Yawn

It was bright early morning as Nidalee woke up. She was in her cougar form because she enjoyed sleeping together with her cougar family. It was cosy and warm and a human sleeping next to cougars would've just been weird. She stretched her paws out in front of her as she gave another yawn and got up. She turned back into a human and went to brush her teeth as the rest of her family slowly woke up as well. As the old saying goes: 'old habits die hard' and as such Nidalee kept to brushing her teeth even after she was taken in by the cougars after her birth parents' unfortunate deaths. She even went so far as to make new brushes out of thin twine. Brush is a rather loose term, they looked more like balls of knitted twine which she used to clean her teeth with like a sponge of sorts. She even started to help her cougar family with oral hygiene too and made a teeth cleaner for each of them.

After all the morning cleaning was finished, a cougar cub walked up and started scratching his back against Nidalee's leg. He looked up at Nidalee's and purred with a hopeful look in its eyes.

"I know, I'm hungry too. When we come back from our morning hunt we'll have plenty of food for everyone!" replied Nidalee.

Satisfied, the baby cougar strolled back to its small bed and plopped right back to sleep. Their den wasn't extremely spacious, but it was adequate. There was enough room to shelter all three cubs as well as Nidalee and the other four adult cougars. There was also a makeshift bed which was just a giant pile of dried grass and leaves covered with a piece of animal hide. It used to belong to a giant grizzly bear that Nidalee hunted down. They had eaten the meat but she skinned the bear carefully and now the black fur lay over a pile of straw and leaves. Despite what it was made of it was surprisingly comfortable, but Nidalee never slept on it. She much preferred the smaller circular cushions which the other cougars were sleeping on. These were covered with the deer pelt.

Nidalee liked to hunt as a cougar but today she felt like picking her javelin back up. It's been quite a while since she last slew a beast with a javelin and not her teeth and claws so she figured she would keep her skills sharp. Nidalee and the four cougars all set off in different directions and as per usual each of them was to bring back a prey of their own. Sometimes there just simply weren't enough prey around so some of them returned empty-pawed but usually the food was plenty anyway.

As Nidalee stalked through the jungle looking for prey, she hid in bushes and on trees. She loved the atmosphere of the jungle; breeze feeling warm blowing against her skin, sunlight scattering down through the canopy of the trees, birds singing their songs and insects buzzing as they flew around. It was a wonderful feeling and she could've slept in the foliage all day under the light of the warm sun, had she not had a job to do.

A couple of hours passed and she still hadn't found any prey. She was frustrated but she accepted that this was going to be one of those slow days.

Where is all the food?

Another hour passed and all she had managed to find were some rabbits. It wasn't much but it was enough she thought.

At least it's something...

As she headed back to the den, feeling a little sad about the lack of food she had obtained, she came across an adult deer near a stream, with its head down sipping the water. She smiled gleefully as she dropped the rabbits and sneaked behind a tree overlooking the stream. It was the perfect position, behind a tree in the blindspot of the prey. As she raised her javelin in a throwing stance, she closed one eye and aimed carefully. She noted the wind blowing southward which meant that none of her scent could possibly make its way to the deer. She tensed her muscles as she threw the javelin silently towards the deer's side. However, before the javelin could land, the deer raised its head suddenly, looking northward and immediately bolted away as if startled by something.

Shit! How?! It couldn't possibly know I was here!

Now even more frustrated she went to retrieve her javelin. She would've turned into a cougar and chased the deer but it was already noon and the cubs are still waiting. She grumbled in irritation as she picked up her javelin. As she turned to head back to the den, she stopped midstep as she realised what had startled the deer. She stared northward, the direction which the breeze was coming from with a look of concern and confusion on her face. She recognised this smell, it was the smell of...

Blood! And a lot of it! This isn't the blood of any beast I know... What the hell happened?

Curious and worried at the same time, she went and followed the scent. It wasn't long before she found a trail of blood which was also accompanied by some odd green liquid to the right as well. Before she started following the trail again, she gave out a long sharp whistle. It was a signal akin to a distress call, upon hearing it any adult cougar must follow the sound and help whoever was in trouble. Since cougars can't whistle, their call was just a high-pitched cry, so when they hear an actual whistle they know exactly who was in distress.

Confident that the whistle was long and loud enough for her family to find her, she began to move down the trail. Slowly she stalked silently, cautious that whatever beast did this may still be around. A few minutes of moving later she discovered the source of the blood.

Oh my god...

