Mending Midnight

Adira's P.O.V.

The man had returned with his midnight beast, stumbled through the door, and seemed to collapse. They were covered in blood- no, that isn’t right- they were drenched in blood and seemed to be still bleeding.

I had no idea what attacked them or if it was coming for me next, but I didn’t care. At the sight of their injuries, something in me took over. I couldn’t even say it was a conscious effort because in all reality, my brain stopped working and my body just did.

‘Sterile water and cloth. Tie off the leg to stop the bleeding and apply pressure if necessary. Needle and thread to sew up wounds.’

It was as if someone was giving me instructions, a list to follow. And I just… did it.

It was only when I was leaning over the man, ripping his shirt off of him to check for injuries to his chest- there was certainly enough blood to justify that concern- that it hit me.

‘How do I know this?’

He groaned, his face looking pained as his eyes drifted shut.

‘Not the time. Question your existence later, save his life now.’

With that realization, I snapped back into action, pulling away to check the water, which I was heating over the fire. To my relief, it had quickly come to a boil, and after setting the pot in a pile of snow just outside the door to cool it, I would be able to use it to irrigate any wounds and clean away the blood from the man’s chest.

I set the water down next to Brone, opened the trunk at the foot of his bed, and pulled out the first thing I saw- a plain cloth shirt. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do.

I tore the shirt into strips, soaking a piece in the now warm water at Brone’s side before using it to dab away the excess of blood that covered his naked upper body. I wiped the rust-colored substance away as carefully as I could, leaving behind streaks but cleaning the area enough to see. His chest and stomach were tan and muscular, but wounded.

The wounds, however, weren’t fresh and did not bleed. Lines of raised skin that appeared to have been healed and reopened time and again scored across the expanse of his body. Some were small nicks that could be explained by time in battle. Others looked like they were deliberate, appearing in patterns against his flesh, lingering over some of the most sensitive areas on his body.

I stifled a gasp, feeling a pang of shock and sorrow at the sight in front of me.

‘Did he do this to himself… or was this done to him?’

I pulled away, momentarily taking it all in. The scars didn’t stop at his chest or ribs; they seemed to wrap around him. Engulf him. I had no doubt that they traveled down his legs, around his back and shoulders, and virtually every piece of him that couldn’t be seen.

‘No, it would have been impossible for him to do this to himself.’

And for a moment I thought of the men on the enormous boat who had bound me. How they took pleasure in my discomfort and would raise their fists when the other women or I spoke. How the ropes rubbed my skin raw, and the sailors would deliberately splash saltwater on our wounds to watch us cry out in pain.

I rubbed my wrists at the memory and stared at the man in front of me.

‘I can only imagine the pain you felt.’

I forced my eyes away from the jagged wounds and refocused. If there were no open wounds on his upper body, then the primary focus should be the one I noticed on his leg.

‘Exhaustion.’

I determined after painstakingly treating the injury on Brone’s right leg and pulling him from the floor to the bed, elevating the leg slightly with a folded blanket.

His color was good, and he didn’t seem to have lost much blood, but I knew he hadn’t been sleeping well, and whatever they had fought on the mountain had certainly been a force to be reckoned with. I wasn’t really sure what the shadow-haired man and his matching companion had been up to before being attacked, but I assumed it had to be physically taxing.

I looked over at the limp creature in front of the fire, his mate lying next to him, whining.

A pang of guilt and sadness wracked me at the sight. For all this knowledge I appeared to possess about treating injuries, I didn’t seem to know how to handle them on an animal. Still, from the moment I woke up here in this strange little house, the beast and his partner had been nothing but docile and welcoming.

My apprehension for them had melted away, leaving only a soft affection for the two, making my heart ache when I realized that all the blood had come from the gentle giant.

‘I don’t think anything could survive that much blood loss.’

I took a breath and crawled over to meet the animal, ‘Romal,’ I had picked up on Brone calling him. His breathing was all too shallow and pained. His body appeared covered in deep scratches and caked in blood. His neck was the worst, torn open to expose agitated pink flesh that bled profusely.

‘It’s my responsibility to try.’

I thought to myself gravely, knowing that I was setting myself up for failure. But that wasn’t going to stop me.

I grabbed the now-cooled sterile water and carefully poured it over the worst of Romal’s lacerations. He didn’t even react to the sensation, only darkening my thoughts on his condition.

I took cloths and pressed them against the opening on his neck, hesitant to apply too much pressure and disrupt his already strained breathing. To stitch it shut would have been the best, but I had searched for needle and thread in passing yet found none in this still unfamiliar little house.

While Brone and Romal had been gone, I’d let my curiosity get the better of me and started looking around. The cottage consisted of three rooms, from what I could tell. The first was the room we sat in, where the bed, fire, and essentials were held, and the door outside was. The second was a simple bathroom with a wooden tub and a place to relieve oneself. The last room appeared to be a store room where Brone kept supplies and processed what he hunted.

I’d had hours to look around, even stepping outside for a brief period, to take in my surroundings. Nowhere had I seen any sewing supplies. I was sure Brone must have kept them, but in the crux of this emergency, I didn’t have time to look thoroughly.

‘Just focus on what you have and not what you don’t.’

Still, as I looked at the pitiful sight in front of me, it was hard not to think of all the things I didn’t have. Hard not to think of the difference it would make if I only had more resources.

I reached out, pulling Romal’s limp head into my lap and gently stroking the coarse fur on his face. I stifled a sob, feeling ridiculous that I would have grown so attached to a beast I had only known for a few sunrises.

‘Then again, a few sunrises are all I know, aren’t they?’

My fingers glided slowly over the void of fluff, feeling damp from the blood and water. Somewhere in the sorrow, I felt a sudden sense of calm. It embraced me, and on the other side of that stillness was a feeling of… life. Instinctually, I leaned into the feeling.

It became more intense, seeming to come from my core and flow through every vein until it reached the tips of my fingers and beckoned to be released, spilling out of me and into Romal.

I stared down at hands that didn’t feel like my own and watched as the injuries I’d only just flushed with water closed themselves, like a rose blooming in reverse.

The blood that still coated Romal’s body seemed to absorb into him or evaporate away entirely. Moments later, his pained breathing came easier, deeper, and more like the breathing of a slumber than a final farewell.

But I didn’t move my hands. I didn’t move any part of my body until I sensed that life that had so perilously poured from what felt like the depths of my soul receded. It returned to me, stitched shut the hole it escaped from, and vanished without a trace.

Like a bucket of ice water, my thoughts and emotions washed over me, shocking me at the abrupt and overwhelming sensation. I gasped against the feeling, confusion, and sorrow at my lack of answers gnawing at my mind after the calm blinked into oblivion.

‘What was that? Where did that come from? Where did I come from?’

Questions raced like snow in a blizzard, weighing on me as heavily as the blanket of white powder outside.

A low whine pulled me from my spiral, dragging my attention to the now open eyes gazing back at me. Romal was awake, and his mate was very happily licking his face as he stared at me. If I didn’t know any better, I could swear I saw gratitude.