the zith placed one foot directly in front of the other, and hoped to Rhysol that she could create a straight path. A half chime of nerve-wracking movement later, she spotted her back, quiver, and bow.

She replaced her equipment on her back and lamented the weight of her bag. Miraculously, her bag had gained twenty pounds since she had fought the wolves. Ignoring the inconvenience, she made her way back to Torrel with her newly stomped path.

When she returned, she saw that he had created a small pile of kindling and tinder for a fire.

“Thank you. I’ll try to start a fire. I’m not the best at this, but I’ve done it a few times.”

Irriari tried to forget the fact that the last time she created a fire with flint had been in the comfort of the IHL where there was no wind to disrupt her attempts. She pulled her canteen from her pack and tossed it to Torrel. It was only half full, but she knew that she could fly back to the lake and get more water if he drank it all. He needed it more than she did, anyhow.

Next, the zith pulled out the flint and steel that she carried in a small pocket on the front of her backpack. She grabbed a small bit of the tinder that torrel had set aside and rubbed it between her fingers. It was dry enough, though it could be drier. She placed it on top of the flint and put the small ‘u’ shaped steel implement over her fingers. It took a few strikes to find the proper edge on the flint, but when she did, a small spark erupted upward and caught on the tinder. Irriari cupped it in her hands before moving the small bundle of material to the branches and twigs. Within a few chimes, the bundle had blossomed into a small fire at their feet.

“So… what are we supposed to do now?”

[Inoadar]

Inoadar still panted from the effort of gathering fuel and scraping a bare spot. "Get out a pot or something and boil some water, if you can spare some. Boiling water will be good to clean these wounds so they don't get infected."

This was one more thing he'd learned from his visits to The Healing Hand, though the medics there usually smeared some sort of stuff on the area first. Inoadar assumed it was to numb the area to reduce the pain. No such luxury here. He was undecided what would be better, to have such injury as to render you unconscious and feel nothing, or to have less injury, but have to endure the pain of cleaning wounds.

'What am I thinking? I am Trandino Adarius! No one in the pitiful Second Edict had been able to endure what I could! This is just hot water. There's no salt in it. No juice from some tart fruit. There will be no peeling back of the skin. No scrubbing with some unnecessarily abrasive surface.' His thoughts assailed him with accusations of cowardice. 'What's more you have company that will be watching! You WILL NOT quail from this!' He suddenly felt a surge of masochistic pride. Not only did he have a serious enough wound to merit a tourniquet, he was going to clean it with boiling water and no numbing agent. 'HA! Take that, you Nykan worms!'

"Is there any water we can spare from the jars with the little spiders in them? So we don't have to use drinking water for this? The boiling should destroy any infecting impurities." He looked around at all the unfamiliar foliage. He smirked a single grunt at the thought that there was probably some usefully medicinal herb right in sight.

[Irriari]

Irriari stared at Torrel before responding. His wounds must have addles his mind.
“A pot or something? My pack doesn’t contain a kitchen, Torrel.”

Her tone came off snappier than intended, so she busied herself finding the jar that the spiders were in. She drained a majority of the water into a second jar that was slightly smaller and held it a foot over the fire. It would never boil at this rate. Irriari placed it at the edge of the pile of kindling and sticks, but still on top of a bit of the flame. It wasn’t the equipment she used at the IHL, but it would have to work.

Ignoring a sudden surge of pain in her hand as she pushed off from the ground, Irriari moved to the edge of their makeshift campsite and gathered some more fallen branches to add to the fire. She placed them near the fire that was heating up the jar, and hoped that it would stay lit.

After a half bell, the fire had finally died down enough that she could hand the jar to Torrel. Irriari covered her hands in dirt before passing it to Torrel.

“Where should we go now? Should we turn back for Ravok and get you medical help?”

[Inoadar]

A perverse eagerness filled Inoadar as he took the jar of hot water. It was not boiling hot, but he'd seen the medics use water that had cooled from boiling to merely hot as if it was still capable of killing infections. They had more knowledge than he, so who was he to question. The glass had whitened where it had sat in the heat and Inoadar had to grip it with a cloth. His hand, after all, was not where the wound was and, endurance against pain aside, only a fool injured himself for no reason. Especially when in the wild without a mount, and already damaged to the point of requiring a tourniquet. No, he had no need to impress anyone.

