Jade Fern Grove his heart was trapped in a cage

despite that the temperatures still felt like they were holding steady in a warmish region a light snow's been falling since brisbane'd woken from slumber early that morning and made his way across more territories. he wound up in a grove: a flat land with emerald ferns aglow with red and olive colored mosses. it wasn't the grove's shade of greenery that drew him in but rather the tall albeit thin trees standing stalwart, the canopy they've grown together offers some shelter from the light snow. the deeper into the territory that brisbane goes, the poorer the lighting is but he pushes forward, tempted by the aromas of small woodland critters and the promise of a fresh drink as he nears one of the creeks that cut through the grove.

soon after she'd met the healer, her next decision had been made easily when she'd caught sight of the mountains. she told herself the only reason she'd circumnavigated the range was for adventure, she knew well enough that the prospect of huge, jagged rocks between herself and the man-by-the-cliff was plenty tempting. she'd travelled in solitude for the most part, and taken dutiful care of the wounds that plagued her still. mercifully, breathing wasn't as hard anymore, though the exposed wound at her tail had taken to smelling like illness, and the wound didn't seem to close as it should. 

she hoped to find something to scavenge, here. there was no chance of her hunting with her healing hock, and she didn't trust the limb enough to move any faster than a three-legged trot. her meals had been few and far between the last couple weeks and her waistline had suffered for it. it's thirst that has her veer towards the scent of fresh water, and ultimately cut in front, suddenly, of the stranger. she pauses - a mistake, she thinks, for otherwaise she could have simply hurried on her way - and offers a "hello."

brisbane moves with purpose to each heavy footfall that draws him ever closer to his goal. it's in sight now and he can almost taste the fresh creek water; the trickling of the water as it moves it's progression through the grove works to distract him so that his focus is so singular upon the promise of a fresh drink he does not hear the sound of uneven trot until a streak of brown emerges from out of the emerald foliage, cutting him off and forcing him to come to an abrupt halt. there is a very brief moment where brisbane is perplexed, brain rapidly attempting to make sense of facts: another wolf and not a predator — his hackles lower from their instinctual bristle —, female, injured — noted as she pauses and offers him a hello.

hello. he parrots her greeting, smoky timbre forming the words in his accent. he surmises quickly that she, too, is making a beeline for the creek and he gestures with a small sweep of his muzzle for her to go ahead of him. it wasn't like the creek didn't have enough water for the both of them. brisbane moves to the bank of the creek, sparing her another glimpse from the corner of his eye, wondering if he should offer to take a look whatever exposed wound she had that smelled like it was getting an infection. he wasn't any sort of master healer but his mother'd been into botany ( perhaps it was that which attracted the witchdoctor to her in the first place ) and she'd taught him a thing or two that proved useful in helping to patch up his siblings when they came home looking worse for wear.

i could take a look at that wound for ya, if you'd like, he offers, gentleman enough not to point out that he's caught fish that smelled better.

he echoes her greeting and makes it plain that she ought to go ahead. she accepts this easily, beelineing to the bank and drinking deeply. she can taste only sharp relief until the cold becomes apparrent and she is forced to slow her pace. a single aud is pricked towards the male, though she's made comfortable enough by the fact that she's certainly larger than he. still, he radiates a kind of toughness that she most definiately can't match - that point is made when her focus shifts too far from the task at hand and she stumbles forward, catching herself only just in time to avoid an embarrassing fall. 

he smells like something she can't place, something sharp that makes her think she could taste it if she tried. she shakes the thought and pretends to be fully engaged in the task at hand, and then he speaks. her chees grow hot and not because of her mild fever; hotter still when she realizes that it must be the smell that's alerted him to the state of it. "ok," she answers. then, slightly defensively, she adds, "I can't feel it. or reach it." she wants to explain away its horrible state, and her words are true - whatever's left of her tail is bent and twisted, and with her bum leg and chest the burns when she attempts to fold herself in order to reach, maintence of the limb has been minimal.

as his offer hangs in the air between them, brisbane takes the opportunity to drink from the creek himself, feeling the cold water's progression from his mouth all the way to his stomach. he laps from the creek's surface until his thirst is stated, which conveniently fell right after she answers with 'ok'. he swipes his tongue across his jowls to collect the stray droplets of water as he turns so that he faces her and draws nearer. it's the first time brisbane gets a good look at it — what was left of her tail was far from a good state, possible stewing infection aside. never once had warwick or karratha ever returned to him in such a state; but the wolf packs of stormvale coast knew better than to invoke brisbane's ruthless 'justice'. fuck, someone really did a number on ya. he observes under his breath as he inspects the wound after she, rather defensively, adds that she couldn't feel it or reach it.

