prompt - Nurse Me, Connor and Abby - one character taking care of another.
They marked each day they were lost in the past. They knew exactly how many days since they left their home, what the date would have been in their proper year. Connor could even calculate what the local time in London would be. But Abby determinedly avoided holding a number in her head. If she didn't know, she could convince herself it hadn't been as long as it seemed. Or that it had been forever and she really ought to be used to it by now. Whatever she needed for the mood of the day.
But enough time had passed that the seasons were starting to change. The plants they foraged were past ripeness, migration patterns were changing. To avoid thinking about what it would be like back home in London, Abby focused on the need for a scouting mission. They would need to find new sources of food.
They left the shelter while the sun peeked wanly through the trees in the east. Abby would have preferred to go alone. Connor was getting better at moving through the forest with some stealth, but this morning the sound his boots crunching over twigs and tripping over moss-slicked stones was grating on her nerves.
She felt impatient with Connor lately and wasn't sure why. She wasn't annoyed with him (most of the time), but being around him make her feel restless, her skin tingling and her legs quivering like they'd run 5k. A quiet walk through the misty forest morning would have given her peace and time alone to think. Instead she hiked along with Connor trailing behind her, prickling with awareness each time she felt his eyes on her back.
Spotting movement in the distance, she waved Connor into a crouch. With a finger to her lips she motioned him to keep quiet and wait for her. Abby turned away so she wouldn't have to see him gesturing his insistence on accompanying her. She crept through the foliage until she spotted it, a ground-nesting avian species busily nudging twigs into a small hill on which to lay their young. Perfect, if this was a common nesting area, they'd be eating omelets again before long.
A sharp snap followed by some shuffling disturbed the peaceful scene and Abby cursed inwardly as the nest-builders fled into the forest. Connor was going to scare off every crawling creature they could eat, leaving only the creatures that could eat them.
With an exasperated huff she rose to her feet, spinning around smartly to march right over to Mr Connor Temple and ask him why such a genius couldn't follow simple instructions. In a fine state of fury, she viciously kicked the leaves covering the forest floor. Not paying attention to where she placed her feet, it was no surprised when she slipped on a mossy rock hidden beneath the disturbed leaves.
Abby didn't remember crying out as she fell, wrenching her ankle viciously, but as she sat on the ground swearing at herself for tripping and the stone for tripping her and the entire Cretaceous era for existing Connor was thundering towards her.
"Abby! Abby, are you okay?" he slid to his knees besides her, hovering anxiously but too afraid of hurting her to touch her so that his hands fluttered uselessly.
"I'm fine." She had to grit her teeth against the throb of pain. "I turned my ankle, it's nothing. Help me up."
Overriding his protests, she insisted he pull her up. Abby leaned on Connor as she carefully lowered her injured foot, and was glad for his support because before her toe ever touched the ground the rush of blood from standing made the pain excruciating. The only thing keeping her good leg from buckling was Connor's arms tight around her.
"Yeah," she tried to sound confident but her voice wavered "it's nothing. I'll just, uh, just sit for a minute till the pain passes.
Rolling his eyes at her stubbornness, Connor gently lowered her back to the ground. Where she would have stayed in the first place if she had listened to him. She was stubborn to a fault. But his irritation with her faded when Connor realized how white Abby's face had become. She was in pain, deny it though she would.
Sitting on the cool earth besides her, Connor gently took her leg and set it across his knees. Slapping away her hands as they tried to interfere, he gently untied her boots, slowly working the laces free and loosening the sides. Soon Abby's hands were too busy clawing the dirt as she fought the pain instead of Connor's help. He sucked in a breath and held it as he slid the boot off. Abby too held her breath through it, not reacting to the pain until she heard the boot drop. Then she began to swear.
By now Connor was used to hearing Abby's foul mouth. But during their first days trapped here, he had been shocked and frankly a bit impressed by her vocabulary. Still, it took a lot to get Abby to forget herself like that.
Examining her ankle, he had to choke back a few obscenities himself. Damn her, this was not nothing. It was already swollen to the size of a grapefruit and Connor's stomach turned a bit to think what colors those bruises would turn. And stubborn Abby Maitland was sure to try to walk it off if he let her. But he wouldn't. She was going to keep off that leg till it mended, if he had to bully her through every minute of it.
Abby had let her head fall back, her eyes closed as she panted. A small wave of coolness radiated up her ankle briefly before the sizzle of pain smothered it again. Cracking an eyelid she glanced down to see Connor packing soft cool dirt gently around her ankle. It was a tiny bit of relief anyway so she closed her eyes again with a tiny sigh and tried to will her body to unwind.
But the next moment Connor was scooping her up off the ground. She wriggled briefly, demanding to be put down but he refused and told her not to squirm so she didn't get dropped on her ankle, or her head. She tried to reason with him, insisting she could walk but the look he gave her said he was a bit insulted she actually thought Connor would believe that. Then she asked where he was taking her, they were miles from their camp, but he remained mute. She subsided when she realized he was focused on moving carefully, trying not to jostle her as he negotiated the uneven terrain.
A kilometer later, Connor's arms were burning and sweat was starting to trickle down his back. He sighed with relief when the he heard the sound of water through the trees. A few paces more and he could lower Abby to the grassy bank of the creek before he dropped her. Settling her beside the water, Connor briskly stepped into the frigid stream and rolled up his sleeves. groping about under the water, he searched out an stone.
Abby stared at him quizzically as he returned to her. She watched his dark head, glinting in the sun that was now above the trees, as he bent to his task before her. Setting the cobble down, he placed the heel of her foot upon it so the water could flow over her ankle. She squirmed a bit at the cold, and the current tickling her foot, but the fierce throb was turning to a tolerable ache.
Her mind off her pain for the moment, Abby began to fret about being stranded so far from their shelter. If anything crept up on them, Abby would be useless to help Connor defend her. She had to admit he had chosen a good spot. Large outcroppings cut them off from the bank upstream and down, the opposite bank was a wide grassy clearing that would let them see anything coming their way, and when she looked back the way they had come she couldn't fathom how Connor has carried her through the dense bramble at treeline.
Connor scouted around for threats and returned with a mound of the last berries of the season. As the sun passed its zenith the day warmed, but Abby on her shady bank, both feet now dabbling in the soothing water remained comfortable. That is she was until Connor, standing midstream with a spear poised for unwary fish, decided to remove his shirt. His lean body, with the sun beating down upon it, was harder and more defined than it had been. Abby was just forcing her eyes away when Connor's arm flashed and his spear hit the water.
He sloshed over to her looking well pleased with himself to triumphantly display the flopping silvery prize on the end of his spear. As Connor bustled about preparing a fire to cook the fish, Abby had to smile.
It had worried her that Connor was so unprepared for this life. The man had never even been camping properly before she met him. Abby had been unsure she could bear the burden of keeping both of them alive. She grew irritated because she worried that one day she wouldn't be there to keep him safe. But now she realized that each day she witnessed him adapting, learning, becoming a stronger and wiser man. He could take care of her when she needed it and wasn't too stubborn to refuse the help. They would help each other. They would be all right. They would survive.