#zeliha 02

It was too quiet and too loud in the medical tent all at once. Juneau, who usually had a short fuse to begin with, found this particularly vexing. Thanks to her accelerated healing, she had woken up earlier than many others. In Alder’s company, she had watched the battered faces of a few Hestia’s Cove residents be brought in on stretchers and quickly patched together on stiff, uncomfortable cots. Each face, whether she knew them or not, was a reminder of their dismal failure in their investigation and battle. Outwardly, Juneau talked a big game and postured herself as a loner, and she had come to slowly begin to accept the truth of Ivar. But he had still conditioned her into who she was today, in many terrible, toxic ways, but in one enduring way as well: if you’re the only one who makes it out safely, or alive, you’re doing it wrong. 

Alder, after taking the time to comfort Juneau and ensure she was truly as alright as she could be in the moment, had separated from her to speak with someone from the guild or Lothar or Prospero. Her head pounded too badly to really remember–but she was alone. The dull buzz around her of hushed tones, pained whimpers, and scared voices thrummed inside her head until she felt too overwhelmed to sit quietly on her cot alone. Her mind, desparate for distraction, wandered instead to how Alder had recounted the strange beasts that had appeared after the great estate had crumbled. He had described how they had found Juneau in the rubble and taken little interest in her–though with the bruising on her face and the split of her lip and left brow she had wished they had taken some care in how they discarded the rock they’d apparently bludgened her with as they abandoned her–and how they had seemed much more curious about Zeliha.

But they hadn’t taken her. 

Juneau, stiff and sore, lifted from her assigned cot and craned her neck to ensure none of the medical volunteers were looking her way before she snuck between one canvas privacy curtain and the next to find Zeliha. The vuldak knew she was lucky–her pain was real, but some of her exhaustion and malaise was a symptom of her body working overtime to heal her at an accelerated rate. Many around her would be permanently maimed and in pain for days–she hated her demonic form, but she tried to remind herself to be grateful. 

Zeliha, when Juneau found her, did not look much better than Juneau. Bruises littered Zeliha’s face just as they did Juneau’s. She knew there were more injuries–hidden internally and under clothing–that both of them shared. Her rage spoiled her stomach as she stood over Zeliha’s sleeping form for a second, but it was quickly superseded by a sense of relief that Zeliha was even there to observe, in a pitiful state or otherwise, when she had been so nearly disappeared away in the hands (or hooves?) of the Kossith. It was a strange sensation to allow herself to care about someone as much as she did those who were tasked with the investigation with her, and foreign when she found her sense of relief that Zeliha was safe to be so profound that it moved her to tears. Quietly, and as gently as she could, she wedged herself into the little extra room on Zeliha’s cot. Juneau was careful not to wake the faiman prematurely or to disturb any of her injuries as she laid close to her, her heightened senses allowing her to listen to Zeliha’s heart and track the sleep-slowed rise and fall of her chest. She would be able to tell when Zeliha was waking.

The fanfare of Progress Day and anxiety of the crashed ship was already behind Eterna. Freydis herself had already gone on another journey, primarily with Witchers, that led her closer to Iskaldrik than she had been in nearly a year. With distraction and duty behind her, Freydis had sought out to speak with one healer in particular. Freydis had learned that Zeliha could be found at one particular Stumble Inn, owned by the very banshee Freydis had been on a strange journey with not long before. The thought of the Dark One’s emergence being one step closer to a reality twisted in Freydis’ stomach in a similar way that the mere thought of her Blight-stricken fight for survival out of the broodmother’s lair did. Luckily, meeting Calla by complete chance had led her not only to the establishment of a new friendship, but to a resource that would allow Freydis to provide Zeliha with a resource in the healer’s interest in trying to find a way to reverse or mitigate the effects of the disease. Freydis found the bubbly woman in one of the common areas of the Stumble Inn and suddenly felt oddly nervous approaching her. “Zeliha?” she greeted softly, trying to garner the other woman’s attention. “Do you have a moment to speak?”