"Lulu, rise! We have an emergency!"
Though her eyelids flutter open, it happens like they carry the weight of a boulder. Slow, creaky. Her quarters are lit only by Soraka's oil lamp, dawn does not seem to break just yet. Must have been quite the emergency if she's roused outside of God Sun's course, alright.
Pix stirs in her nape, disturbed by her slow rise from the bed; the world blurs for an instant as she moves, her whole spirit seduced by her bed and pillow. She whimpers when the fey bug accidentally pulls a strand of purple or two as he makes his way out from beneath her hair, fluttering lazily beside her.
"Whaddizzit?" She slurs, dreamland only just yielding to reality. Soraka looks almost unreal under the lamplight, much too huge, the massive size of their Rakkor home still leaving rather scarce space between horn-tip and roof. Lulu feels like a lost child, a sensation she's equal parts familiar with and disturbed by.
"Lunari," the starchild mutters, crouching to be more at the her eye level. "Lunari and a yordle."
Oh no.
"Lunari?" She drags, small feet pitter-pattering around the room, gathering her healer's garb and hair bands to tame her mane, a habit Soraka struggled to get her used to. The word sounds like a riddle of sorts in this state of half-consciousness. Soraka's lamp paints long, blurred shadows all over her quarters; everything feels liminal. "Bold of 'em to get 'round here." Brave. Her own voice feels muffled in her ears, nonsensical.
"I wouldn't wake you if it was only them." Soraka's hooves make a pleasant noise, her strides far more spacious than what Lulu's little legs can manage as she follows her and helps her gather her belongings. Green eyes are staring miles away, at something on some other plane, and the starchild wraps a hand around her shoulder, a hand so big it nearly goes three quarters through her clavicles, spinning her so they face each other and making her feel all the more fake and defenseless. "Please focus, sweetie. Lunari and a yordle. You're best suited to watch for the latter, don't you agree?
Lulu agrees. Dread neurotransmitters are just starting to truly tickle her receptors.
Bad. Bad. This is bad. She hasn't bothered to deliberately find any kin since she left, avoiding them like she would direwolves or human Hunters. The words of her own promise rite with Soraka, protecting all life no matter how precious she thinks it, ring in her ears, deafening, and the long shadow her horn casts down her nose bridge makes her fear the stars—
"Lemme pee and I'll be there," the sorceress drones.
Soraka nods frantically. "Hurry. And don't forget to bind your hair."
"Yes, ma'am."
The way her eyes see darkness does not favor her concentration, though adrenaline's done a decent job of springing her into consciousness. Her hands tremble, fighting their way through tying her generous curls in a tight bun. They are moist with the alcohol herbs and soaps she uses to disinfect her hands; the silk lace slips between her anxious fingers, frustrating her.
At least she doesn't have to face this situation while nearly pissing herself, she argues against her own anxiety.
"Who do you think that could be?" She tells her familiar. He's nestled beneath the cloth she uses to wrap her hairdo under, as taught by her master. "Gods, I really hope it's not—" Pix jumps up in a burst of fuchsia sparkles. She sometimes forgets he can read her feelings through and through, and now he's grumpy and everything's worse. He flutters around her hace, irritatedly chirping in Fae. "Okay, okay! I'm sorry. I'm just scared. I know it probably isn't one of them."
He settles on her shoulder, taking Serious Position, ready to assist her. "You seem almost eager to go..."
He looks into her with eyes she can't fully understand for once, and she scrunches her nose up. "Stop staring at me like that! I'm still gonna do it, I swore before the gods I would."
She steps out of the restroom, heading to the ruckus her ears track at the living room. Soraka's pulled the dinner table cloth off, resting a human atop, his blood leaking over its edge and dripping on the floor. Drip, drip. The iron of blood remains so invasive her time of actual practice has not fully accustomed her; thick saliva pools in her mouth as she fights the usual nausea. The goat woman is stagnating his bleeding; he does not scream; muted gurgles crawl out of his mouth.