She gasped at what she saw. It was a giant white-furred humanoid lion covered in streaks of red, lying facedown in a pool of blood but still holding onto that looks to be the head of a giant insect. She moved quickly to the body and immediately placed her fingers to his neck to check for a pulse. She was worried because she couldn't feel anything for a second but then the faintest of pulses hit her finger.

Oh he's still alive but barely...

She rolled Rengar over to find out where the blood was coming from. He was heavy but considerably lighter now with the lack of blood left in his body. She had a sharp intake of breath as she saw the two giant stab wounds in his midsection, they were very deep and she was amazed that he was still alive after losing all of that blood. The fur around the wounds were all stained a deep crimson and his breathing was very erratic and shallow. Kneeling, she placed her hands over the wounds and began to channel her magic. She wasn't the best in healing magic but it had been sufficient for her and the cougars so she prayed that it would be enough now. She hoped that at the very least it should ease the pain a little.

As she concentrated on her magic, the other cougars arrived and one immediately cried urgently.

"No, I'm fine! It's him!" she answered as she tilted her head in Rengar's direction. "Help me carry him back to the den, we have to help him!"

The cougar growled and gave a small snarl in response.

"Yes, I know who he is!" Nidalee snapped, "but he also protects this jungle from unwanted predators and explorers! We need him!"

The cougar had a reluctant but conceding look on its face and it moved over to help carry the Pridestalker. The cougars stood next to each other and Nidalee hoisted Rengar onto their backs with some effort. Nidalee turned into a cougar herself and picking up the insect head with her teeth, she went to support Rengar's legs as the five cougars headed back to the den.

Nidalee's magic had stemmed the bleeding for the time being, not that there was much left to come out anyway. They returned to the den as fast as they could and the young ones were happy at first until they saw what was on their backs. As they hurried over, Nidalee morphed back into a human and pulled Rengar onto the bed. She immediately removed his armour and began channeling her magic to try and heal the wounds.

The other cougars all watched her with a worried expression, but she told them to go eat.

"The young ones are hungry, no?" she urged.

As the hours passed, night began to fall. The adult cougars returned from their dinner hunt and brought back three large deers. Everybody ate while Nidalee continued to channel her magic. The cougars were all worried because Nidalee hadn't eaten anything so one of them brought her some meat and poked her with a paw and purred.

"I'll eat when he's stabilised." she replied. The cougars continued to watch with worried expressions as Nidalee worked her magic. A green glow emanated from the palm of her hands and shone onto Rengar's wounds. The flesh ever so slowly grew and knit together; it was a slow process.

Some time late into the night, Rengar's breathing slowed and eased to a point which Nidalee was satisfied with. Confident that Rengar wouldn't die during the night, she stopped her magic and turned to eat the food. All of the cougars breathed a sigh of relief as Nidalee finally ate something for the first time that day.

Every day after that, she stayed at the den while the others went to hunt. Rengar had so many lacerations, it never failed to surprise Nidalee how someone was able to survive all of these wounds. The small cuts were easy to heal as they closed quickly. The slightly deeper cuts were also quite easy to knit together. The problems were the stab wounds. It was hard to repair organs as well as the flesh. She tried her best but she never had to use her healing magic as the cougar family was basically the top of the food chain in this area of the jungle, as such she wasn't particularly well-versed in the art of healing.

She would stay with Rengar from sunrise to sunset. The wounds slowly started disappearing as she healed them one at a time. This went on for about a week and a half before finally all of the wounds were closed except for the two large ones in his abdomen. The wound openings were too large to close with her current level of healing magic. The organs took the most time but she managed to fix them up, the muscles were hard to knit too as they grew in such an intertwining fashion that it was hard to replicate. In desperation she resorted to her final option.

Her human parents had always insisted on her learning first aid. "It'll help you!" they said, "It'll save your life!" they said. "You'll thank us in the future!" they said. She hated every single second of those lessons, they felt boring and tedious. Well right now she was thankful. She dug through all of her belongings from pre-cougar life until she found what she was looking for. A stitching kit. Threading the needle with ease, she began to stitch Rengar's wounds together and waited for him to recover naturally. Once fully stitched she was finally able to clean his fur from the blood stains. It took a while to wash the blood out but after a while she managed to restore the original white colour of the fur. In order to avoid infections she bandaged Rengar up as soon as his fur was cleaned and dried.

Rengar's breathing was no longer pained or laboured, and most of the wounds have healed. Other than changing the bandages every now and then, it was a waiting game.

"C'mon big guy, we both know you're too proud to die from this. Besides you've still got a job to do" she whispered as she glanced over at the giant insect head lying in the corner.