Pulling out the leeches took longer than Gordan wanted it too,but once he was done he was sitting next to a pile of leeches looking at the small child that he assumed was a boy given the child hair and clothes. Overall the child seemed to be fine other than being alittle pale from blood loss.
Gordan gently shook the child and after a bit its eyes opened, and the child looked frantically about before grabbing it's head in pain. Gordan felt alittle bad about that since he had thrown the child and all but still, it was that or carrying a child covered in leeches up a pit wall so he didn't feel too bad about it.
Gordan pushed all of these thing out of his mind right now he needed to figure out what the deal was with this forest. He hoped that the two of them would be able to communicate but since he did not know his location at the moment there was a chance that things could become much more difficult to manage.
Thankfully this event was not a problem since the child seemed to understand Gordan's words.
"Are you okay kid?"
He spoke in his best calming tone which seemed to make the child feel more comfortable since it nodded its head in response.
=sigh=
Gordan was glad, both at the child's responsiveness and by its seeming ability to understand his words.
"My name is Gordan, sorry about my appearance, some stuff happened and I haven't been able to clean up yet"
He motioned toward the snake behind him. Gordan had noticed that though the child had nodded it's eyes had still been filled with fear so Gordan had given the easiest explanation that he could think of.
After seeing the snake the child's eyes got extremely wide as it looked from the snake to the injured person. To the child who had just recently fallen unconscious due to blood loss and been thrown up a pit that was over ten feet by his head, the man looked more like a monster than a person.
If Gordan had known what the child was thinking he wouldn't blame him, since he already knew that he looked terrible, but there wasn't all that much he could do about it the last week of his life had been alittle crazy after all.
Gordan slowly got to his feet and brushed some of the half dried mud off of his clothes before extending a hand to the child, he tried to put a smile on his face but he felt like garbage, and anyway his smiles were weird anyway that was why he rarely smiled.
The child hesitantly took his hand and Gordan razed it to it's feet. The child bowed its head slightly almost falling over in the process, Gordan caught him and helped to steady him.
"Be careful you lost quite a bit of blood back there. Are you good to stand on your own?"
The child seemed to be quite shocked by his concern but nodded it's head to imply that it was fine. The child took a deep breath and began to speak.
"My name is leech"
Gordan flinched but continued to listen.
"I am the third son of Rood, of the Turn clan. Thank you for saving my life"
The child called 'leech' smiled a smile that was filled with a lingering sadness but Gordan was to busy wondering what kind of person would name their child leech to notice. He finally pulled himself away from his thoughts to respond to leeches introduction.
"No need to thank me, the one that you should be thanking is that one over there, it's the one that dragged me over here."
Gordan pointed toward the boar that was standing behind him half hiding from the child in front of it. Leeches eyes began to sparkle as he saw the boar behind Gordan for the first time in their conversation. Gordan rather wondered how one could miss that thing, so he just chalked it up to blood loss.
Leech fell to his knees and held out his arms in joy.
"Fred! You came back for me!"
All of the child's reservations and fear fell away at the sight of the boar who came out from behind Gordan and rushed forward into the boys embrace.
Gordan shifted rather uncomfortably at the sight of such a dramatic shift in tone. He didn't do well with situations like this and found that he just always ruined things so he sat down again and began flicking chunks of half-dried mud off his clothes.
Leech had been rather worried about the strange man who looked like a monster when he had woken up, mostly because of the sheer amount of blood that the man was soaked in. He had seemed nice enough, and had even killed a fanged snake so he couldn't be all that bad, but then again the people that usually got into fights alone with fanged snakes were either crazy, or had a death wish. Given the mans condition he had thought it was the first, but after seeing Fred he figured that this guy wasn't crazy, so maybe he was just lucky.
Looking at the man now Leech wondered what kind of person he was. But the thing that he was even more curious about him was his identity. Leech had never seen him before, and he knew what most people in the area looked like. He had used the common traders language so he didn't seem to be from around this area, but that could just be his preference in language so Leech couldn't tell, for all he knew he was a hermit or something.
Gordan had been paying attention to getting rid of the mud so he wasn't paying all that much attention to the kid, but then Fred came over and gently jabbed him in the back pushing him slightly forward. He caught himself from falling back into the pit but it did make him knock into the pile of leeches with his leg, which he quickly pulled back.
Gordan turned his head to look at the boar who had a rather sour expression on its face, like it was saying 'why are you not paying attention?'
=sigh=
Gordan used sighing as a way to detox emotionally, not that he got all that emotional in the first place. He stood up in defeat and turned toward the boar.
"Okay you have my attention what is it you want?"
He had been speaking more to the boar but the boy was the one that ended up answering him instead.
"He seems to like you quite a bit, what did you do to gain his favor, usually he is quite distant from most people"
Gordan shrugged it response, he hadn't done anything that spectacular. The boys eyes drifted from him to the pile of dead leeches behind him and then let out a cry of delight, which made Gordan flinch. The boy rushed over to the pile of leeches and began putting them into a bag that was slung over his shoulder.
"What in the world are you doing?"
Gordan was in disbelief at the boy so willingly picking up the disgusting creatures. The boy stopped and looked up at him in confusion.
"Collecting some food, that's why I was here in the first place, to catch leeches."
And then Gordan realized why he thought that the walls of the pit had looked so weird. After his father had found out that he hated leeches he had him learn everything about them in order to 'overcome' his weakness, it had only served to solidify his hatred of them. One thing in all of his reading had caught his attention in the past, leech farming. The idea made him sick but people would breed and grow leeches for food. He hid his distaste and helped the child pick up the rest of the leeches. When they had finished the boy surprisingly spoke up.
"Would you like to come to my house, we can help with your wounds and you can join us for dinner. Today was my coming of age trial so I was collecting the food for tonight, so with my leeches and your fanged snake we could have quite the meal"
Gordan felt sick about the leeches and at the same time confused, he assumed that the snake was called a fanged snake but why would they call it a fanged snake, didn't most snakes have fangs?
He desided to push the thought away, besides the food, the idea of medical treatment was something he was in rather dear need of, so he desided that he could deal with the leeches for now.