Routine
Day 6
She leaves me. Never for long mind but she does. Every morning after she tries to feed me she leaves the room and allows me to sit and look out the window. Sometimes I dream of home when she does this and my tail gets the urge to wag just that little bit, turning a circle or two in the air. The young girl had dragged me here over a mile at night after finding me in that crash. I had looked up out of the smashed windows of my k47 and seen this scint of a child looking down the hill at me. I was in enemy territory so at first I thought she would hand me over to her people, call someone to take me away. It never happened. I wondered what would happen more than once when the soldiers found the plane and, I think, she wondered to. At first she would leave the radio on for me but after I threw a bowl at it she stopped doing that. I couldn't understand their chitty language anyhow.
She returns. Her name isn't really Marybell. I don't know what it is. The Law says that we aren't supposed to talk to each other, although the law said that I should probably be dead now. I watch her approach.
For a kit she has a decent figure. Her hips sway as she walks in time with her long tail and she covers her body simply using bands of cloth. Not shaped clothes like us Kanin but with sleaves and vests but single bands. One wrapped around her body, starting just under her breasts and moving its way down around her hips. The results are form-fitting to say the least and create a make-shift dress that goes down to her knees where it is held in place by pegs - also made of wood but intricately carved. A similar piece of cloth, cut like a huge square with a hole in the middle, hangs over her top half like a shirt, covering her chest and forearms in a single piece.
This is another sample of the racial divide. In my home land clothing was important. A girl showing that much forearm or that much leg would be labelled easy. All the hounds would chase her, even at that age. The clothes she dresses me in are simpler still.
It's a shift, although well made. A single sheet of cloth with a hole cut in the top serves as the basis of it but like our Kanin clothing it is stitched, hand worked down each side leaving enough room in the top for my arms to fit through.
Around my waist she has placed a sash, or a belt made of cloth. I don't know what the style is called but it is clearly meant for ease of use. It hides my slight figure and pert breasts while showing off my hips, making me wish even more that I could stand, if only to look in a mirror.
Marybell is smiling at me again. I wonder sometimes if she can read my thoughts on my face. Some day children can do that, although I wonder about Kit children.
She stands and I know what is coming, the routine. Taking the back of the seat she wheels me forwards and out of the bedroom into the main living area. And here is a confusion of wonder.
Rather than a living room and a kitchen their houses are built simply with a large living space. In the centre of the room is a large pit; this is where she cooks. Round and rimmed with stones of the kind we call pavers there is a simple iron grill over a pit of coals. In the roof of the house above it chimney, made of wood like the rest of the house it allows the smoke from the fire pit to drift upwards and out the middle of the slanted roof. Around the sides more wooden furniture, including a set of shelves containing the only metal objects in the house; cooking utensils such as Pots and pans, all of them well used and blackened from the fire and poor cleaning. While the house itself is poor this design is marvellous. Even though the girl only uses a small amount of coal the house keeps the heat from when it was lit. Large windows frame two sides of the living area, the third containing another bedroom and a bathroom. It is time to change my bandages.
Her work is slow and careful. The first two times she didn't know how to bandage things properly but she persisted, wrapping and re-wrapping it as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
Her persistence payed off in the end as now, wheeling me into the bathing area, she attempts to prove.
"Lets see how you're leg is doing puppy-san." She comments as she helps me out of the chair. The bathroom is sparse. There is a tub there but we never use it. The house seams to lack running water let alone hot water and so she merely sits me on a bench outside the tub. I swat her away again, knowing the procedure from the last few days, and use my good hand to untie the cloth around my middle. Marybell undoes the bandage on my other arm as I do this and helps me to lift it so that the shift of clothing can be removed.
I wince, and she purses her lips. In the crash the cockpit of my airplane had had a roof beam come through it from the shed I had impacted. A wooden stave pierced into my upper arm snapping the bone. While my Kit nurse didn't know about medicine she did know enough to split the wound and bind it tightly with cloth. I suspected though from the pain that it was starting to become infected, although she always tried to smile when she saw the colouring of the flesh. At one point she had attempted to deal with it in a primitive method by wanting to press a hot coal into the wound. I don't know where she got that treatment from but I refused to let her do it. Hopefully it won't be necessary. It would be a hard decision to make if it was.
I raised my arm and allowed her to remove the shift with a grunt, she ignored it. I was naked before her and I wondered to myself.
I was a grown woman. Different yes, but grown. What did she see in me as she rubbed the soap through my fur, poured water over me and bathed my injuries? Indeed, compared to her small form I had much more fur, even my tail, bred from generations of German Shepard's, was covered in long thick shags. I had seen pictures of Kit girls and their small breasts, tiny figures and thin waists. I was heavier built and, in comparison to the young child before me, much more shapely. Everything from my pointed ears to the scruffy hard pads on my paws - I looked at them, then at the pads of my hands. My nails needed trimming, not that I was going to let the Kit do it.
It was cause I wasn't walking much. Even before the crash I had undervalued walking, going everywhere on my bike with my tail in the air as I felt the breeze against my face.
I couldn't even cycle now.
I looked away as Marybell unbandaged my arm followed by my left leg. Like my arm it had broken but not the skin. This she simply splinted so that no more damage would occur.
Later today she would go outside and wash the strips of cloth, dutifully and carefully.
Now, she washed me. I cannot do it myself, nor lend a hand beyond moving when she prompts me to. Her hands run over my body, mussing my fur and rubbing soap into it only to rinse it out again. The water at least is warm. Boiled over the pit in the lounge room no doubt since it comes to me in a large metal pot; it feels good in spite of myself. As though for the time when she fusses over me to clean my wounds and my body, she is washing away my past failures. At least for while the water flows. Then eventually I have to dress again in a fresh shift. I never see her wash herself but I imagine she does it at night as she is always clean.
She smells of lavender. I don't know why. I smell it on her when she cleans me, she rubs her face against my back and I cringe from her but always when she does I get the smell of lavender in my fur. Does she wear it for me? Nonsense.
"Good puppy-san." She coos as she cleans and dresses me, tying the sash back around my waist.
She helps me to stand and places me back in the wheelchair. How can a child so young be so strong?
I am wheeled back into the living room. She has chores. I watch her perform them.
First she cleans the floor. While you or I would do this with a broom she does this with cloth, two pieces. She crawls along the floor at high speed, pushing the cloth ahead of her as she pushes what little dirt there is to the sides of the room. Her tail wiggles behind her as she moves and her ears twitch, listening to the sounds around me.
One time I spoke as she did this and she tripped. She laughed and looked at me expectantly, as though hoping for me to say something but I did not know what to say. At that stage I still hated her to much. Or did I just hate the way I am. I'm note sure.
I watch her today with a satisfaction. She works hard, picking up the dirt with the damp cloth then washing it out, working her way around the room methodically.
I wonder if I could get Kanin children to do this.
Nah.
