lukeoutbelow | Do not be afraid of light

Do not be afraid of light

They smelled the battlefield long before they saw it. The apprentices and little Sisters who hadn't been on this kind of excursion before covered their noses and exclaimed. Vena didn't. As the child of a camp follower she would know to expect this, but her tread slowed and she looked repeatedly at Sister Lashan, especially as the sound of incredible numbers of crows cawing grew louder.

"Nasty, isn't it? Decay is part of death which is part of life," Lashan said firmly, if not totally without sympathy. How young had she been, the last time she was upset by the aftermath of battle? "There's armies that immediately turn around and sort the living from the dying from the dead and take care of that then and there. Not here, they're leaving it for the locals to handle or not and we're local enough. If you fight, you may well fight for people who'll leave you if you fall and move on. Make sure you at least have friends who'll look for you." They pressed on with their wagon. The donkey put its ears back but did not balk.

It wasn't as bad as it would get over the next few days. The bodies - it was now academic who had belonged to which side of whichever meaningless conflict this was - were not much bloated and decayed yet. Flies were not yet overwhelming. Right now the field of bodies was mostly attended by carrion birds, and various other birds that were willing to take advantage of the bounty before them. Finches among them, tiny beaks dipped red. A few other people could be seen picking their way across what had been a perfectly useable pasture. They kept clear. Lashan tasked girls to keep watch for them anyway, pretended not to see the ones who were being sick, and oversaw as dead men were loaded onto the donkeycart. They'd take them away a distance, say the rites, strip them of useful things, get them buried, and come back.

She paused. Something... like a sound. Not a sound. Lashan was hearing something with her mind, closer than the pickers. A threat? She stood like a sentinel and paid attention.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"The only victory I care about is that the fire hasn't taken me today, and that seems pretty certain. Not that I'm just going to give in! Only don't break my arm. I saw that happen once, before," she says lightly. "A pair of drovers at my, at a tavern got competitive. But you're not drunk and I don't have much feeling in my hands anyway, so I'm sure it will be fine."

Hesri makes some arrangements and has to pause to distract a small child who's started crying for reasons of being very young and full of emotions and a lack of understanding how to regulate them. She's very patient with little kids, her cheerful, encouraging tone never slipping.

Usually the girls only get particularly into arm wrestling in the iciest, most appalling parts of winter, but they know what's required. They bring things out, mainly from the stables, none of it specifically made with this purpose in mind. Not that anything too specific is needed.

"How's this. Bring the back of my hand to the table in exactly ten seconds. If it's less, that doesn't count. If I make you take any longer, that counts as a victory." A controlled effort will probably be harder for him than just slamming her hand down.

Tiny Nerine, who's really no bigger than Vena, watches intently with her brow furrowed, and is promptly appointed to count down. "And be fair about it now!"

"I'm always fair," Nerine says darkly. She's still got some bruising on her face.

Experience has given him the sense to not ask what Hesri's deal with fire was, but some part of him remains inescapably curious.

"Sure. That makes it more interesting." He agrees easily in response to the terms, though Nerine gets a doubtful glance from him on whether or not it'd be fair. None of these were real fighting lessons, he reminds himself. It was just a game.

Although Hesri had some height on him, when they sit at the table and lock hands, he finds his palm and fingers wrapping around hers more extensively than expected at first glance. The ointment underneath her bandages felt slippery, making the grip a bit odd when the prolonged hand-holding was already a little awkward. The calluses roughening the texture of his palms weren't going to help much between the oil and the rain.

When he looks up, the first thing he notes up close is that her eyes seem almost as orange as the flames that had licked her skin. There was something mysterious about her. And then the count begins.

He pays close attention to their hands. The time limit leaves his own hovering easily at the center for a few seconds while waiting for the seconds to tick down. Around four or five is when some proper torque is put in ( a thing he mentions between one of the rounds - if she tilts her wrist a certain way, she could make more use of her leverage ).

And although the test of strength was uneven, Guts' sense of time apparently ran on the short side. Impatient. Hot-blooded, even if he was being careful. The first non-victory aggravated the next, leading to one slipped delay when Hesri got the better wrist position just long enough for the ten seconds to lapse. Was he actually going to lose this one? Stupid! They switch hands and go one more.

"That was ten." he shoots Nerine an aggravated look, feeling like he was being goaded on purpose. "Did you learn to count where you learned to fight?"

