Day 9
Blood Ice Cream
Cye was seated Indian-style on the couch with tissues jammed up his nose and a bowl of strawberry ice cream half-consumed in his hands.
An after-dinner sparring session had ended in blood, quite literally, with a resounding crack halted all movement in the bare bit of dirt across the Koji manor's backyard. As his element was water, he had a tendency to bleed an alarming amount in comparison to the others.
Everything outside the sting, the warm flow over lips and chin was nothing but light and noise for a few minutes. In his haze, he couldn't remember who had struck him. Kento, maybe. Sage fussed over him, pressing his fingers flat over the swollen cartilage under Torrent grew tired of the blonde in his space and began shouting at him, despite Halo's best intentions.
Mia took him by the arm into the bathroom and dressed his wound. She tilted his chin with her hand, washed the dried blood from his lips, rolled up little pieces of gauze for him, all without speaking. She was wonderful like that.
The others flurried out of his way when he plodded down the stairs, snuffling down the rivulets of blood in the back of his throat. A bowl of ice cream had magically appeared on the table and he began to eat without question.
Kento came into the room to apologize again. He leaned over the back of the couch and turned his head sheepishly when the smaller boy didn't acknowledge him. Cye just pressed the concave side of the spoon against his lower lip and stared at the TV. He forgave Hardrock. That didn't change the fact that his ice cream tasted like blood.