#gtwac

Cleaning the wound was easier than Ursula had expected. It seemed humans weren’t that different from elves structurally, so her spell needed only minor adjustments. Likewise, sewing the wound shut went well. After the stitches had been finished and the wound bandaged, all that was left was to wait.

The human—Helena, she reminded herself—had been unresponsive since the morning, but she was still breathing evenly, presumably asleep. So Ursula slung herself in a makeshift hammock, hanging in the space between the knight’s massive torso and arm. Finding a comfortable position, she lay down to rest.

When Helena woke up, she tensed immediately.

It was subtle. If Ursula were bigger, she never would have noticed. But as it was, the slight jerk sent her makeshift bed rocking back and forth.

Slowly and carefully, Ursula swung out of her hammock, using the hooked claw on one of her foremost arms to lower herself to the ground.

Climbing to the top of the knight’s chest, Ursula came to a stop at the top of the breastplate. The human’s head was laying flat on the ground, face-up, giving the smaller woman a view of the skin under her ching. She called out to her patient.

“I’m glad you’re awake! How are you feeling?”

Helena sighed deeply, assaulting Ursula with a massive gust of wind. She leaned into the motion, keeping her balance as the plate she was standing on shifted. When the human spoke, she did it through her teeth. “’sgood as can be expected, I suppose.”

Ursula chittered ambivalently, reaching out to touch the human’s face, then deciding against it. Instead she spoke. “Is there any way I can make you more comfortable?”

Helena lifted her head to look at Ursula, crossing her eyes to try and focus on her, then sighed again and laid back down. “I’m fine.”

Ursula hummed doubtfully. “Well you’re certainly not fine.”

Another sigh from the knight. Ursula idly wondered whether that was Helena’s primary form of communication, but stopped when she saw a blush on the human’s cheeks. When she spoke again, she was quieter, almost muttering. “Well, I suppose not, but you’ve already done so much.”

That irked Ursula, in a way she wasn’t sure was entirely rational. She called out, being sure to keep her voice level. “Look at me again, please.”

Helena did so immediately. The human’s nose was at Ursula’s shoulder level, and she jabbed a finger into it, emphasizing her next point. “Listen. I understand you’re grieving, but as of right now I am a doctor, and you are my patient. If I leave you aching or wanting for comfort in any way that I could have prevented, I will have failed. Now, what is it that’s bothering you?”

The human’s gargantuan eyes met her gaze for a long moment, face impassive, then dropped her head back to the forest floor. Ursula saw a blush the size of the small tent spread across Helena’s face, but her tone remained neutral, carefully impassive. “Well, if you’re offering, I haven’t eaten in about a day.”

Ursula’s heart dropped. How could she have failed to account for something as basic as food? “Oh, goodness, I should have asked sooner. What do you typically eat?”

Helena lifted an arm to point, then grimaced and dropped it. “I carried some rations in my pack, but I dropped it when…”

When her companions were killed. Right. Ursula looked in the direction she had indicated, into a nearby clearing. “Very well then, I’ll go grab what I can carry, and be back soon.”

Helena hummed. “Are you sure? It must be easier for me to go…”

“Oh, you absolutely should not be walking for at least another day. I’ll grab enough for a meal, you sit down and rest.”

Helena grumbled something under her breath, but at Ursula’s size, she could make out that it was intentionally nonsense.

~~~

It took her nearly a quarter hour to get to the pack, and that was with Helena’s footprints providing a direct path. Ursula spent it mainly organizing her thoughts. She had dealt with larger creatures before, so why was it that Helena unnerved her so much? She supposed it was mainly that Helena was both massive, and a person. Her large-scale works had always been on beasts, unconscious and unaware.

Ursula rounded the trunk of a tree and found the leather pack lying on the ground, but her mind was focused on how the knight had looked at her. Helena had been calm, no outward signs of emotion other than vague tiredness, but being considered by a face the size of her entire body had stirred something in Ursula. Fear, nervousness, but also something else. Something she wasn’t sure what to do with.

Finally reaching the bag, Ursula walked around it in search of an opening. Luckily, it had fallen with the flap up, so all Ursula needed to do was unlatch the clasp at the top of the bag. As she climbed up to reach, she caught a view of the rest of the clearing around her.

It was big and empty, in a way that told Ursula this was one of the places the Elves had left their mark on. The trees shied away from this place, letting a golden pillar of sun reach the grass below.

Interrupting the view were the bodies of other humans strewn about the clearing, rising like distant mountains from the flat ground. Briefly, Ursula wondered what had driven them so far out into the forest, where Humanity was known only as a distant myth. She made a quick note to ask Helena about it later.

Unclasping the latch and letting the flap fall to the ground, Ursula climbed inside the bag to find several bundles of crackers, and what looked like some type of dried meat. The crackers were each as long as she was tall, and perhaps half as wide, bundled in stacks of four. Dragging one of these packages out and laying as much meat as she could fit on it, she strung a line of web across the cracker to use as a handle, and began hauling the setup back to Helena.

~~~

Perhaps half an hour after Ursula had left, the pain had begun to abate, and the feelings of guilt in Helena were reaching a boiling point, flowing over and becoming concern. Was the little woman okay? Had something happened to her? Had Helena really left her to what must have been a mile long walk at that size, simply to avoid walking the two minutes it would take to get her food?

