She ran, at first. Candle ran as far and as fast as her legs would take her, trailing blood heavily, but soon she could run no more. Everything hurt, and she hardly knew herself from the earth beneath her as she dragged her ruined body back to her home.
The priestess called haltingly for help; for
@Sari, for
@Zoug, for anyone who would come. Then she let herself collapse just outside the ravine, too weak to move any further. Blood gathered under her.
S'ari heard the weak, halting call for help and came running, spraying sand all around her and she skidded to a stop before a bleeding Candle. Shit,
she said, a rare curse from her maw--generally, she found more entertaining ways to get her words across than cussing, but sometimes cussing was the only way. She knew some amount of healing but not enough for this. And in her panic, she forgot to call for her sister, or anyone else who might have more skill than she did.
Candle,
she said, the words coming quickly, though she didn't know if the girl could even hear her. It will--be all right. S'ari will...
She didn't know what she would do. She needed something to staunch the bleeding. Thick cobwebs might help, but there were no spiders out here who would leave enough webbing for that. Moss!--did not grow out here in the desert the way it did in great forests. Desperately, she tore away from the girl and went in search of some kind of plant life with large leaves to press to the wounds.
S'ari; the priestess felt her presence first, like the rising of the sun. It was a slow creeping warmth, a familiar light to chase the shadows away. Candle stirred at the sound of her voice, whining faintly.
She would help, surely. She would make the pain stop. Except it was already fading, all of it. It should have felt like relief. It should have, but all Candle could feel was an inexplicable dread.
I'm dying, she thought with a sudden crystal clarity, a calm that belied the panic surging through her. Or perhaps not calm but acceptance. She was afraid but she was so tired of being afraid, so tired of fighting against her own fear.
Then —
She heard her name and the fading light in her flared. Zoug. Candle struggled to lift herself. She abandoned the effort when he fell upon her with the heavy press of his paws, yelping a little in protest. And for a moment she felt betrayed; for a moment she could not understand why he did this, why he was hurting her — !
But she trusted him. She tried to listen. Stay; and what had Zoug ever asked of her but this? All that belonged to her, Candle owed to him. Home; language; family; he'd brought these things to her, or perhaps her to them. And some part of her had been waiting, hoping that he might ask something in return, if only to show that he needed her in some way.
He asked that she stay.
How could she do anything else?
Candle whined again, plaintive this time. W-wo - wo - olf...
She managed in her whispersoft way. F-f-fo...llow me-e.
She began to cry. H-hu - urts.
And she did not want to stay, she did not want to suffer this way. But Zoug had asked, and S'ari had promised, and she did not want to but she would.
Wrapping!
Candle tried; she tried to speak, but there was so little left in her to give. That she still drew breath at all was a miracle. The darkness took her, then, and later she would remember nothing of this encounter. She wouldn't remember S'ari tending to her, Zoug helping in his quiet way. She wouldn't remember being moved.
But when she woke, she knew who had saved her life. Those same beloved faces which had given her a life to save in the first place. Candle had been nothing before them.
In the coming days, her world would dwindle to a spotlight centered on S'ari and Zoug.