Edited 2022-12-01 22:12 (UTC)

Sisters gather, taking the little ones aside. This isn't a time to have small children climbing into laps. The sight of the Boy's biceps in action, and of the mud drying in flakes and scales across his broad back and chest, is not lost on many girls old enough to really notice. Even a lot of the ones who wouldn't have expected themselves to be interested have a bit of aesthetic appreciation, or take notes on their Sisters. There are some whispers and shushed giggles.

Hesri's thumbs are relatively normal if discolored, but under the bandages her palms are small and hard with scar tissue, and she's got bony fingers that don't fully uncurl or clasp strongly. Guts has to do most of the holding, and whether that makes things more or less uncomfortable is up to him. She bears that discomfort, chalking it up to unease about how messed up her body is; lots of people don't like to touch her. Regardless she does give it a good effort, sweat breaking out across her forehead as she strains against his arm. A disbelieving smile plays along the good half of her mouth when she manages to stall past the ten second mark the second time.

She's had to assure watchers that she's fine more than once. Nerine has not been among those asking. The smaller girl gets in close and stares at each contest without blinking until they end, and is all of about a foot and a half away when Guts challenges her judgement. Straightening, she says, "You're going to eat those words. You and me, Mister Boy."

Nerine is about Vena's height but wiry. So, she's almost two feet shorter than Guts is and probably weighs as much as one of his arms. On the plus side her movements are precise and quick, purposeful in a way the ten year old's just aren't. There's a poised, birdlike aspect to her even when she's standing still.

Having sighed in relief and leaned back once she was released from this latest round, Hesri's eyes widen. "Oh dear. Nerine, lovey, are you... you're sure. Okay, we're going to need to set up some ground rules here. Ah..."

"No biting," someone suggests, and then it seems like everyone has an idea and they all say it at once. No knives. Nothing below the belt. No punching. No tit-punches comes up several times, and while a lot of anxious glances travel over Guts, at that one actually Nerine is the recipient of several dirty looks. No throat-grabs. She looks increasingly disgusted as this goes on but doesn't back down.

Galli has returned somewhere in this, wet and with wet clothes clinging to her. She looks appalled but raises her voice. "Deflagging! The winner has to get a sash off the loser."

Mister Boy was a lot less forgivable when it was her saying it.

"Don't think I'll go easy just 'cause you're an ankle biting twerp."

Nerine brings out his antagonistic side easily. Somehow. Whatever gentleness he'd shown with Hesri appears to have evaporated, trading in that cautious awkwardness with the combative menace they'd found buried in the battlefield a week ago. He at least settles when Galli arrives (freshly showered) to help set the ground rules. He is using more bark than bite here, but the barking was pretty emphatic.

Arms crossed and breaking out the Full Frown, he mostly acquiesces to the rules of the latest game he was yanked into. No punching, no punching tits (does this even apply to either of them?) no throat grabs. He only complains when Headbutting is axed off the list, because: 'How'm I supposed to give her rematch a fitting end? This's barely even a fight.'

But fine! Fine. It's a game. Not a lesson in proper combat. So beyond a vocal complaint, it looks like he'll be getting sashed up.

Nerine curls her lip as if imitating Hesri's scar-pulled mouth and stands unmoved, her hands at her sides, fairly vibrating with anticipation. 'No punching tits' does not in fact look like it'll be difficult for him, she does not have enough to speak of, but if she did she's so short that he could've backhanded them without raising his arm.

"Why are you still topless? Never mind," Galli says, determined not to get weird about it even as various onlookers snicker. She holds up something like a long handkerchief, rumpled and damp without being fouled. "Here, let me show you the flag knot. You go like this, and this..." She ties it loosely around her hand and inserts her other hand to show that the knot isn't giving, then tugs on one of the trailing ends. It comes apart immediately.

"Tie it where you like. What is she - what a freak!" That last is muttered, as very abruptly Nerine has turned away and found a puddle of watery mud, stirred it up and splashed some on her arms, and then just flopped into it and started rolling around. When she rises to tie a sash around her waist, she's so coated that she's a monotone dripping gray-brown.

Hesri lets out a breath in not quite a sigh. "Don't call her that. She just burns hotter than most of us in some regards. It makes her care about some things more than others." Addressing Guts directly she says, "You won't hurt her too much, will you? She's more capable than she looks but..."

