[PRP Jauhar] little bit of chaos [Ouen & Aylin]

[Stereochrome]

Alethryia

The little town of Ast was thrown into a little bit of chaos.

Having been terrorised by a gang of shiftless bandits for the last few days, the residents had taken to hunkering down inside their huts and treehouses every time they heard any usual sounds outside their doors. But this time, the shouting and yelling turned out to be somewhat different -- it was the bandits who were panicking, caught up by a sudden and entirely unexpected onslaught from another group.

This latter band was comprised of about a half-dozen fighters of various races, and was lead by a particularly determined male shifter. Ouen had galloped into town on the back of his radaku, called out a challenge to the local bandits -- and when they stumbled, laughing and drunk, from the house that they had confiscated from a local family, he shouted out for his allies to attack. They swooped down from all sides, including the canopy above, and made short work of the bandits. Some scattered immediately into the jungle, others were knocked unconscious, and some eventually ended up hogtied on their sides in the middle of the market square.

None were hurt fatally, but having done their work, the attacking group seemed content enough to leave them as they were for the locals to deal with.

Besides, they had wounds of their own to take care of (having been outnumbered in this encounter, and suffered some bad cuts and bruises before their victory). The leader was eventually identified as a once-local boy, and son to Shiyana, a local whose tree-house had been burned down by the bandits at the start of their short-lived reign. She fretted over her son for a while, trying to tend to the gash in his thigh (his trouser-leg having been sliced almost clean across with a sword-blade) -- but he waved her off and told her to go look to his allies, perching instead against the side of the village well and doing what he could to clean his wound himself.  

[Alethryia]

Stereochrome

Sorry for the delay, being sick totally wiped me out!

Aylin was bringing Shiyana some herbs on an errand for Reshel when the fight broke out. She had moved about cautiously, wary of the bandits that occupied Ast for the moment. She was frustrated that there wasn't more she could do, if only she could use her magic like Biroki could. But no, she still lacked control and Biroki was away, so there was no calling down of lightning and fire onto the heads of this pestering blight. She was afraid they’d just have to make due for now, and Shiyana was a testament to just that. Aylin felt for her, having to relocate-even locally- because her home was lost to these savages. So she was happy to visit with her with the excuse of an errand from Reshel, but less so when the din of fighting broke out and their visit cut short.

Something was different this time, there were more voices than just those of the bandits, had a group of townsfolk banded together? The two had hid away out of sight to the best of their ability in the small hut, barricading the door as a precaution, until the clamor outside died down.

When they made their way outside to cautiously see what all the fuss had been about Aylin was surprised to see the bandits tied up and thrown on the ground. Perhaps an even greater surprise though was when the typically reserved Shiyana cried out to an unfamiliar male shifter and ran over to his side.

Aylin cast her eyes over their benefactors, wondering why they had come to Ast’s aid when so many were foreign, not even owing allegiance to being fellow shifters. Still, she wasn’t about to second-guess kindness and set herself upon the task of administering aid where she could, thankful for her lessons under two healers.

She looked up from the freshly dressed gash on the arm of a leaf fighter when she noticed the lean, male shifter Shiyana had run to earlier trying to address his own wound beside the village well. Aylin approached with fresh cloth and a smile, drawing a fresh pale of water as she commented, “You know, it’s usually easier if someone looks after a wound for you.”  

[Stereochrome]

Alethryia

no worries! ow o took me a while too, lol.

Ouen had gotten pretty used to taking care of his own cuts, scrapes and bruises -- but that didn’t mean he was particularly good at it. The man simply didn’t have the attention span for proper healing-work. He’d wipe the trailing blood off in some water, then bite down on his lip as he did what he could to stop the residual bleeding… to limited success.

Finally, his attempts seemed to catch the eye of a young shifter. She wasn’t anyone he recognized, but… well, he was older now, he realized. There were people living in Ast that he’d never seen or heard off, and there were younger people around that were doubtless born in the long years since he left. Time went by fast when all you did was tramp through the jungle, drink, raid and sit around campfires until the early hours of the morning, singing and telling tall tales. His mother was older and even quieter than she had been when he’d lived with her, and… little, baby-faced shifter girls were poking their noses into his business.

He shrugged his shoulders at her, glancing around to make sure the rest of his allies were being cared for.

“‘S them I’m more worried ‘bout. Ast’s my home, anyhow. ‘S expected that a man do an’ put ‘is life on the line f’r his home, ain’t it? But this ain’t their home. They done chose to come ‘ere on my account, so I’m responsible for ‘em. But if you’re so worried ‘bout me, then lend me a hand, will ya? I saw you workin’ on the others with my Ma, so I’s figure you know a thing or two. My Ma wouldn’t put up with anyone who wasn’t smart, that I know dam’ well. ‘S why we never got along too well, I guess. I ain’t all that clever, most times.”  