"This is my apprentice, Lulu," she says towards the other ruckus, in pure Rakkor. "She is kin of your man. She will know how to treat him." She points her eyes to the witch, prompts her to a hyperactive shadow in Lunari arms who wriggles in a desperate brawl for freedom; his efforts fall flat against the beef of human arms. The two who hold it sport Lunari face paint; it already runs down their faces, smeared down by sweat.
The shadow lets a distinctly yordle-y snarl, and the flip of Lulu's stomach re-grounds her, shattering her fixation with the small, squirming thing. The sorceress sprints the way across the living room to them. She now understands why the shadow was particularly indistinguishable— male yordle, pure black fur, and dressed in black to boot. Bloodied, needle-sharp fangs break his seamless silhouette as he opens his maw to growl and spit out curses. Dang, we're angry.
"What happened here?" She asks, trying to recall, and keep frontmost, the list of bullet points Soraka has instructed her to cover when receiving a new patient.
"Our golden child Aphelios spotted an intruder he believed to be a Solari infiltrator and went for the kill," one of the two explains, voice quaking from the constant motion of keeping the yordle up. "He was not a Solari infiltrator. He ordered the stars themselves around and hit back fast and hard. Aphelios is now with your master. This man didn't want any help, or any healing, though Phel is ruthless and got a good beating on him. We refused to let him die, seeing how he's not our enemy, and now we're here. This was the closest village nearby, and you, the closest healers within."
"Alright," Lulu replies, barely getting all that through her skull amidst the chaos. "Follow me, I need to lay him down and check his wounds. What weaponry does your Aphelios use for battle? Do you know what he could have been hit with? Do you know anything about this man?"
She guides the three to her own quarters, figuring the shadow-yordle-man to want a bed more fitting of his size while mentally recording all intel. Aphelios is a Lunari assassin and has five weapons, mostly projectile-based. The inner mechanics of it all are complicated and Lulu cares more about the results—the man's left leg wobbles like jelly under the strain of his struggling and weight; something's definitely broken in there. She has Pix summon her decent lighting, the little sprite floating around her bedding and shelves and placing pastel light spheres strategically: her eyes now see he's caked in blood, his robe's fabric stiffening with its congealing. She inhales sharp, in her own palms, holding her nausea down. "Place him on the bed and restrain him," she commands, whistling for Pix to grab her a rag in their own coded language.
The yordle's forcefully pinned down on the bed, but uses the newfound surface as momentum to propel himself off the humans' hold; His lower leg bends awkwardly with a wet noise, and Lulu subtly retches as he screams in pain. The inside of his mouth is just as coated red, strands of thick bloodied drool stretch thin as he hollers. That stunt probably worsened the leg situation, overall—and that, Lulu can't allow.
She paces the way to her bed dominantly, rips the bedsheet off with an angrily graceful arc, earning her a glare from the two gold orbs that were the man's eyes all along. They shine like suns in the vastness of space, and their unexpected allure throws her off for a split second.
Pix flutters to her right, placing a clean, neatly folded cloth on her shoulder, and she takes it as if on cue, hops on her knees atop her mattress and cups his face with her right hand, internally disgusted at how the light cotton immediately dyes red. The man growls in her hold, baring pearly whites at her, pupils narrowed to furious slits; it almost feels like his eyeballs spit fire at her. It's been about five minutes, at most, and she's had her fill of this foolish violence.
"Alright, handsome," she hisses, digging into gold with green, fighting fire with fire. "Look at what you did to your clearly broken leg. I'm just about done with your tantrum, okay?" She squeezes him harder, secretly delighted at the way his eyes widen in surprise. "I need to patch you up. Thus, it's nap time." Her left index nail digs into the thick dark fur of his forehead, shoots a beam, and he falls without warning, his face slipping from her right hand.
The expression of barely bridled rage has now simmered into serenity so profound she resists the urge to giggle at it. What a ridiculous little man.