The chimes passed in agonized sluggishness as he poured steaming water into the wounds and scrubbed them with cloth or scraped them with his knife. He could not have honestly answered whether he had screamed or not. He had definitely raised his voice in unrestrained curses, but he didn't think he had given in to actual screams. He could verify that his jaws ached from prolonged gritting of his teeth, however. Most of the wounds bled anew, but he took this as good sign, as the blood was a healthy red and scabbed quickly.

After several more chimes of panting and reorienting himself to his situation, he answered Irriari's question. "Without my horse I will not make it back like this. Even if the wolves dragged him down, my bags have some very useful supplies in them. The trail is not hard to follow. I am going to track him as long as I can and, hopefully, find a ride back, or at least enough supplies to make a successful walk back more likely. If you accompany me, my chances improve considerably. However, you have no obligation. Your decision is yours. I have made mine."

With that, he struggled to his feet and faced her to see what her decision would be.

[Irriari]

Irriari found herself starting at Torrel, wondering if he was truly going to pour the nearly boiling hot water onto the wounds that had been inflicted by the wolves. It took only a few seconds before she had her answer. At first, Torrel clamped his teeth together and tried to stay quiet, but soon after, he began screaming. Fresh blood ran from the wounds after a few chimes of scrubbing and she nodded at him when it was over.

“I wouldn’t leave you to find your horse alone. You don’t know these woods at all, and I don’t know if you’ll be able to make it back without me. I’ll come with you, and I’ll walk this time.”

The way that Torrel stumbled to his feet worried her. While there would be no akalak to take advantage of their weakness, she worried about other creatures that would. Irriari bent down and retrieved her pack, making sure that the straps were tight against her shoulders. Next, she tightened her quiver down at an angle so that it wouldn’t interfere with flying.

“Do you need help walking?”

She phrased the question as best as she could, knowing how offended she would be if she was in Torrel’s position. Weakness is a hard thing to accept, even if it’s only temporary.

“The good thing is the horse would have tired out quickly- I can’t imagine it being too far from here.”

With that, Irriari grabbed her bow tightly in her right hand, and began moving forward.

OOCShe’d be helping Torrel if he needed it, or walking on her own if he declines her offer. Just figured it would be good to get moving again.

[Inoadar]

It burned Inoadar's pride to have so nearly accepted Irriari's offer of support outright. He knew that pride WAS the only issue. It was entirely sensible for him to accept her help. The fact that she offered showed that she could see that it might be necessary. It was not so much the pain as the dizziness. He had no idea how much blood he'd lost. The tourniquet appeared to be holding in what was left though. His foot was numb as he took a few tentative steps.

"I think I'll be able to manage." he responded, trying to be less than definite. He wanted to see if she was going to give some snort of disgust and choke out some comment about "weak humans", in which case he would die before he asked for her help. But she refrained from comment. "If I slow us down too much, I may ask for help. I may just ask you to put me out of my misery."

He muttered this last, but loud enough that he was sure she heard. She was not as injured, not as bloody anyway. He could tell by her cautious hand movements that she must have a few broken fingers, same as he did. But he did not think she had lost as much blood as he had. His head spun dangerously, but stabilized.

"If I slow us down so much that you are truly concerned about your own survival, I...ask you to do me that favor. I would not represent my race as one that dragged his partner down when he was clearly beyond help." Then he added a bit of sneer to his voice, "But I don't mean right now, okay. I'm still goin' strong for now, so don't get hasty."

He thought he heard her suppress a laugh, but it might have been his imagination. What wasn't his imagination, however, was the clear trail smashed through the underbrush by the panicked horse. Irriari had made some comment about the horse tiring quickly. If that was the case it would be a wolf ravaged corpse by now. And he would never make it all the way back to Ravok.

Surprisingly enough, it was only a matter of a couple bells before the sound of a horse, crashing its way back, silenced the nearby birds. Inoadar steeled himself for the snarling of wolves to punctuate the snapping and rustling, but they were conspicuously absent. With many a call to slow down, and his body weight hanging from the reins, after he was pulled from his feet, his horse slowed and stopped. He didn't know how the horse had lost the wolves, but his gear was damp. It must have found some deep water and they must have found easier prey. At any rate, he climbed into the wet saddle without complaint.