Veltar could not sleep. No matter how he tried, he was uncomfortable and hot. Of all of his brethren, he had the thickest coat amongst them. He always seemed to overheat without a good sheering now and then.
They weren't exactly stocked with blades or and cutting materials, so what was he supposed to do? Rip it out?
His only solution was typically to dunk himself into the cool water and let his hair soak up all the liquid it could, and then shake it out furiously to let the wind do the rest.
He crawled up to the surface and squinted at the bright sun as it hit his unprepared eyes. To go from the dark to the light was staggering, especially when he was so tired.
A grunt left his body involuntarily as his eyes shut themselves with agitation.
The river sounded so loud against his ears that had just been surrounded in silence, and it only made him want to soak his fur faster.
The brown wolf dragged himself out of the hollow and shook off some dirt that sprinkled into his tangled hair. His tired 'eclipse'-like eyes scanned the area for anything hostile-looking before he made his way towards the river.
On any normal trip, this would feel fine. However, he was dying from being so fucking hot, and even if he was being run there on a palanquin, it wouldn't feel fast enough. Poor Veltar was tired, disoriented, and now agitated.
Before he even needed to start to calm himself down, he made it to the babbling stream and without hesitation, rolled into its shower of cold kisses to soak his hair.
He was so pleased with the relief that he failed to see the limp body of an old wolf laying a few feet from him. 'How could someone miss something so important?', one would often ask in situations like this.
The answer would be in an old human saying: "put your own mask on before attending to others".
Veltar had done nothing but care for others day in and day out. Just as one patient seemed to do better, two others had to be looked after in their stead - and as much as he hated to admit it; Myranda was a huge drain on his energy.
Silver poisoning was something serious. It was unheard of to remove any remnants of it from the blood, and since Myranda now had little shattered bits in her body that would eventually dissolve into her blood and make her weaker, still.
To have to watch over her carefully and tend to her slow healing had left him sleepless and stressed. Veltar allowed himself to vent out his feeling silently as to not wake anyone up, and did so in a quite meditative manner. He would take in each breath and hold it gently, only to put his head under the cold water for a few seconds, and slowly pull his head back out and drawn in another deep breath as the long tendrils of water went through his hair.
The sound of the rushing water, the feel of the cool rivers dancing on his skin, and the deep breaths that felt 'filling' all held hands together in perfect harmony to relieve the agony and anxiety that was taking a solid toll on his mentality.
After repeating these actions four times, Veltar finally felt released of enough pressure and heat that he fully pulled his head from the running water and flipped it back behind his body like some kind of majestic merman he had read about in books as a child.
He couldn't deny it; it did feel pretty awesome to sling water from his locks like he commanded the droplets himself. Would he ever admit it? Hell no....but this would definitely need to be added to his stress management regimen.
He took a few hard breaths to catch up his chest from the heaving it had just had to do in order to hoist the neck and its weighted mane to his back, but once his breathing evened, he started to look around the area to appreciate its natural beauty.
...only for all the nice serenity he had built up to be shattered beyond redemption once his eyes fell upon the old, injured man that looked as though he had been tossed aside like an old, unwanted rag.
"Goddess damn me," he grunted to himself. The budding doctor couldn't help but wonder about if the timing of such dramatic events were divine intervention, a cruel joke, or just the abundant obvious signs that everyone around here could not rest on their laurels, and that time wasn't something they had much to spend.
At first, he was reluctant to pull himself from the water, but that soon faded as he saw the face of an old man who had come to keep him company in the dark dungeon he had been kept in for so long.
He was sure - no - more than sure that his visitor had been nothing but a mere hallucination or dream, but there he was - laying there on the ground with labored breathing.
Now everything he had promised to Metas would become a lie. There was no way he could leave Jhinto in this state without access to all of his medications. 'Dammit, dammit, dammit all!' Veltar cried in rage within the walls of his own head. His face read anguish and agony well enough to where he didn't need to yell out.
...Why was everything always so hard, and so inconvenient?