Ad Eid, 12th Day of Refinement
"Aya get the…no, yes…yes those ones, right there!"
THUMP
"Quickly!"
"No, dress his un– no, without the wool…"
THUMP
"This…?"
"Yes, just like that…"
THUMP
"Okay, let him rest. I'll go check on the girl."
Kalen's heart pounded as layer upon layer of cloth was draped across his body and eventually covered his eyes.
All the while a duo of voices had been talking to each other. Both sounded feminine. A small, quiet voice alongside the husky and seemingly older voice of a matron.
Although between the various sensations assaulting his body, Kalen could barely distinguish their words as his eyelids fluttered close in exhaustion.
His head thumped in dull pain along with the rest of his body as Kalen quickly fell unconscious.
THUMP
…
Idibus, 13th Day of Refinement
Kalen's mind flittered between stages of twilight. A series of pulses send wracks of pain trembling down his spine.
He felt like he was falling, or being pulled by something as he laid horizontal. Kalen struggled through the assaulting sensations to keep himself lucid. Feeling the tightness of his cloth bindings more than ever as he shuddered from his injuries.
'Ah! M-m-m-mph!'
Kalen's mind struggled to form a coherent string of thoughts.
While the boy thrashed about in one room, in another area in the same building a woman spoke aloud next to her daughter while they delicately cleaned and replaced the wrappings around the fragile body of a small girl.
"That boy…what happened to him?"
The younger woman asked her mother. She was a head taller than Kalen due to age, and nearly the same height as her mother. Both bore the same brown features of hair and eyes that was typical of the region.
"I don't know Ayana, I can only guess something horrible…luckily the girl isn't in such a state as well."
Breila looked down at the young girl in the bed before them, who was breathing with feverish inconsistency.
"Until one of them wakes up, we can only continue to treat them. But that boy, I wonder if…"
"You're thinking about the wound on his head?"
Breila nodded.
"With such a deep gash in that kind of place…It's critical he recovers soon."
The woman shuddered.
"...and now that it's infected, Verma. It's a miracle he survived long enough for us to find him, but only the gods can save him now."
Ayana frowned as her mother cursed in frustration. Her mind was busy ruminating on what Breila had said.
With a questioning gaze she looked to her mother.
"But even if he does wake up, we can't expect him to say anything coherent. With that cut so deep, it has surely affected his brain."
Breila nodded.
"We can only hope for the best. We're not healers, after all. I have already done the best I can."
…
Ab Eid, 14th Day of Refinement
"...continue with that, and the wound should close in a few days. No, no. Without the Herbtrouse…yes, with that.
Three days had passed, and for the first time, Kalen's mind sprung awake with lucid thought.
As his eyes attempted to open and take in his surroundings though, they were blocked by a layer of cloth circling his head.
'Ah, what?'
Kalen's attempt to uncover his face was also blocked by a layer of cloth at his arms, though they seemed far more rigid, as if fastened to the frame of the bed he was set to lie in.
Kalen attempted to gain coherent thought while the voices of two women played in the background.
"Mom, are you going to be alright?"
"I'll be alright Aya. Just something about treating those two took it out of me. I suppose I haven't felt myself in the last few days."
"Should we close for a few days? Give you and those two a chance to rest?"
A silence filled the space between the two voices for a moment.
"...No, we can't. I'll be better before sunset, don't you worry. I just want you to focus on getting the boy awake this morning. His condition was a lot worse than the girl's before they came in, but he should be close to healing by now."
Kalen numbly listened to the conversion. He couldn't see or move, but the words being spoken sounded like they were coming from behind a wall or door.
He was probably lying in a bed in some kind of wooden building, he realized as his emotions and thoughts became less erratic. Given the ease of hearing past walls, he guessed that the building was probably made of flimsy materials. Like the house of a farmer. That at least, was familiar to him.
'From what they're saying, Layla should have made it with me, probably here being treated as well. But where am I? Did a farmer really take us in?'
Kalen immediately started to rustle around again, this time his actions were accompanied with the sounds of cloth ripping and the sensations of his bindings being torn.
"La–Layla, are you there?"
Kalen sounded out in a weak voice.
His eyes behind cloth wrappings turned wide as he realized how scratchy his voice was.
"Layla!"
'She has to be in this building somewhere, or at least in this village!'
A rising current of emotion started to overtake Kalen as a door was swung open across the room. Ayana ran into the room with a flustered expression.
"Whoa, whoa! Stop! Stop! I'll untie you, just don't make your injuries any worse!"
Kalen froze for a moment, blind to the appearance of the voice as he was, but quickly realized that the feminine voice didn't sound familiar.
"Who are you? Where is my sister?!"
"Please, just stop! I'll explain everything if you sit back down!"
"No!"
Kalen pulled himself from the bed, finally earning freedom from his bindings as he felt a snap.
Pain tore through him as he stood up, and he almost fell over due to a sudden light-headedness that washed over him.
But Kalen quickly steadied himself before uncovering his hand from the bandages around it. He held it out in front of him in a defensive gesture.
"Where am I, who are you?"
"Please…!"
Kalen shouted as he fumbled with the covering over his face. Eventually they gave way, and his eyes were able to see what was in front of him…
'What?'
He was greeted by the sight of his sister Layla, broken down into a heap in the center of the room, with eyes glazed and pointed up toward him. Her body was bloodied by gashes and bites that ran like rivers all over its surface.
Kalen's eyes shook in confusion.
The gnarled image overwhelmed his mind and set it into a state of shock.
"L-Layla?"
Kalen choked over the words. His impulse to raise his hand, and likewise the curse of his flesh, at his assumed captor now dulled by the sight.
