Otatso Wetlands ii. pain and guilt

Coelacanth studiously avoided the wolf’s mismatched stare, keeping an ample amount of distance between herself and the bedraggled woman until that dark, swanlike neck craned and a pleading whine slipped from that pain-curled mouth. Perceiving these things as implicit permission to approach, still the sheepdog was infinitely cautious as she crept nearer on nervous paws. For a prolonged moment, she simply allowed the wounded bird to become accustomed to her presence, keeping the carriage of her body low and nonthreatening. There was no telling how a patient might react, particularly if the healer’s ministrations caused pain — and, more often than not, they did.

Cautiously, Coelacanth scooped up mouthfuls of snow and applied them liberally to the worst of the lacerations; she feared that packing the deep furrows too heavily would cause pain and potentially do more harm than good. Still, the cold from the snow would numb the wounds and allow her to tend them with less discomfort to her patient — and with it being the middle of winter, she couldn’t do much more than clean them. She didn’t think the woman would follow her to the seaside, where the saline could do its work. Whuffing softly to catch her patient’s attention, the empath stretched out on her side in the snow, then swept her nose toward Reigi. She repeated these two gestures several times, hoping the woman might catch her drift and lay with her lacerations against the soft snow. Seelie simply wasn’t covering enough ground by trying to apply it mouthful by mouthful — and this way, she could work on the scruff wounds, which seemed less critical.