the good news was that he'd seen his mother patch up worse and those wolves lived to tell the tale. he didn't have his mother's skill ( from lack of practice beyond anything else ) but by attribution he appeared to have witchdoctor's affinity for it. good news is that as long as we can take care of the infection that's settin' in you'll live. the words don't feel like an empty platitude to give her some peace — there's something about her that's hearty, believed in part because of the fact that she's managed to survive this long without anyone tending to the wound.

moss is sterile, if i pack the wound with moss it'll clean the wound of infection and the best news is there's plenty of moss around here, the corner of the non-ruined side of his mouth quirks up light-heartedly, just as he would approach any wounds his siblings often came home with. there was a favorite quote his mother liked to use when treating wounds — she'd used it on him as she treated his freshly tattered muzzle: you'll be better before you're married — but he's always thought it was cheesy and he refrains from using it now because they are strangers. yarrow would be better to use but i don't remember seein' any. of course he hadn't exactly been looking as he'd made his way through the grove either.

he takes a moment to speak and when he doesn, she responds only with a nod. she doesn't want to explain the circumstances that led to her injuries, the sudden violence of the man has an uncomfortable feeling she can't quite place rise in her chest. it's his next words taht cause her some concern - she'd never thought that it'd be possible to die from her injuried in the first place, and she blinks at him. perhaps the lack of sensation stemming from the break further up has furthered her connection from the tail that had once seemed an integral part of her, but the wound doesn't seem part of her in the same way her healing leg and bruised ribs do. 

she accepts his help easily, and nods again. "moss sounds good. I'll help find some." of course, he could be spewing bullshit, but his explaination sounds concrete and the alternative is doing nothing and letting it fester. "what's sterile?" as with the woman who'd helped with her leg, she tries to commit whatever knowledge he offers to memory. 

she hobbles a little further from the bank, nosing at the base of a fir where moss grows in sparse clumps. at least it should be plentiful here, and finding enough of it can't be that hard.

brisbane doesn't pry for the circumstance that led to the wound, but mostly because he held onto the belief of doctor-patient confidentiality. he didn't need the details to heal her and he's not nosy enough to pretend that he does. she offers to help gather some and he doesn't protest — his mother might've, insisting that the patient shouldn't help look for whatever medicines that was needed, but brisbane wasn't his soft-hearted mother; so long as the patient was capable of helping look for what he needed he wasn't about to turn it down. the gathering process would go a lot faster with the both of them and if they collected enough he could make sure she had some moss to spare though without someone to apply it for her having leftovers might be a bit useless.

sterile means its clean and won't make the infection in your wound worse. it's the first time he's ever had to explain what it meant, finding her question amusing ...likely the same way his mother'd found his own questions during her mandatory lessons amusing. it was good that she wanted to know the details, brisbane thought. in case you happen to come across it, yarrow is a small flower that is tell-tale by their white petals and the fact that they grow in bunches with thin stems. the moss will do for the time being and as that's what they head from the bank in search of he imparts the information in regards to what yarrow looks like to her just in case she'd need in the future as she appears eager enough to learn.

brisbane veers left, shrugging through underbrush as he finds a tree whose trunk is covered in olive green moss. he begins to pull it from the bark, gathering as much as he can carry in his mouth before he turns and heads back to the bank and deposits it in a dry patch of grass.

she pauses in her gathering when he offers the description of yarrow, though this time of season she's not sure there'll be much around. still, she could be wrong - this is her first spring grown up and aware of the changes in the land around her. "what's it do?" comes her question, dipping to gather all she's gathered in her maw once again and make her way back to where a small pile seems to be starting on the bank. depositing what she's managed to gather (less than he has, though she blames her bum leg) she pokes at the mound of it, all different shades and textures. she quite liked she feel of them, and it seems plenty to her. "is this enough?"

yarrow? brisbane inquires rhetorically, a bit distractedly as he collects his own bounty of moss. depends on what you're usin' it for. if you eat a small dosage of it, it'll cause you to throw up which is good for expelling poison. on the other side of that is ingest too much and it's a poison itself, which tended to be the case with pretty much any medicinal herb that was ingested his mother'd been sure to warn him when he'd begun to take an interest in botany. if you're chewing it into a salve and putting it on a wound it kills and stops the spread of infection. he continues after he returned back to the bank of the creek, watching as she limps back to him.

