ORIGIN

He stumbled and fell, totally depleted of any and all energy, and he was crying openly now, his tears burning against the fresh welts on his face. Everything in him hurt, and his vision was winking out now.

His sister did this to him.

Feverfew did this to him.

He thought this over and over, a vicious cycle in his head without fail, blocking out any other thought. He was too tired to feel anger or fear or anything at the moment, and his shoulders and his head by matter of spatial relation fell to the floor with a soft thump.

He could hear her ragged breathing, but she wasn't moving, and neither was he.

She did this to him.

He closed his eyes that couldn't see and blacked out.

She watched him stare blindly at her, seething, sobbing, panting, and she knew he would never forgive her for this. Even if she gave him such paltry explanations later that she just wanted to make him stronger - she'd set him on fire, and might have even blinded him permanently. She should've told him, should've explained what she was doing, but she just wanted him to fight. She didn't want to hurt him.

She didn't feel like the stronger of the two. She just felt like a monster.

"I'm.....sorry...." She whispered, her voice mottled by pain, and even if Nettle was awake to hear her, he probably wouldn't have understood her, so garbled it sounded.

But she'd said it.
Her eyes closed.
And she accepted oblivion.

[exit Feverfew and Deadnettle]

She had been digging around in Orion like she'd been doing every once in a while. This place with its crumbling buildings was filled with hidden treasures like her spool of thread and her needle, and her satchel, and her little glass bottles. Always, in, out, with this place, because she always had to get back to Eridanus and go on her sweeps for more herbs.

She'd been digging around in one of the buildings she'd marked for interesting excavation, and thus far she was having little luck finding anything. She lifted a chunk of rubble, hoping to find something tucked away like her thread and needle had been, but before she could search with any depth, she heard screams, the screams of youth, and her fur set on edge, and she dropped the rubble and began to run as fast as she could.

It took her a while, for while she could hear their voices clearly in the echoing quiet of the room, she had to traverse the maze like paths of the city to reach the arena where she knew the sounds to come from, and by the time she'd made it, her heart racing, her limbs shivering from the effort, the two children were already lying there on the ground, unconscious.

She'd seen so much so far - she'd seen a jaguar with too many broken bones and his insides set on fire, his mind muddled to the point of insanity(even if such a creature deserved no pity after the things he'd done), she'd seen a friend with a gigantic hole in his chest and infected, rotting wounds, she'd seen a child stomped on till her rib broke, she saw a calm and majestic wolf clawed at and bitten on multiple occasions. This world was full of violence, and she had seen her fair share of it - but nothing, no amount of it could spare her from the fresh horror of seeing children hurt. It hit her like a calamitean wave, her her skipping a beat as she moved closer to them both.

The two rhinos lay there, unconscious, just a few steps from each other, one giving off static shock and irregular breathing, the other....burned. In multiple places. Her hackles rose, her hands clenched into fists, and she swallowed hard.

Remember, there is nothing you can do to change the past, she told herself. You can only remedy what's been done. Focus on the present and the future, not the past.

She reached for her magic to aid the burned one first, hoping to look into him and perhaps understand what'd happened. Cayenne stood next to him, and she placed a hand on his shoulder, closing her eyes and delving deep to see his internal damage.

It was bad. He'd been shocked himself, though by who, she couldn't tell. Immediately that cave-rotten jaguar came to mind, and her thoughts went dark. He'd done this to Bog; she wouldn't doubt he'd do this to these poor, innocent children.

She immediately set to work sending calming waves throughout the child's blood and dampening the inflammation around the serious burn on his side and the burns on his face. For the most part, though, she sent almost all of her army to the child's eyes. He'd been blasted with heat directly in his face....what kind of a monster would do that? Burn him while his eyes had been open? It would form serious scar tissue and cataracts if she didn't treat it immediately, and it might still affect his vision for the rest of his life.

She worked furiously into the day and long after the lights had dimmed, and she had set a fire near ehr with its sweet smoke keeping the two rhinos fast asleep as she healed their skin and packed the burns with poultices and monitered them to make sure they wouldn't succumb to their wounds and their pain.

This was a tragedy, a terrible, horrible tragedy, that two young children should suffer like this.

And when the lights came back on, gently, slowly, she rose, sleepless, and she kicked dust and dirt onto the fire and shrugged on her satchel. There was nothing she could do for them now, she had done the best she possibly could, and since she couldn't move them to a safer spot, they would have to wake up to find themselves taken care of. She doubted they could read, and she doubted very much that she could write a legible enough note for them, so she just left a pile of sweet berries on a pile of leaves between the two of them for when they woke up.

Poor kids. They didn't deserve this.

[exit Cayenne]