Author's Note:
Here you guys go, the next chapter. Enjoy!
Chapter 8: Guest
Liann
She wiped the small, square table beside the currently occupied bed until not even a smidgen of dust remained on the empty tabletop. She swept the floor of wooden tiles and dusted the shelf in the corner where she kept the vials in. She pushed the also-wooden shutters that covered the windows outwards, so light flooded the room and made everything become brighter.
Her home had to be in its best state when he woke up.
And, no, it was not that she didn't do the chores yesterday, or the day before, it was just…
Her face heated up, just a little.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She did not have much time left.
She went outside, and moved the two chairs on the front porch so they rested beside each other, both facing the clearing that separated the house from the forest. She raked up the dried, pale blue leaves that had drifted onto the clearing, collecting them in a near-filled sack that she placed by the porch. Then she went back in, checked that he was still sleeping comfortably, and left for the forest with her basket in hand.
Hunting for materials in the forest was a daunting task. The materials she wanted were already rare to begin with, not to mention that the other beings who dwelled there were also actively hunting for them. She needed ample amounts of luck, skill, and time for anything that resembled a successful haul.
The reddish hue of the dusk sky, visible even through the dense foliage overhead, signalled the end of her gathering. She promptly headed back, making sure to retrace her steps to avoid the slightest chance of losing her way. She walked across the clearing, stood on the porch, pushed the plain wooden door inward, and entered her all-too-familiar home once again.
The first thing she did was to check on him. He was in her care, after all, and she had to ensure his well-being.
He was still sleeping. His facial muscles were tightened and his breathing was laboured, but his eyelids were shut, and did not flutter the way a half-awake person's eyelids would.
It seemed he would not be waking up today, either.
She decided to take a break then, and noticed how ragged she looked. But the weariness she felt was mostly non-physical. In fact, her dishevelled appearance was a small hint to how magically drained she was.
Keeping him alive had been a struggle unlike any she had faced before.
The curse on him was a vicious creature. Although it was following its own destructive nature, it was relentless in devouring him from the inside out, a flame that brought ruin to wherever it spread. He had almost met his end when she had found him, collapsed on the grass in the devastated land that had witnessed the first battle in Avalon.
All her efforts had barely been able to save his life. And she had only managed to force the curse to retreat to the wound. There, the charred flesh still smouldered and gave off a faint trail of purple smoke, a clear sign that the curse was far from gone. His recovery would be slow, and if she made any error in her treatment, the curse could easily escape her control to claim the life it so desperately wanted.
As had happened many times before, the thought of asking for help crossed her mind. Healing was never her expertise, and he would fare better in the hands of another more skilled at the arts of healing than she was.
She could approach the fairies, for one. She had done her best to maintain good relations with them–leaving behind gifts of her own whenever she took from the forest, avoiding the locations and objects they had marked as their property–and she doubted they would deny her request outright. She also knew there were many adept healers among them who were fully capable of nursing him back to good health.
But she knew the rule as well as they did – help always came at a price.
And the price for a life was usually another. That, she would not be able to give.
Unbidden, unwelcome, another person rose to the fore of her mind. She shoved that idea away as firmly as she could. She had resolved that she would not seek her help, especially not for this matter.
She moved a stool beside the bed, and sat facing her guest. It was best that he was currently asleep, for she would be tending to the wound again.
She placed her hand above his wound and steadied her breathing. She found the curse. The black flame that raged in the confines of the makeshift prison she made for it, and tried its hardest to escape before it succumbed to her ministrations, fizzled and died.
Without so much as a pause to ready herself further, she resumed her treatment.