[Alethryia]

Stereochrome

A long time coming!

Aylin blushed at his words, she knew she had grown more capable as a healer in the last year, but it still felt good for that to be recognized by another. “Oh, you must be Ouen then, Shiyana’s son!” She wasn’t quite sure how to respond, “I don’t know about that … I mean she doesn’t talk about you too often, but when she does, it’s fondly…” She trailed off hesitantly, sure she was making a mess of this conversation, “... anyways, I’m Aylin. Could you extend and relax your leg?” She noticed the angle at which he had been trying to attend to his own wound was pushing more blood through the veins of his leg, and she wanted to stop the bleeding as soon as possible.

She noted the spear at his side and pondered, “Do you have a knife that you could use to cut away the rest of the trouser too? It’d be easier to get a good seal on a clean wound then.”  

[Stereochrome]

Alethryia

“One an’ only.” He nodded, pleased to learn that his mother was still talking about him -- at least to this girl. He’d half gotten to thinking that maybe poor old Shiyana was too embarrassed to mention him infront of anyone; her reckless wild child of a son who had disappeared when he was a prentice, only to return a quasi-moral bandit with a spear and a dappled gray mount.

“Well, mothers is like that, ain’t they? Most of them’s still fond of their kids even if their kids is stupid as walls. At least, my Ma’s that sort. If I was her, I’d’ve done an’ forgotten me by now, y’know? Probably wouldn’t even have recognized myself. But my ma, naw. She just sits here remembein’ me. But it’s a good thing, I guess, ‘cause she’s the one who done an’ sent me that message when them there bandits burned down her house. ‘Course, she didn’t intend on me comin’ up to hunt ‘em down, but… well, she oughta’ve known it was gonna happen. I don’t take kindly to folks messin’ with my kith and kin.”

The focus shifted to his wound then, with the girl -- Aylin, she said -- directing him to relax. He slid down to sit on the ground so that he could do so, and when she mentioned his trouser leg he simply reached down and tore it away with his hands. He had a knife with him, of course (the very same little bone dagger he’d left Ast with as a kid), but this would do good enough.

“Don’t go easy on me.” He grinned, leaning back against the well. “I’ve done an’ lived through worse.”  

[Alethryia]

Stereochrome

Aylin was sporting the calm smile of a healer, one that was meant to abate patients’ nerves and diffuse tense situations, but this faltered as Ouen spoke of his mother and grief filled her eyes for a moment, speaking in a faraway voice, “Remembering is sometimes all we have … something to hold onto when days are dark.” She shook her head sharply and pushed back the grief, “Sorry about that, I can get lost in my own thoughts on occasion!”

She laughed as he leaned back against the well, “Hopefully I won’t have to be too rough, it seems like a fairly straight-forward gash.” She poured the fresh water from the well over the wound slowly to clear it of debris and blood, the majority of the cut was clean, but the blade must have been on the dull side- leaving jagged edges in some places where the tissue had been damaged. “I’m going to stop the bleeding, but the damage around the cut is something I can’t heal right away, it’ll have to be bandaged to ensure the cut heals properly.”

Aylin placed her hands on either side of the gash, with her left hand picking up Ouen’s pulse from his femoral artery, and closed her eyes to focus on the heartbeat; it was the force that pushed life through one’s body and she felt the tug of the wound on her consciousness. The healing magic she had called to her hands tingled outwards as it moved along the path of the blood vessels, allowing them to knit back together in their proper place- once again creating a harmony in the water of the body. With the bleeding now stopped- and a good chunk of her energy drained- Aylin opened her eyes with a smile. Healing magic was draining, but also fulfilling in its own right, and she was only improving in this area. Large wounds like this were still very taxing for her paltry power at this point though, and so she was happy to have at least stopped the bleeding. “There, the worst of it’s over. Now I’m just going to apply a poultice that will stimulate healing in the tissue around the wound and secure that with a bandage.” So saying, she removed a small packet of herbs from the bag at her side and steeped the packet in some fresh water, layering them on as gently as possible- she knew they could sting- and wrapping the whole thing efficiently with one of the clean bandages she had brought up to Ouen to begin with. She washed her hands with a satisfied smile, “There, that should do you if you don’t go around over-exerting yourself. The gash could tear and set you right back to bleeding, so don’t go bashing bandits over the head!”  

[Stereochrome]

Alethryia

“Hm.” Ouen shrugged, hearing the distance in her voice and not knowing what to think about it. She was young still -- was was it that she could have experienced, to paint such a tone to her voice? “Guess it’s so for some folks. Me, I’d just rather up an’ move forward an’ deal with the darkness. Ain’t the sort to leave things undone.”