After Galli's explanation, Guts decides to wrap the 'flag' like a headband, because screw making it easy for this girl in particular. She'll have to jump high if she wants to get her victory. The trailing ends fall over the back of his neck.

"That's why, since you were askin'." He jabs a thumb at Nerine smothering herself in mud, a delayed response to Galli's 'topless' question. That mud that will inevitably end up all over him in short order. He brushes the drying dirt off his shoulders, exposing a bit more skin to the sun, and makes his way over to his tiny opponent.

Hesri catches him before the start of the round, and the earnestness of the question manages to strum some guilt out of him. She was too kind-hearted. In truth, even focusing on the ten-second rule she'd set still didn't leave him feeling right. The weak grip of her hands and the burns of her skin made him feel like he was beating down on a sick or injured person. At least Nerine was feisty enough to make him feel annoyed at her instead.

"It's just a contest." he ends up saying with a shrug. In his head, that draws a line between game and proper duel.

Seeing that Guts has made his flag into a headband, Nerine, dripping, makes eye contact and undoes hers, then reties it around one of her thighs. He was going to have to reach down pretty far either way, so this is mainly a petty gesture.

Hesri looks from one of his eyes to the other and makes a little concerned sound, but steps back and leaves them to it anyway. Her bandages are disarrayed and some of the harsh-smelling ointment under them has gotten squeezed out or soaked through, leaving them darker and smudged. Someone helps her get mitts over them so she won't annoint everything she touches but she's going to get them rewrapped soon.

With the rain cleared up and the sun coming out, the day is becoming humid and sticky. Girls fan themselves and make a circle to watch and talk in whispers and murmurs. Someone's taking bets and another forgets to hush her voice saying "-but have you looked at him? Come on."

Nerine appears not to have heard or cared about any of it now that those ground rules have been laid out. Her eyes, as big and bright and unspeaking as a fox's, flick over Guts and his frown and then, to the side, where horses that had the good sense to stay out of the rain are venturing out of the stable, and she says, "On the roof. I know you climbed that one. Let's go!"

"Hey," Hesri says instantly, but Nerine's already gone, threading through her bigger Sisters and scaling the wall like it's a ladder. Literally none of the girls are into this, though Galli starts to laugh in disbelief.

Edited 2022-12-04 19:09 (UTC)

"You sure she ain't some kinda rat?"

Guts watches her with a slight disbelief - it's like Nerine gained the ability to scurry up walls with her rodent abilities. Well, fine. If she really wants to injure herself up there, he's not gonna stop her. He follows in a straightforward fashion: jumping up and catching the end of the roof, pulling up to the top with a little momentum. The bruises didn't hurt his sides as much as the raw spear wound.

With their new contest location set, he catches the sight of Galli down below, waiting for her to officially announce the start of their contest. His footing was a bit less even, but it was also less slippery without the mud around. He realizes Nerine would have an easier time scrawling around on her short legs. She probably planned that the whole time, he thinks.

She's aggressive, but so is he, and so the two crash into each other in chaotic fashion. Nerine trying to dive between his legs, Guts trying to get a hold on her clothes. She is slippery and nimble and close to the ground, but he has plenty of reach to make up for it. At one point, he manages to seize a fistful of muddy cloth in a grip strong enough to rip a piece out of the fabric when she manages to wriggle free. Escape, but at the cost of a clean hem!

Some of the particulars of the rules become forgotten between the two of them - Nerine lands a good enough elbow into the bruised side of his ribs to make him flinch. There might have been a nip of teeth and a punch somewhere in there. She later manages to scale up his back after landing a good blow to the side. A ribbon within reach! Until he twists around violently enough to accidentally hit something soft with his elbow and lose his balance at the same time. Slipping!

"Fuck-!" is the last thing he yells as he falls with Nerine attached. Luckily, the two land harmlessly in a pile of wet hay as a mismatched tangle of limbs.

"The roofs are mine," Nerine hisses in that brief period before Galli decides there's nothing more to be done and calls out "Start!"

On the ground, there are exchanges such as "Wanna climb up?" "And get kicked in the face?" The Sisters retreat far enough to be able to watch without crimping their necks and mostly seeing overhanging roof. The view is not as good from this distance and with all the movement it's harder to savor details. They commence to mostly cheering Nerine. Difficult as she can be, she is still one of them. And she's putting on a great show of that in-your-face agility that makes her such trouble to spar against. "She was a robber, right?" "No, a burglar, there's a difference. Robbers make threats. She came over the roofs and just broke into things." "If she was sneaking around why's she like that?" and etc. They gasp and protest at appropriate moments.

