A/N: Eh this probably sucks but I love The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling, especially The Mowgli Stories. Takes place between The Spring Running and In The Rukh. Tried to mix Kipling's style with my own.
Yes I know it's Gray Brother and The Three. But it was a mouthful so I called them The Four.
I'm sick with a low fever so I don't know how this came out.
DISCLAIMER : I do not own.
Healing Flower
Now, it was perhaps sometime after the Summer season that Mowgli and his brothers ran into their first bit of reckless trouble.
As you know, Mowgli had driven Mowgli from the Jungle, and onto the trail of man. He knew in his heart that the villages he had passed were not the right places to return himself amongst his own kind, and so he and the four continued on their way.
They went through Jungles that were not their Jungles and, presently, grew more reckless with abandon in the strange lands. They still followed the Law - as, they were of the Jungle, even if it was no longer theirs - but the Law varied ever so slightly from Jungle to Jungle, and many animals were not welcoming of a man with Jungle-speech on his tongue.
But their trouble was not to be spelt of the Jungle, but of man.
Out of all Mowgli's brothers, Gray Brother was the wisest, and their youngest brother was the most foolish. He was still cunning and smart, but he was the most likely to make a mistake or act before he thought. And so it was not a surprise when he had leapt out on a man-trail - a path - just as men came around the corner on great horses, and with even greater guns on their shoulders. If it had been the little Hunter - the Gond - it may not have been so bad a situation. But it was the white men, who shot sharp stones from smoking sticks.
Normally, in the Jungle, if one beast makes a mistake, another typically will not come to aid or fall into the trap for them. It just wasn't done. But as Mowgli said often (and denied, just as often) - he was a man, and besides that; they were not in their own Jungles.
Mowgli had jumped as fast as his honed reflexes allowed, grabbing his brother by the scruff and yanking him back. The white man had already pulled the trigger, and as soon as the group noticed a boy before the wolf, it was already too late as a sharp yelp followed the crack of gunfire.
Through haze-pain Mowgli snapped at the men in one of the few man-languages he knew, "my brother!" and the wolves had cried the same in their own tongue. Quickly, they drew back into the surrounding forest, leaving the men bewildered at the events.
"Did - did that boy just growl?"
Back in the Jungle the wolves bore Mowgli between them until they found a suitable place to stop. When they did, Mowgli sat up with a wild grimace, immediately digging into the flesh of his side.
"Little brother," Gray Brother said. "Little brother," he repeated, "you only make the wound grow. Please stop."
Mowgli growled and spat, then panted when he finally dug the stone out, "I - I have seen - arrrgh! - a man be shot in the man village at whence I stayed so long ago - you recall the one. They pulled the stone - the bullet, they called it - out of his flesh. They said it was possible to live with such an injury."
"Did the man live?" One of his brothers asked, ears flashed back.
"Ah - no. But it was because they had yet to close the wound. Or so I was told - I did not see the wound itself not how it had been treated. But they say - they say, that it can be closed up, with a thin thorn and long, thick hair. But I have neither - so I must close the wound different."
"How?" Gray Brother asked, helping to clean the wound. He watched warily as Mowgli unsheathed the eighteen-inch nice that hung from his neck with a trembling hand.
Mowgli grunted. "Bring me that dead vine," then he kicked the ground. "And I need a small pit dug."
They did as he asked.
"And now, Little brother?" One of the others asked.
"Now," Mowgli said, striking knife against rock. "Now I implore the help of the Red Flower - ho! ho! - see how quick it is to assist!"
A flame quickly bloomed, and the wolves, to their credit, merely shifted in response. They watched with glittering eyes as Mowgli thrust the blade of the knife into the petals of fire, and watched it begin to glow, brighter than Bagheera's eyes at night.
"Little brother," Gray Brother quavered, "Mowgli - I do not - I do not think this is so wise."
Mowgli pulled the knife out, inspecting it. "But - and as you know - Jungle cunning can not heal these wounds. I must use the cunning of a man, lest I die. And this would be not Good Hunting, I should think."
And he quickly pressed the flat of the blade against the wound and held back a scream.
When it was over, Mowgli fell asleep, the knife slipping from his grasp and the fire still glowing. The four's fur was bristled, but a prompt sniff showed Mowgli to be alive.
Gray Brother took charge. "We shall stay and wait to move on; we will hunt only in twos, until Mowgli wakes up."
There was no argument, merely a question from a darker-future brother. "And of the Red Flower?"
Gray Brother looked into the mesmerizing flames. "Leave it. We do not know what will put it out or feed it - it may rest in its own time. Unless it grows and travels on its own we should be safe."
And safe they were; Mowgli woke up days later, uncomfortable, but able to walk. And so he put out the embers of the fire and they made their way on in a few sunrises' time, all a little less fearful, and a little more wiser.
And a lot more wary of reckless behavior.