"Woah," says one of the humans.
"Please leave me with him," she answers, back to her collected, carefully constructed healer voice. "I have to examine the extent his wounds, and for that I ought to disrobe him. I still want to let him keep his dignity."
The two humans nod, smirking at her, and she smiles back. "Go check on your Aphelios. We will be fine." She steps down from her bed, shooing the humans off with a wave of her hands.
She whistles for Pix to grab her first aid kit and spare hair laces, arranging his inert body gingerly so he rests comfortably meanwhile, and her first step is to bind his left wrist to the bedside with hair laces, in case he wakes up and gets rowdy. He's slim, toned, from what she can tell; his forearms are littered with scars, they paint constellations on the dark heaven of his fur. How much have you hurt? This is not the first time you're trapped under a healer's mercy, is it? She lightly taps his chest through the robe, then her temple with the opposite hand—his heartbeat's still untamed from the fighting, but far from the erratic pulses of near-death.
Pix places the box— a present from Soraka the day they climbed down the mount and to the Rakkor populace nearest to its base, intending for her to start actual practice— beside her. She strokes its lid for reassurance, inhaling slowly. Something bitter pinches the back of her throat, perhaps pity, perhaps secondhand pain, perhaps simple, tingly anxiety at being so close to kin for the first time in gods know how long. Her fingers hesitate when undoing his dark robe and splitting it open. Rusty puddles show her where wounds lie beneath his sleeveless silk jumpsuit.
She grabs for the shears in her box, clicking them a time or two and revelling on their metallic noises before starting. She's unwilling to manhandle him to strip him, fearing for his leg; the onesie will just have to accept its end. Walking around him, she aligns the shears' edge to the neck hole and cuts the top through in one swift motion, the silk giving in like butter; she peels the first half away, uncovering his chest like she would a fruit. More scars, drawing patterns on his torso; the ends of his rib cage poke two hard edges, his belly flat, a hint of muscle beneath. He mustn't have food too reliably. Dark fur, like a current, flows to the center of his chest, where it pools in a dark, fluffier tuft; it in turn flows down into a trail that vanishes beneath his waistband.
Lulu's face unwittingly flushes with embarrassment; it appears today is just the day she's supposed to feel like some flustered, confused cub all the way through. Something about him being kin gives her discomfort with her stripping, makes her depersonalization from him harder to achieve, harder to reduce this man to just a body like any other. She swallows, blinking a couple times. A few cuts, two or three probably need actual stitching; the rest are just due for disinfection and bandaging. His free right wrist appears more swollen than his left; there's probably a sprain going on. That will need bandaging too. She should probably clean the fur off blood so there will be no contamination. She shudders at the prospect of having to wipe-bath him, shuffles the thought out of her mind for now. Just a body, she repeats to herself in whispers, like a madwoman. Just a body from your species. A bloody beaten body, to boot. Get real.
She nods, reassuring herself, before doing second and third cuts to the leg sleeves and pulling them open suit. The broken leg will definitely make the brunt of her work; it's twisted to a weird angle, blood leaks through; wise of her to put him to sleep to rearrange the bones. She'd need clay for the cast, but it's an open fracture; injuries should probably dry up first, she supposes wooden planks and bandaging will have to do for now. His opposite thigh sports a nasty gash that demands suturing, deep and stretching beneath the leftover fabric. Poor man, he'll take a while to walk again without suffering. Past wounds litter his entire form, she concludes; ankles split with lines, a few more strokes breaking the flow of dark fur on his thighs and calves... What a shame; the fracture will probably add to his growing collection.
She prioritizes her procedures; the thigh injury will probably be second to the broken bone, probably succeeded by the wrist issue... she's got to inspect the full extension of that cut.
She splits the final strip of fabric, cutting the jumpsuit's waistband, and is already fetching for the final stretch of silk when her eyes note the small poke of his sex on the fabric and she retracts like she touched red-hot iron, turning away to compose herself, burning with shame. "Oh gods," she whispers at nothing, "I can't do it."
