we have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin

~~Andraste~~

She’d been tensed, prepared to help him shift into his stomach so she could work on his other side despite her own fever — and then his words promptly doused it, and a sullen shiver touched her figure. Perhaps she hadn’t even realized how she must’ve seemed, just now; yet words of her own flew to the tip of her tongue, ashamed words: Never meant to appear that way, or, I’m terribly weak-willed when it comes to you. Don’t you know? “That was not my intention,” she settled on, finally, quietly, ears casting away as she eventually resituated him. Should she apologize for the way her body felt for his, even now? When her mind, at least, knew there was more at stake than another romp? “...Forgive me.”

So, once she’d cursed herself to herself some several times within her mind, her countenance returned to its guarded inscrutability; and her eyes only brightened, hardened with previous focus. The silver made even shorter work to the scars along this side; applying poultice and scrutinizing repetitively when she’d eventually finished.

“Verx?” She couldn’t meet his eyes, either, still a bit burnt by her unnecessary immodesty... Instead, her gaze went to some indiscriminate patch of herbs which she’d purposefully leftover. “What was my intention was to show you this.” And so, she toted the rest his way — perhaps now an attempt to salvage what little progress they’d sort of made, too:

“This is coltsfoot. It is a... a numbing agent, for aches and pains. If you are recovering from them, take two leaves every several hours. However, if you need to fight, take three. Your wounds will open, and you will bleed, but you should be able to rejoin battle.” An uncertain pause. Then: “Of course, I suppose it... it only makes sense if you have it in store.” But without further ado, Aure went on to describe the locations of which the plant thrived, words quick and quiet; picking her way about her warrior; chucking bits and scraps of roots and green hither and thither into the undergrowth.

“I’ll have even more confidence in you, Verx, if you come to remember all of that,” she huffed softly, coming to halt some pawprints before him. “Is there anything else you need?” Aure enquired from over a spire of a shoulder; shorn features hesitant as her elusive, worn-out eyes finally decided to meet his own. “I won’t be too far, either way.”