He quieted down to let her work, closing his eyes as he felt her fingers moving across the wound. There was an odd feeling, then, not quite a sting but a sort of… heat, even, as she worked some sort of healing magic. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was hard to ignore, and he let out a deep breath as it spread along his thigh. Then the young healer was speaking again, and he opened his eyes to watch her work with some herbs. They smelled quite familiar -- he remembered his mother doing the same for him for his cuts and scrapes as a child, as much as he tried to bat her away and tell her that he was fine. This time, of course, the infusion was a lot more potent, for the cut he was suffering from was a lot more pronounced than the gashes he had once come home with after falling out of a tree.

“Thass’ easy for you t’say.” He laughed as she warned him not to go bashing bandits over the head. “Turns out that’s exactly what I plan on doin’. See, there’s gonna be some hell to pay for what I done did ‘ere, bringin’ out these folks. We ain’t always been the sorts to fight bandits, is what I’m sayin’. Matter of fact, bandits is what we is, most days, ‘till now I ‘spose. An’ I ain’t in all technicality their leader. So he gonna be mighty mad when we roll back t’camp, tha’ss for sure. An’ Talin, when he get mad, there ain’t no talkin’ to him. There gonna be some blows dealt between us, thass f’er sure. So I hope you done did a good job ‘ere, ‘cause… I’d like to kick ‘round alive a little while longer.”  

[Alethryia]

Stereochrome

Aylin thought on Ouen’s words as she packed the unused supplies for a future patient, “Hmmm, I guess I hadn’t really thought of finding resolution myself before… it just seems, so intimidating I guess. To leave what I know and go looking into the unknown, but it’s probably better than not knowing at all.”

She shook herself from her own thoughts again, “I’m sorry, I’m being terribly vague aren’t I? I’m just glad you did come to help us, even though it sounds like it caused more trouble for you. I lost my home and my family when I was young, during the war with Oba, and I’m not really sure what happened to them. I’ve held out hope for a while, even though I heard no word of them when I was still in Neued. I had to leave to train my magic, my mentor- he found me there and healed me up, but I was dangerous, unpredictable with lightning magic so he took me back here to train me. And I’ve learned a lot, so much more about healing than I could have imagined and I have better control of my destructive magic now, but I hadn’t thought of going back. And I’m still worried about hurting others, with or without meaning to, and I’m worried about traveling without my mentor- but he’s off fighting the Extremists and I just don’t know.”

She felt tears pricking at her eyes and her breath caught in her throat, she smiled weakly and rubbed her eyes with the butt of her hand, “I’m sorry, that just all came out… I haven’t really talked about it with anyone before, and well how do you know? When to fight and when not to fight? When it’s okay to hurt someone, and whether or not that’s justified?”  

[Stereochrome]

Alethryia

heyy. i know you were looking to finish this, super sorry i'm not being much help! i'll try to prioritize it but i don't have a lot of spare time in the summer even for my priorities lululul. x3

Well, he’d been right on that suspicion. The girl sure did have a lot on her mind. It seemed a heavy weight on her shoulders, even as she shook it off and continued her work with not-inconsiderable grace.

Ouen stayed quiet a while so she could talk. Sure, he could be a loud one, but heck -- the girl had patched him up. Least he could do was shut up for a short while. Besides, it made him think, hearing what she had to say. Her worries… weren’t the sort of things that Ouen ever fretted about. Family? He’d practically ran away from his, with this here raid just about his first show of filial piety in years now. And her inexperience with magic, the changes of hurting someone by mistake… jeez, well, he hadn’t given that a spare thought when he bought a lance and started swinging it around.

Still, some of her words were more familiar to him. The war, and that whole sticky issue of fighting.

“War’s old news now.” He finally shrugged when she finished, knowing it would sound dismissive but figuring he might as well say his piece. “I mean, all that killin’ an’ all, ‘s in the past. I used’ta be all sore at Obans for it, but I done travelled ‘round, an’ I seen as many good Obans as I seen bad folks of every other race, an’... I seen a lot of ‘em. So I come to see, these days, it wasn’t personal. They was just thinkin’ one thing, an’ we was thinkin’ another, an’ these days we’s both fightin’ the same opponent. War’s like a bad storm or a long drought. Kills people, scatters people, gets everyone confused an’ hurtin. But it ain’t personal. Ain’t no Oban soldier gonna hunt’cha down just ‘cause you go tryin’ to figure out what went down.”

“As for hurtin’ folks, doncha be so worried. Some folks, they just need a-hurtin’.”

He jerked his chin at the bandits tied up in the middle of the square.

“An’ if it’s an accident, well… that’s what they made up apologizin’ for. Sure as heck ain’t good for nothin’ else but that!”

He rolled his eyes and laughed at his own dumb joke.

“If it’s travelin’ you’re worried about, I can point you the way to Neued easy. We goin’ back down that way anyway. But my dear old Mother might be mad I done told you to go.”