Galli's attention isn't on the tiny girl. She sighs, "He fought a bear for no reason, I guess there wasn't any way he could be normal," and feels a twinge go right up her spine. This has been a day of discovery for Galli. Hesri is having a worse time, joggling a little kid against her hip and running disaster scenarios in her head. She'll have to send someone to the Healers...

It is a particular quirk of Nerine that in moments of real exertion and upset she cannot say cool things in a cool, held-together voice. She yelps "Waugh! Mom!" as she loses balance and tries catlike to claw her way up Guts. And then they hit the hay. Nerine is... absolutely gonna keep trying to grab his headband. She's not done yet!

There had been some shrieks of horror from the peanut gallery but now they've gone silent. "What do you naliz think you're doing?" asks one of the conjoined Healer-twins. With frigid dignity the other says "Are you trying to break your backs?"

Giving no sign that she hadn't ambled casually over, Lashan says "Oh, no, don't mind me. They've got 'concerned' and 'angry' out of the way and that means I'm free to laugh."

Guts shoots up into a sitting position, spitting out pieces of straw that had gotten into his mouth. The wet strips are stuck to his hair and any other part of him that had gotten slightly wet from rolling around with little Nerine.

The admonishment from the twins goes right over his head, but he's distracted for a moment by Lashan approaching the scene. Distracted long enough for a hand to reach in and tug the headband off him while it was within reach. Success!

"Hey-" he turns to Nerine, scowling. Goes quiet. Then lets out a loud snort that might have been misconstrued for a laugh if the earlier example hadn't been heard. Did they really just do that?

"Fine, rat girl. You earned it."

But at what cost? Never the graceful loser, Guts decides to get his revenge by scooping her into a headlock and messing up the girl's hair as vigorously as he can. Like hell he was going to let her enjoy her victory without a light knuckle grind to the top of the head. Real battles didn't have clean rules!

She'd had to all but climb over him to reach and so there's no escape. Her eyes have that wild foxlike quality right up until Guts seizes her and they go wide. Nerine yowls in some incoherent combination of victory and outrage, her tight-set braids coming undone, and waves her prize in a dirty fist. She is getting mud all over him. After a bit of fruitless struggling she goes limp, flushed and breathing hard from all that effort.

"No, I mean it," one of the Healer-twins says with deliberate patience, addressing not the combatants but the unfortunate Hesri. "What would have happened if either of them broke their spine? What would we do with them?"

"They would have learned to live with it," Hesri says, her cheeks red. "People survive worse. We've supported people through worse."

Galli steps in to take some heat from her, though her shoulders sag as both Twins turn expressionless faces on her. "It's not like they asked permission. Nerine just finally found someone who wouldn't stay on the ground and call her an idiot."

"Galli, why are you here at leisure?" the other twin asks, and Galli absolutely wilts in place as she keeps talking. "Don't you know what danger you brought on yourself and all the rest of us yesterday? If Lashan had died..."

"Here's where you describe my funeral," Lashan says, leaning against the fence and getting some of the weight off her bad knee. "It'd better start with a feast. Children," she says more loudly and sternly, addressing the assorted Sisters, who've done a lot of straightening up and acting like sober, interested parties. "Afternoon entertainment's over. Time to go back to whatever you all are supposed to do."

They disperse, looking back over their shoulders. Huo waves as he's led away. "Bye, Mister Boy!"

Ever used to the thought of dying one day or another (probably sooner than he expects) Guts finds the fussing of the adults wearisome. He considers that dying playing some stupid game might be a pathetic way to go, but at least it'd be fun. Marginally better than a miserable battlefield death stewing in rot.

When Nerine's wriggling stops, he hefts her along out of the hay easily. Lashan's crotchety old face was starting to feel less like a stranger's, so he makes his way to her. His hostage is eventually dropped in another puddle of mud on the way over, making the round an acceptable half-win for both of them.

"How's the sword?" he asks, like hadn't just been doing something stupid and dangerous.