should be more than enough. he assures her as she deposits her own collection with his own. i'm going to start chewing little bits of it into a salve and then apply it to the wound in small sections to ensure that the entirety of the wound has a consistent coverage of moss, brisbane explains, walking her through what he's going to do in steps, inspired to give her the walk-through by her curiosity thus far. i don't recommend lettin' it on for any more than two days at most and water should wash it out without too much issue. he then takes a small mouthful of their gathered moss and begins to chew it into a paste — trying not to think about how much he hates the texture of moss all the while.

she soaks up the information he gives her readily, wondering if plants all had some sort of dual nature. she couldn't think that eating too much of any kind of plant would do anything else than harm, but perhaps some were more potent than others. next time—not that she had any plans to repeat her latest experiences—perhaps she would be bale to help herself, rather than rely on others. 


he offers an explanation of what he plans to do and she nods, lowering herself to the ground next to the neat pile, poking at it once more and feeling the springy softness push back against her muzzle. "can I help?"  she'd rather not lay here like a log while he helps her, and if she can't exactly pay him back perhaps she can lend a paw, or a muzzle.

everything has a light and dark side, taleigha used to say to him and his siblings, such is the way of nature. flora. fauna. wolves. they were all the same, in the end. sometimes beauty hid the deadliest of poisons and everything had that area of grey that it operated in ...whether it was inherently good or inherently bad, well, that depended on the beholder. brisbane, for example, didn't see his penchant for usurping to be 'bad' while others did.

he peers up at her as she speaks, breaking him from his steady and admittedly single-minded application of the first bit of salve to her gruesome looking wound. what was left of her tail should be torn off — but brisbane's got no apothecary to treat the extensive damage and profuse bloodloss that would undoubtedly cause and besides, it should be an action performed by an ( experienced ) healer and not an aspiring botanist. his skills were limited to medicinal treatments. not full blown operations.

sure, he replies to her desire to help. just grab a bit and start chewing. don't over chew it, though. you want it to retain some of the spongey consistency for absorption. he explains as he takes another bit of moss himself and begins chewing, expression blanching slightly from distaste as he focuses a bit too much on the texture of the moss.

she nods her head at his affirmation and tugs a mouthful from the pile in silence, working carefully to obey his instruction. her gaze lingers on him a moment too long, but then his face grimaces in distaste and warmth come to her cheeks a moment. she ducks her head and chews in silence, until the flash of heat fades and the texture seems closest to what he'd described. dropping the wet mound on the ground, tongue swirling around the inside of her mouth in wake of the terrificly odd taste, she asks, "is that alright?" perhaps a little dry, she considers, but her mouth seemed to dry up the moment she'd started to chew, as if her jaws were horrified by the thought that she'd potentially ingest the stuff. she wasn't too hot on chewing it up herself, but she'd hate doing nothing more.

his second mouthful of moss chewed he sets to work applying it beside the first application, careful to press the salve into her wound with enough pressure for it to stay without risking applying enough pressure to hurt her — though mild discomfort from application couldn't entirely be avoided, if the nerves weren't entirely dead though her previous admittance that she couldn't feel it would suggest that they were. he moves his head to examine her own chewed up mass of moss she deposits on the ground, inspecting it clinically. perfect. he compliments as he scoops it up and sets to work applying it aside the other two.

her help is both appreciated and allows brisbane to get the wound addressed in a more timely manner than if he'd been making the salve on his own and when he's finished he takes a step back to both give her some space and assess his work. alright, he draws on a breath, moving so that he is facing her once more. i've patched it up the best i can do, but i'm no healer. you should really try to find one to take a more in-depth look at that. he suggests regardless. i'm brisbane, by the way. he offers, realizing that he's been so focused on her wound that he'd never offered her his name.

he applies the poultice, and she bears the hurt easily enough. it's certainly not as bad as the initial fall, though the latter she was blotted from her memory and not entirely of her own accord. she offers a smile none the less when he approves her poultice, though wariness prickles in her as he moves to apply the rest of the poultice, and her mins slips to fragments of memory, of a man a great deal larger than the boy and the entirely disconcerting resemblance to the void. she'd glad, then, that he takes a step back, but does not show it, or at least tries to. 

when he faces her, she rises, and gratitude mixes with the wariness in a way she does not like in the least. "I'm Vuk." she offers in turn, adding, "thank you - if I meet you again, I'll figure out a way to repay you, promise." she's certain that she will, somehow. while she's pretty much useless now, she figures the Teekon can't be that big, can it?