He let his uncovered hand drop to his side as his legs gave out.
"Layla…what did I do to you?"
Kalen's mournful sobs were met with a glassy stare as the expression of his sister didn't change.
Only a confused voice sounded out, one that he now recognized intimately as his sweet little sister's.
"Layla…isn't that the name of your sister? Please, just… calm down. I can explain what's happening."
Kalen's eyes widened as he saw the pale face of his sister mouth the words. His shock only deepened when he drew closer to her, and the perspective of her image didn't change.
It stayed affixed to the same point on the wooden floor. Almost as if it was some trick of the light.
Kalen's face strained.
'What…is going on?'
The boy's eyes dulled as they rolled back into his head.
Kalen collapsed against the wood floor.
…
Ad Non, 15th Day of Refinement
"And then you collapsed after that. The blood loss you experienced made you faint, but your hallucinations were probably caused by the injury you received to your head."
Ayana spoke to Kalen who was sitting across from her in an empty tavern. The boy who was barely fourteen gulped with a sincere face of guilt.
"...I…don't know what to say. I'm sorry, and I'm grateful for your treatment despite my actions."
"I'm glad that no one was hurt."
Kalen sincerely apologized to the older girl sitting in front of him.
For minutes prior, Kalen had been holding his own face in his hands as Ayana had explained to him what had happened.
His little sister Layla, the real one, sat at his side as she too listened to the conversation.
Though the attention of a young child like her was only half-hearted in the presence of the slice of melon she had been given by Ayana.
"No one was hurt? Please, you couldn't hurt a fly the way you are. Plus, you've got a few years before you can catch up to me in strength, even if you were training to be a guard in your village."
Ayana made a flexing motion as she patted her raised bicep. The comment was in jest, but still had an impact on Kalen.
Kalen looked down at himself to what Ayana had mentioned. It was true, he was heavily injured. Though having his physique he had spent years training as a swordsman compared to a barmaid was a little embarrassing, in this situation he couldn't bring himself to say anything.
Kalen just kept silent and reflected on the conversation they had just had.
After collapsing, Ayana had told Kalen that she had gone to her mother, Breila, who was the owner of the tavern they were in and who had been the one to initially treat Kalen's injuries after he had come out of the woods with his sister draped around his back.
Kalen sighed, he remembered the final words of his mother before he had fled Willowhearth, and the desperate sprint that was needed to outrun his bestial pursuers.
With Layla clinging to him, escaping the beast-like monsters that had chased after them had been the hardest thing he had ever had to do. In addition, because of his broken rib, he had been forced to make sacrifices each and every time their pursuers had caught up to him.
Sacrifices that were numbered by the gashes and pieces taken out of his body.
Yet eventually, by the time the sun started to come up, Kalen and his sister had lost their pursuit. They had made it to a different place. A safer place, Kalen hoped.
His memory of the final hours of the journey were turbid however.
He couldn't remember much. But Kalen did recall fragments. The final moments of the journey, when the horizon had just broken into dawn, and while clutching Layla in his arms he had stumbled onto a rocky path that cut through the trees.
He remembered the fire light hitting his face. Not the light of a raging fire like he had run from, but a calm glow as multiple posts lit the path of a large village street.
He remembered the scene of standing there at the edge of the village, then collapsing as his vision blackened.
The thing he felt before waking up to the voices was the sensation of being dragged across a wooden surface and thrown into something soft.
'It's probably something that the stress took from me. Maybe it's good that I don't remember much.'
But apparently as soon as Kalen was brought into one of the tavern's rooms, Ayana's mother Breila had discovered that the wound across the side of his head needed immediate care.
Now apparent to Kalen, a wide gash had been inflicted across the side of his head, on the right side of his face from his chin to nearly his temple. In addition to that, a chunk of his upper right ear was missing along with it.
Kalen realized that it was probably caused by a swipe from one of the wolf-like claws of the beasts that had attacked Willowhearth. His memory of the escape was fragmentary however, so he couldn't remember exactly when he had received the wound.
Though regardless, the cut ran deep along the side of his face and by the end of the first day it became infected.
Ayana and her mother did all they could to stave off the infection and alleviate it, and although their efforts subsided the negative effects of the cut a great deal, and would hopefully prevent future hallucinations, Breila began to feel ill toward the final days of treating him.
By that part of the story Kalen could guess what had happened to Ayana's mother.
'Ayana's mother was in contact with me for too long, she probably began to feel ill from touching me.'
'It's the curse again…'
Kalen's mouth welled up with a sour taste as he prepared to speak. The sight of his little sister, gnawing on her slice of the melon, made him feel a little better about what he had to say however.
At least, if they kicked Kalen out of the village after learning of his curse, Layla would have a place where she didn't have to go hungry.
"Ayana, you said that your mother started to feel ill during my treatment?"
Ayana nodded as her curly brown hair bobbed up and down.
"Well, is it possible that we could go see her? I wish to give my thanks for her help."
The topic of Breila's sudden illness seemed to cause her some trouble. Ayana's face darkened slightly the more Kalen mentioned it.
"Um…okay. I think we can probably see her now. She should be awake…"
Ayana's voice was hesitant, but regained its usual cheerful vigor as she understood that Kalen just wanted to express his thankfulness.
Yet the hesitation in her voice at her mother's condition quickly brought to Kalen's mind the cases of previous members of Willowhearth.
'Ayana must mean that her mother is spending a lot of time sleeping. That's…similar to those I've touched in the past.'
Kalen felt the sensation of something heavy form in the pit of his stomach.