His hair is plastered to his head from the rain, and his bare upper body is covered in smears of mud and mottled bruising (some of which were looking a little redder than that morning). The stab wound in his shoulder had healed enough that the muck wasn't of immediate concern - though he should probably rinse it out again along with the rest of him. His palms were still looking a little raw from pulling rope.

Struggling upright behind him, his opponent demands "Again!". Now that the adrenaline has ebbed out she's clearly in no shape to go again, all bedraggled and spent and quivering with exertion. She just does not have the kind of stamina to keep up all that dodging and swarming for long, let alone absorbing blows that are harder than most the Sisters can manage. The twins round on her next. Actually face to faces with them, Nerine lowers her head and at least feigns submission.

There's a good chance they'd have had to put Guts on suicide watch if he broke his back, Lashan thinks, looking him over. And probably have him dragging himself around by his arms. Like Hesri she's not imagining him dying but suffering a permanent injury. Given that thickheaded stubbornness and the Healers' help he might or might not walk again eventually but things would be bad in the meantime.

"Eh," she says, as if she hadn't just walked over on him doing something stupid and dangerous, and then says something technical about some minor problem that came up in the forge, ending with "But it's sorted. I didn't start learning the forge just last week." Not pausing or changing her tone she says, "Boy, do me a favor and keep this kind of thing on the ground until you get out of here. You're a mess. Did you have fun?"

As far as Guts was concerned, the day he couldn’t fight anymore was just as good as being dead. That was as far as his thoughts went on the matter.

But that wasn’t his foremost concern at the moment. It sounded like his sword would be ready soon, barring a few technical hiccups here and there, which means he’d be departing sooner than later. But, she was right, he was still a mess. He’d have to actually rest to be in proper fighting shape.

Pensively, considers Lashan’s question, realizing it wasn’t common thing he was asked or considered. Gambino certainly didn’t care much if the boy was enjoying himself. Looking back at Nerine, remembering their little spar up on the roof, and the tug of the rope, and Hesri too (even if that was more awkward than fun, per se).

“Yeah. I guess I did.” he admits, though the smile on his face is rather understated.

“I’ll have to give the rat another match on the ground, next time.”

Spoken within earshot, so she hears.

The question had been sarcastic in her head and came out plain through her mouth. Guts takes it as sincere. Lashan sees the slight, unfamiliar smile and feels her heart twist in her chest.

Gruffly, annoyed with herself, she says, "That's the best I can ask for, I suppose," and leaves which statement she's responding to unsaid.

It's a relief to know that he still has fun in him and knows how to pull his punches enough to roughhouse instead of treating every altercation like it's life or death. She hadn't expected this half-feral boy-man to know about headlocking someone to mess with their hair. Maybe she's too cynical about him. Or not cynical enough, since he's going to march himself right back into other peoples' wars once he leaves. She shouldn't worry herself about the future of someone whose face she likely won't see again.

"You should clean off enough to cover up before you give more girls a complex. And go with our firebug back to the infirmary for at least long enough to clean that out and so she can get fresh salve. Aumin's out on a housecall. The apothecary," she clarifies dryly. "I'll send Vena after you. Gotta stay here a bit longer." Gotta underline her girls' authority with their peers while also not letting it go to their heads, that sort of thing.

“Right...”

The particulars of why girls act the way they do are utterly lost on him, but he should eventually get dressed again to keep his wound covered. He surveys the fence, having forgotten where he’d left Lashan’s shirt in all the entertainment of the day. He finds it half-abandoned where it was, draped over the fence. A bit wet from the rain, but clean. No mud.

To the bathhouse it was, then. He jumps the fence to get going, but one residual question makes him linger on Lashan a bit longer than usual. Should he ask?

“Uh - Where’s the firebug?”

He doesn’t make the connection. He imagines in his head a jar full of firebugs, like captured fireflies. Or maybe it was one big firebug. Medicinal.

It made sense in his head.

Lashan’s feeling a stab of envy about this boy so casually going over the fence. Her body doesn’t let her do that anymore, even calling on the Twins to help it along.

So she’s caught off guard a moment when he pauses to ask. What’s with this insect-catching imagery? Wait. “Hunh. All right, in ancient times when the gods walked the earth, we used to say someone obsessed with flame was a ‘firebug’. Ours is mostly reformed - she’s the tall one with the burns, you can’t miss her.”