At the hour mark, she resolved to go and check. Cognizant of how this had gone last time, she tried her best to keep pressure off the wound. She rolled carefully over to her good side, then on to her hands and knees. There she sat for a moment, before working herself up to kneeling, slowly and carefully.

“What the fuck are you doing?” The voice was loud, as though it were shouted by someone just a few feet away from her. Helena whipped her head around, squinting, until her eyes found Ursula a few yards away, standing near a pack of hardtack with some bacon laid over it.

After a stunned moment, she replied. “It had been so long since you left, I was worried something might have happened.”

“I’m completely capable of running that errand myself. I told you not to walk.” Ursula’s tone seemed tense.

Helena shrank under Ursula’s ire, slouching slightly to make herself smaller, but not quite laying back down. “I didn’t mean to question your ability, I was just hoping to help somehow.”

Silent, Ursula started walking towards her, leaving the pack of meals behind. Arriving at Helena’s knee, she began climbing the armor, coming to a stop on her armor’s collar, just in front of her face. “I thought I had made this clear. I am helping you right now, because you are grievously wounded. That’s my task, and I will do it gladly. If you try and help me back, you’re only going to make more work for me later.”

Helena looked down at the spider before her, her shame and her desire to help clashing in her head.

Unsure what else to do, Helena closed her eyes and took several long breaths, trying to move as little as possible to not upset the passenger on her collar. “Yes, you’re right. I apologize, I shouldn’t have strained myself like this.”

Ursula made a slight hmph sound. Reaching a foot down and hooking onto her tabard, the spider began climbing off of Helena’s kneeling body. “Alright, thank you. Lay back down and tell me anything you might need. How are you for water?”

Helena began the careful process of lying back down, retracing her earlier steps. “I have a skin with me, but I emptied it while you were away. Is there a stream nearby?”

As soon as Ursula touched earth, she started walking back to the abandoned meal. “There’s no need, I can condense enough water to fill that in about an hour.”

Finally resting on her back again, Helena stared at the forest canopy again. The view was becoming familiar. “Do you use magic for that as well?”

Again, the response came as though it were spoken directly in her ear. “I do.”

Helena turned her head, catching a glimpse of Ursula walking through the grass several feet away.

“And that method of carrying your voice farther than natural… How is it you can use so many magical techniques in such quick succession?”

There was a pause before Ursula replied. When she did, there was strain in her voice. She was carrying the food again. “I’m not sure what you mean. In my experience it’s typical to know enough spells to cover a variety of tasks. Is it not so with your people?”

“No, for humans it takes decades to master even a single spell. Those that do are considered specialists.” She paused. “How… old are you?”

Ursula laughed lightly. It wasn’t a laugh, but a series of clear and simple clicks that sounded distinctly joyful. “I’m twenty-five, thank you very much. And when did you get so talkative, anyhow?” “The pain is significantly less now than it was before.” Helena paused. “So young to be so knowledgeable. If you were human, you would already be one of the greatest mages in the city.”

There was a heavy grunt from Ursula, and when she spoke next, she was near enough to no longer need the spell. “I had heard that humans had difficulty with magic, but I had no idea it was so pronounced. Wasn’t one of you casting spells in your battle?”

Helena turned her head to find Ursula perhaps a foot from her shoulder. “How did you know that?”

The spider looked at her feet, as if ashamed. “Oh, it made… quite a noise for anyone who might have been listening, but I’m fairly certain I’m the only one who was.”

“Ah, that probably would have been Maia and I. She’s the star apprentice of the city Warlock, on track to take their mantle within the year. Her specialty is making fire, so she’s really useful in combat.”

Helena caught herself in present tense. Stopped. Tried to feel something, then turned back on it. Took a deep breath. Grounded herself.

“The food is here, when you’re ready.” Ursula’s voice was soft again, and it only made Helena feel worse.

Still, she didn’t want to disregard the kindness. She removed a piece of hardtack from the wrapping and broke off a chunk in her mouth. Kept it in her cheek while it softened up. Then, Helena turned to her host, most of the piece still in her hand. “Would you like some?”

~~~

Ursula had never had food like this before. It was strange and hard, and spent too long in her mouth. Still, she found the novelty enjoyable.

Around the food, she and Helena had finally struck up a conversation.

“So I heard you say you know magic as well? What’s your area?”

Helena’s response was slow, as she finished the last cracker. “No particular area. I don’t know any specific spells, I just have a patron.”

Ursula pulled that thread a bit more. There were so many new topics, it felt as though she would never run out of questions to ask. “What do you mean by patron?

Helena sighed again, clearly grasping for an answer. “She’s… My patron is the Queen of Pure Tones. She is the manifestation of justice and righteousness. Those that follow her teachings can sometimes form a bond with her, giving them access to magical abilities beyond their own.”

“And what are her teachings?”

A wry smile broke through Helena’s next sigh. “Are you sure you want to ask that? They can be quite tedious to list.”

Ursula looked up from her meal, into an eye the size of her head. This being, many times her size and experiencing several levels of intense pain, was worrying if she was bored. She giggled. “Really, I’ll tell you if I find it too dry.”

Helena turned her head back to the comforting view of the canopy. The sun was just beginning to set. “Very well then. The first rule is to always be sure of yourself. Whether the action you take is right or wrong in hindsight is irrelevant, you must only be certain that it is yours…”

~~~