Pix urges her with angry chirps, embarrassing her further. She's acting like a child, aware of it, and yet can't stop—
"No, I don't know how to— I've never treated a yordle like this. Oh gods, I—" she shuts her eyes, hopping in place, trying to wear the embarrassment off, the heat burning on every follicle. "Oh, Sun and Moon..." she wriggles her wrists, and then her familiar is in on her face, bothering her with his wiry arms and fluttery wings, screaming in Fae about how he'll die and is losing blood and it makes her panic in two directions now.
"I know I have to, but I mean—" he leaves no room for counter-arguing, his frantic nagging escalating and angering her.
"Ugh, okay!" She hisses, landing a firm stomp on the floor; vigorously spins on her heels to her patient, pulling the silk off, her pupils widening and contracting in shock just after. Her jaw tightens to a painful degree as she slowly lifts his thigh, trying to ignore the eyeful of penis, and sees the wound traces around his thigh and upwards nearly to the edge of his buttock.
"That was informational!" She scream-whispers at herself through grit teeth. "We will have to clean that and not touch anything we shouldn't! But the other leg first!" She grabs the herbal alcohol and orders Pix around for the wooden planks, pulling the fabric back over so she can, at least, focus enough for the delicate task of rearranging his skeleton. She and Soraka went over this with inanimate simulations, and she's had a kid or two who did mischief and paid the price for practice, yet all of this is new without any supervision, and she's already got more than enough anxiety without yordle manhood on her mind.
"Fetch me cloth to stop that cut's bleeding, too," she commands her familiar, cleaning the milder wounds with the rag she'd already used, not wishing blood clots on his fur. She dabs the cloth in alcohol and scrubs all dry scabs away; once Pix has secured her enough spare cloth, two wooden boards plus bandages, some more alcohol and a pail of fresh water, she halts the hemorrhage on his thigh until she can stitch and gets to work on his shin, straightening the bones with some nasty sounding cracks, washing, disinfecting and plastering all open wounds, and holding the two wood pieces to his lower leg with a meticulous bandage tie she practiced with Soraka for days on end.
She ends up gently turning him on his left side to treat his thigh, seizing the fact his fracture's secured and patched to avoid more distracting privates; taking the opportunity to evaluate his backside for any injuries—none that are particularly severe, much to her relief—
An eye-catching scar peeks from his nape, drawing her attention, and her fingers spread the fur there for a closer look.
Her head spins as she distinguishes a mark she knows much too well from her own skin, her own figure in mirrors.
You've gone through a lot of pain, haven't you?
They don't want you either, do they?
Her index fingertip slowly dances through the path of his mark of banishment, brain flooded with memories so overwhelming they almost knock her over; were it not for the smell of gore grounding her, she would've probably drifted elsewhere. The mark and her fingers deform in a blur, and she blinks the tears off her eyes, urged to concentrate.
What a ridiculous little man...
What a hurt little man.
By the time she's placed the very last plaster and released his tied wrist, her room looks like some crime scene; the asphyxiating quiet of the night's been replaced by birdsong, and her small light orbs become increasingly unnecessary. She puts him to rest on his back, covers his naked body with her bedsheets, and now can't help but watch him sleep. It's been so long since she saw a male of her kind up close; curiosity and yearning fill her, the instinctual species urge to cuddle up to him and feel his warmth and revel in the closeness of her own blood, a base need banishment has staunchly deprived her from meeting. Judging by how he was when awake, her civilized side knows he's probably far from a proper partner for that; but yordles remain animal, and every cell in her body begs her to fill the primal temptation of nuzzling him.
Lulu, fortunately, has lived enough social humiliation to master self control necessary to just let her body scream, watching his chest rise and fall with every slow breath, mind racing with a million theories on this guy and the dozens of stories branded on his skin. His face has already been creased with the grooves of near-constant scowling, and even now, while he sleeps, while he looks so serene and defenseless, she can distinguish them. It makes her miserable.