The tall one with the burns doesn’t know she’s being discussed and is participating in a serious conversation with the twins. She seems to be holding her own, or at least, doesn’t seem chastised like the other two not dismissed to go about their days.

“She’ll be there soon enough, she knows the way.”

The boy's face twists into an amusing expression of mild confusion and a little judgment at Lashan using her Old Person lingo on him.

"Yeah. I know her. Likes to arm wrestle, for whatever reason..."

He couldn't think of any other explanation as to why Hesri would go so many rounds with him when she was all messed up like that. But whatever. Her choice. He sees her having what must be an insufferable discussion with the priests, and takes that as his cue to meet up later.

"I'll get goin'. See ya."

Never a long farewell with this one. He goes to get himself cleaned off. The first few days had felt incredibly awkward bathing with company, but by now he's learned a quick routine to minimize the amount of time getting a wayward giggle or stare. His hair was the worst of it, muddied and half-drying as it was, but he manages to get his head clean with bucketfuls of water and vigorous scrubbing with his hands. He's most attentive with his still-healing wound site, otherwise.

It doesn't take him too long to make it back to the infirmary, though it meant skipping out on any of the nice oils near the baths this time around. He hadn't entirely dried off by the time he enters, shirt draped loosely over his shoulder like a towel. Although his boots and trousers still held dusty evidence of his day in the mud, the rest of him had entered fresh and renewed.

He locks on the sound of knife cutting fruit flesh, turning to find Hesri preparing peaches at the opposite end of the room. He'd been so preoccupied with roughhousing that he forgot he'd eaten practically nothing that day, still. The sweet scent of the fruit lures him over.

"Hungry?" he asks, as if he wasn't also considering what to eat.

Lashan scoffs a bit as she turns away. "She's just excited to make friends with someone over age eight." Which isn't it, or is only part of it, but she's not going to get into people being skittish about looking at or touching the girl's poor hands.

In the afternoon sunlight there are a lot more people about than earlier and Guts gets more looks of both the 'that's a lot of skin showing' and the 'that boy killed a bear?' varieties. Distinctly more attention than the day before, but no incidents stand out.

In the infirmary, Hesri nods without looking up from her task. "This goes better with a snack. You were eating something when you showed up but I don't know if that was lunch, huh? Here, eat the one I butchered. I'm terrible with overripe fruit."

She means one abandoned, sliced several times with disarrayed skin and oozing juices but all still in one piece, clinging tight to the pit. It seems she's doing better with firmer peaches, if slowly. The arm wrestling bout has her relevant joints aching and she's working with clumsier tools that her weak grip can handle anyway. The wooden hilt of her personal knife would suit a much larger and heavier implement, and the blade comes out of it at a weird angle. A heavy juice-stained cloth in her other hand lets her hold fruit without getting any on her mitt.

Hesri looks up, then, and takes in the state of Guts with her eyebrows lifting. Still shirtless! Well, she's not going to complain, even if the bruises and the still-red healing wound do detract somewhat. "Oh, you don't have a change of clothes, do you. How can you get all the way clean?"

"Guess I'll have to wait 'til I can scrub the mud off."

There's a loud noise from his stomach. He had eaten something to quell the growls of the morning, but it wasn't sufficient enough to be called breakfast or lunch. He didn't notice his own hunger until now. He'll have to get something substantial when it was proper meal time again.

Well. There's more food in front of him now. Guts quickly demonstrates that he is not picky, giving the peach only a cursory examination before starting to tear it apart with his teeth. All he had thought to check was if it was covered in juice and not ointment. After ripping a chunk from the pit not unlike tearing meat off a bone, he answers her again:

"If your hands hurt, I can chop up the rest of them." Chew, chew.

For whatever reason, the impulse comes naturally. A fuzzy imprint, not quite a memory, sits somewhere in the back of his head. A half-face marred by the disease - in time, he may end up fully forgeting the details of her with how distant it was. Plague, they said. He was supposed to be afraid, and yet, found himself sticking close to the deteriorating body, grasping as hard as he could. Her death was twelve years ago.

For whatever reason, Hesri's kindness kindled some mote of a similar feeling. He wasn't afraid, so he offers a hand instead.

The impression that Hesri's been getting, that Guts is younger than she is, is strengthened as she sees him attack the dripping fruit with his stomach growling. He looks like he's about twenty, to her, but there are moments that suggest otherwise. Maybe he's just spent more time alone than in company.

