Ana paused for a moment, staring down at her otter skin medicine bag, a frown on her face at the fraying leather strap that held it across her shoulders. She narrowed her eyes, looking down at it as she put her paws on both sides and gave the leather strap itself a hard tug. The leather strap ripped apart easily from her bag, much to her dismay. This meant she would have to go to one of the leather makers to repair it. And it was the first time her bag had needed repairs. A few angry tears built up in her eyes, as she stared frustratedly down at her bag.
Mudfoot was sometimes a bit of a dunderhead, for lack of a better word. He half wondered how he hadn’t been called that, until looking down at his foot and remembering that as a puppy he hadn’t been stupid right at birth, but had always looked like he had just stepped in a fresh batch of mud. Sometimes he wondered if he over-thought things, but that didn’t make sense.
If someone always had a voice in their head, or images, how could the over think something? The nature of thought was to be… omni-present, wasn’t it? Then he saw a lightning bug flicker by and padded after it jovially. He wasn’t much of a philosopher.
Righting himself back onto his path, he wandered over to Healingwind’s den, walking as perfectly as he had before tripping down a tree and getting his leg caught in the branches, dangling there for a bit, then falling. Healingwind had helped take away the aches and pains, and even put something on the scratches his foot had gotten. Whatever it was, it sure helped!
He found her breaking her bag, which made him wonder. “Not happy with that one?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.
Ana gazed up when she heard someone approach and recognized Mudfoot. She recalled him coming to her with a rather angry paw injury that seemed to be healed properly now so she wasn't sure why he was coming back again. She looked back at her bag, her eyes still watering. 'Leather strap broke..." She said softly, wrinkling her eyebrows. "Never broke before..." She said softly, pressing her paws against the otter's face affectionately. "Teacher gave me Otter Skin bag long ago... when Ana first learned healing." She looked over at Mudfoot and flicked her nose at his paw. "Paw hurt?"
He grinned at her, shaking his head.
“Not at all! I just wanted to let you see it. You fixed up really good!” Not the best grammar, but he didn’t seem to care. She wasn’t the best at it either, though she probably had a much better excuse than he did. He was just lazy. He grinned at her though, as friendly as ever, tail wagging behind him.
Most of the time he was awkward around girls. He remembered when he was hanging out with Phantomsoul, one of the older wild dogs around his den. She had puppies and was trying to raise them. He had just been a pup then himself, but he couldn’t look at her without panicking and scarpering away. Now she was like an Aunt to him. A very quiet aunt. But that was the thing, he had never met a girl he wasn’t either afraid of, or treated like a family member. Except Healingwind, really.
“Awww, well, we can get your bag fixed. I’m sure one of the tanners could fix it up really easily! Don’t worry about it.” He smiled, reassuring. He didn’t like to see her sad.
Ana looked down at it sadly. "Just sad... first time broken..." She bent down and picked it up carefully in her muzzle, carrying into her den sight and setting it beside the reed baskets, grinding stones and dried plants hunt up on racks. "Will put here until Ana can talk to tanner..." She said, looking over at him before adjusting a stack of wooden bowls she shaped with sand and stones not long ago. She stepped out of her cave, glancing at his posture to make sure his paw seemed to be working well. Sometimes folk lied about their healing. "Not worry... just sad. Ana okay now... How has mudfoot been?"
He followed her at a distance, not wanting to intrude into her den without her permission. He did peer into it, of course, to see how she lived, but that wasn’t a bad thing, right? Most wild dogs have the same kind of dens. Empty. Maybe a sleeping mat. Some rocks or other knickknacks. He thought healers had better abodes, since they often had plants and strange things he didn’t know how to use.
The only things in his den were a nice mat and some dreamberries he had dried out and liked to snack on sometimes. They weren’t half as potent as the fresh kind, but they still made early mornings, before bed, fun.
But he was still young at heart. Goofing off was just in his nature. He never let that get in the way of his duties to the pack, though.
“I’ve been really good! I thought my paw was going to be broken forever, how I fell. But I guess it wasn’t broken to start with. Whatever you put on it healed it a lot better than when I don’t go to a healer!” He fell out of trees and got into various other kinds of scrapes quite often. “I forgot to thank you then,” he hadn’t, “so thank you!”
Ana took a moment to follow his gaze into the den site and sniffed. She knew for a healer she had a lot of strange items, stuff others had never seen. She was strange, she was aware of it and she was proud of it. She nosed a few dried plants on a rack she had fashioned out of sticks, sitting in the sun so that she could store the plants for winter. On the outside of the den, was the char marks of the occasional fire she had to make in order to make her medicine.
Though she knew fire was off limits, she usually only needed it for a moment or two. She looked over at him and chuckled. "No need thank... Ana does Ana's job." She also knew using her real name was a bit unusual but she found it hard to say 'healingwind' properly sometimes. "Foot was easy to heal... not bad wound... just painful."
“You do your job well!” He liked to speak with her normally, though sometimes he had the urge to echo how she said things. It wasn’t malicious, as he just had a very strong playful side. His neighbor, Phantomsoul, was like that as well, though her speaking had gotten a lot better recently. She simply hadn’t been taught how to speak when she was a pup, and learned it over time. So he was used to strange sentence structures. Healingwind was different, because she had that disjointed way of speech, while Phantomsoul simply had to think very hard about words, and thus spoke very, very slowly.
“It was painful, but that’s okay. I’ve done worse to myself!” he laughed at that, mostly because it was true. He had wandered too far out of the pack lands once, and got smacked by a leopard for it. He had also stepped on a porcupine. That was probably the worst thing ever.
Ever.
“You really are amazing though. I could never do the kind of stuff you can.”
Ana blushed lightly at his compliment. To her it was just second nature, she knew how to fix things like she knew how to breath. That was why Suk had encouraged her to join the pack... he knew she was a good healer from the start. And since she had joined, her familiar Baka hadn't needed to assist her as often and could go off and do her own thing every once and a while. "Tis Ana's job... very simple to Ana... very hard to others. Been teaching Earthchild healing too... soon one more." She said with a smile. "Ana soon be one of many healers... pack will be better off yes." She said looking at her feet.
He smiled, nodding. “You know it!”
Sighing, he looked up at the sky, then down at her. “You got plans for tonight? I mean, I was just coming over here to check in and, really, just to see how you’re doing. And to ask that last question. The one about tonight.”
He was one smooth operator, to be sure. But that was mostly because he wasn’t trying to be smooth.
“We could take a walk? Or hang out? I mean. I guess walking is hanging out. Uh.” He frowned, tilting his head to the side. He hoped she wouldn’t say no, in any case. He wanted to keep her company, at least for a little while. Or maybe he just selfishly wanted to keep her in his company. Either way.
Ana looked rather stunned at his suggestion. She had never really been asked to have company by a male before. She chuckled lightly, not sure what to say to him. "Sure... ana would not mind company. Walk would be nice..." She said softly, standing up from her den. She looked at it all carefully to make sure it was all in order and then stepped up beside him. "Lead?" she asked lightly before starting to walk.
He smiled, wagging his tail eagerly.
“Good!” he said, padding up to her so they could walk next to each other. He tilted his head, indicating for her to follow, padding along and taking the lead as she asked. He tried to keep his furiously wagging tail for hitting her, though it was more difficult than he thought.
They could spend the rest of the evening together, not doing anything but Mudfoot couldn’t have been happier. He liked her company, and he hoped to keep it more often.
Fin
