one day life will be kind.

#KRKWLLS .

"Sorry. Sorry, no more, I swear, I'm sorry," she says, likely too quiet and muffled by her own hand to be heard properly. That's probably for the best.

Her other hand draws a sigil in the air ( comfort, care ), a soothing little habit of her own that she's not sure translates the same to others - but the gesture is made before she can consider that, and she stops herself from asking Remembrance about it by keeping her hand firmly in place.

When they sit - fall, more like, - Faust mirrors the posture, but keeps his hands and thoughts to themselves. Sure. Here works too. They can sit here. Yeah. For sure.

Their terror is evident and all the more concerning when they seem to think they're already at the end of their short life. This is a good time to share a thought, right? As long as it isn't another question? That seems fair, right? And it seems very important for Remembrance to know that -

"You're not dying!" they unclamp their mouth to blurt that out, and then immediately cover it again just in case. And then repeat the motion to add quietly, "You're not dying, Rem. You're just freaked out. Scared. Makes it hard to breathe sometimes, but it'll pass."

They don't really notice the sigil, too preoccupied with everything else—and they've seen Faust drawn sigils before, it's nothing new—but they do notice him sitting down in front of them. They wish he could have moved closer. It doesn't occur to ask him to hug them, they are too panicked to be anything but sad about that. But Faust is there and it matters.

You're just freaked out. Scared. Makes it hard to breathe sometimes, but it'll pass. That triggers a memory (most things do, for a spirit of Remembrance): they've seen this happen to other people with bodies, that they body panics and thinks it's dying even when it's not. They've seen this, the shallow breaths, the terror, and it never led to anyone dying. It lasts for a while, shorter if someone is around to soothe and comfort, and then it passes.

They force their lungs to take a deeper breath. When they peek an eye open to look at Faust, they see him covering his mouth with both hands, and though the terror is still huge inside their chest there's a twitch of their mouth, almost a smile.

“You move, I stitch crooked,” she tells him plainly. “I stitch crooked, you limp for the rest of your life.” Her words are blunt, almost harsh, but the man stops moving.

She completes the rest of her stitch in silence until it's nearly done. Only then does Vora glance briefly toward Merrill. “A little bit of healing?” Vora echoes quietly, not quite a question, briefly studying Merrill's face. There is something strange about this woman, the way she looks as if she should have been swallowed whole by Kirkwall years ago and somehow has not been. Her eyes narrow slightly, but she does not press, turning back to her work. "Good."

She ties off the stitch and reaches for the next cloth. “Your herbs will be needed. Later.” Then she grabs Merrill’s wrist—not harshly, but without warning—and turns her palm upward, inspecting her hands. “Steady enough.” As she releases her, she moves to point at the far wall. “There. The boy by the wall. The wound on his leg is bleeding too quickly. Pressure first. Clean it. Pack it with the elfroot paste on the adjacent cart."

This she can do, at least. She finds a position that lets her press her body weight down onto the wounded elf, using her entire lower arms rather than just her hands for leverage, without getting in Vora's way. She presses firmly, careful not to cause injury. A bruise is better than a torn-open wound, but if she can help it, she'd rather not bruise at all.

"—yes. A little bit", she echoes her own words, because she doesn't have the time to sort through what she knows and what she can't reveal she knows. "I don't have much experience with stitches or setting bones. I can try, but it won't be pretty. I can tie a bandage, clean a wound." She can find a cut-through vein and still the blood flow. She can find blood pooled in the gut cavity. She can encourage blood flow in an area that needs healing, or guide it away from severe swelling. She can feel sepsis running through arteries. She can force a blood clot to break up before it reaches the heart.

But not here. Not now. Not openly, at least.

She winces when her hand is pulled, but she's wise enough now not to cut her palm for magic, or even her lower arm. The scar is old, from when she wasn't that wise. Easy to explain as an accident if someone asks.

Inspection over, she walks over to the boy by the wall and kneels by him. He's young, terrified. Eyes wide and dazed, face too pale. But when she speaks to him in a quiet, soothing voice, he responds, so there's that at least.

She folds a length of bandage into a square and presses it against the wound, hoping to still the bleeding enough that she can pack and dress it. The gash is deep, and as she waits, she hears and sees and smells and senses all the injured laying around them; the screaming ones and the moaning ones, the quietly breathing ones. No time, she thinks, when she stops pressing for just a moment and the blood gushes forth like before.

She dares a glance over her shoulder. Vora seems occupied with another patient. This won't even be visible.

She closes her eyes, feels along the edges of her mind for the place where it touches something else. The Veil feels thicker when it's not her own blood she's using, like clotted halla-milk, but when her thumb grazes the wound on the boy's leg it splits open like an acorn and magic spills out. As always there's so much of it, too much. She could take and take—but she doesn't. She only lets a trickle of it seep into her head, down her arm, through her fingers and back into the wound on the boy's leg.