When he offers she smiles. "I should say no and prove my independence, but I suppose I've cut up a couple already." Meaning, she does hurt. "Please. You can use my knife, and go ahead and eat some yourself... I suppose this seems extremely fiddly to you."

The Apothecary has left her a mug of something, larger than the cup she gave him last night, with a similar look and smell. Hesri drinks it all in one go, opening her mouth afterwards in a suppressed gag, and starts using a long bulbous-handled fork to stuff peach slices into her face. Once she's eaten enough of them she sits back with a sigh. A certain brightly brittle edge to her demeanor softens as the medicine starts to take effect.

"Did Sister Lashan ask you to help me? You don't have to, Vena will do it once she's washed the forge off." Guts must have just missed her. "I know it's a lot. I suppose I'm something of a memento mori, but as a soldier you wouldn't need to be reminded."

She's saying it as much for her own sake. Hesri knows what she looks like and how uncomfortable it makes people who aren't accustomed. He'd done well to go a few rounds arm wrestling with her, actually touching her, but she'd noticed that discomfort and it's not something she enjoys seeing. And despite what she's just said, she is a sort of memento mori to a soldier, too, not so much a reminder of death as permanent injury. If his hands were like hers, he wouldn't be able to use a sword well enough to fight.

"It ain't anything like that." he agrees easily, looking over the handle's shape before going to task. His hand was large enough to almost make up the difference and give the blade an unusually small appearance.

Preoccupying himself with the knife made it easy to turn his brain off, somewhat. At this point it was force of habit that had him keep count of all the bodies in the room and their proximity to him, even if there wasn't any real danger.

"I end up in here a lot anyways."

For whatever reason, he felt the need to assure her that she wasn't a burden. Death and decay was simply part of the job and he was used to it by now. He pulls a piece of fruit off the blade with his teeth and offers another slice to her. The sweet flavor and aroma was pleasant. It was nice to share it.

"Lashan just said you'd be in here to change bandages."

His excuse for being here was simple enough - the spear wound was in its final stages of sealing up (helped along by the healing sword in his cot) but it hadn't quite yet faded into another light line on his skin. He was lucky being battered around didn't reopen anything. What a foolish thing it was to agree to wrestle around.

She takes the slice with her two-pronged fork and a nod. This is the season for peaches, juicy with thickly furred skins. Enough are coming ripe all at once that they're offered in various forms at every meal, with more being dried and some made into soap besides. In another couple of weeks the season will be over.

"Does it itch?" she asks with a look at the healing wound. Good thing it has been too high up and too far inside his reach for Nerine to make a go at it, because she would have. Compared to the bear, of course, her attempts had been gentle. "You know, Nerine's actually fifteen. She has her courses and everything, she's just small."

Whether he knows what courses are... well, no matter.

"For me changing my bandages means washing my hands, getting them stretched out a little, and putting on fresh salve first. Which I can do a lot of myself! It's mostly to try and maintain some flexibility, you know. I've healed as much as I'm going to." Hesri removes her mitts and uses her teeth to tease out a clean-ish loose end of bandage from up at her wrist. Otherwise, the cloth is stained with ointment and dirt.

"Wait - " he chimes through a peach slice in his mouth. " She's what?! I thought she was some really stubborn kid... "

Fifteen would make them more or less the same age! And he most certainly doesn't see himself as a kid. How'd she end up so tiny? It's not like they didn't have plenty of food in the village, it seems. Maybe she was born as a really tiny baby?

The question seems to trouble him as half a peach sits unsliced in his hand, swallowing the fruit with morbidly curious deliberation.

"You didn't know?" Hesri's eyebrows climb towards her hairline. To her eyes he certainly hadn't looked like he thought he was grappling with a child, not until they'd both fallen off the roof. "Yes, she's older than she looks. She just grew very slowly and in fits and starts, and I'm not sure if any more are coming. There was a man who was small like that in a show I saw, back... once. They said he was an elf, but you know performers."

She believes in elves these days, and all kinds of other things too. Not every bit of strangeness is magic, though.

"She gets frustrated by people assuming she's about ten. Honestly, I think she'd like to leave to join a regiment or something otherwise." She's frowning now, and makes a deliberate effort to stop. "You know how nobles will sometimes make armor for their children just to show off? She'd have to steal some of that."

Do not be afraid of light

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)