His face is rather attractive, in a strange way she can't pinpoint; his fur surprisingly neat in whatever small space the blood hadn't tainted, silky and fluffy and shiny. His ears are long, and it only makes him accidentally cuter; it pulls at the corners of her lips.
Well, he's banished, too. Perhaps she can earn his trust through healing, and maybe she'll finally have someone to talk to, to entertain her, ease her yordle starvation, to speak to without craning her neck up too much. Every fiber of her meat hurts with craving, churning with desperate loneliness, and her face scrunches. She dislikes feeling such tenderness for a hurt man she doesn't know and amidst all the gory mess left over from her work, littering her quarters.
You can always annoy him with the fact you've seen all there is to see of him, she tells herself, and she smiles in equal parts mischief and embarrassment.
Pix flutters beside her, staring daggers into her—soft daggers. Foam daggers. He could never stare metal daggers.
"He's got some hours left of sleep," she mumbles at her companion. "Can't you let me fantasize about a handsome male of my kin for a few hours?"
Her imagination's filling her with pleasant tingles, and she's not about to give that up. Her lips tickle with static as she details his face even further. His eyelashes and his little button nose, dark as coal, and the gash in his ear and the currents his fur flows in.
"Oh no, I know he is only a patient. I won't befriend him, I'm just making a nice picture for my dreams." She does a couple dismissive waves at her Fae friend. "I'm only watching him, don't worry. I need a good image, is all." Her mind would fill out the rest. It would fill out his voice and his actions, so she could hold onto this painting after she'd dispatched him. He didn't even have to know. He would never know. She would just plaster this cute face in an imaginary friend. Probably get rid of the scars for the one that would chat with her in her fantasies, feeding an emotional meal she could never afford in reality.
"I'll stop and go to sleep soon. I promise." Indeed, fatigue wears down on her. She'll probably skip lunch just to nap on the living room. Or Soraka's room, if the Lunari are still there. Or wherever. She didn't exactly have trouble picking nap spots.
She's already dozing off in her chair when Soraka flutters the bead curtain open, startling her.
"Oh, stars, how grisly," her teacher says, smiling. Lulu only realizes how pitiful she must look how, sticky with sweat and sporting eye bags and probably pale from hunger and overwork. The sprout of a migraine from hours of bearing the pressure of her hairdo is blooming on the back of her head. "How is he?"
"Stable condition," the enchantress says, tired, but proud inside. "Already cleaned him up and discarded his lost clothes. I'll have to wash his robe, it survived rather well." She smiles at her master lazily. "He should be up by this afternoon. I checked his vitals a couple times and he's good. Can you help me get some new clothes for him?"
"Congratulations," is what Soraka answers. That word makes Lulu's heart burst in light and butterflies and cinnamon. "You did well. I can watch over cleaning this mess up and his clothing if you need sleep. The Lunari already took the Aphelios human, they left as soon as he was stable. A healer of theirs will watch over him."
Lulu nods in agreement, blinking slowly. Lunari mercy only went so far as making sure folk didn't die, apparently.
"You can nap in the living room, or in my bed," she adds, drawing a grateful smile from the sorceress. "You deserve rest. I'm proud of you."
"Thank you, Raka," she manages in a whimper. She wants to cry. Her throat tightens, and she gives her a bow of respect, standing up and clumsily making her way outside while undoing her hair. She lands on whatever soft surface she can find—a few cushions for lounging on the floor by the dinner table do just fine. She curls into a relieved ball, sinking into them.
The starchild steps by her, draping one of her spare bedsheets over her. "I'll wake you in a few hours so you can check on him," she says, and even though it's instruction, it sounds like a lullaby. "Seeing how he's your kin, and you did so well, and I have many others to look over... You'll do fine on your own. Take over this one for me, and show me how fit you are as a healer, okay?"
Lulu can sparsely manage a second nod as dreamland swallows her.