Sunbeam Lair left you multiple missed calls

hoping for a member she hasn't met yet!

the girl groans, squeezing shut her eyes and pressing her paws against her eyes. she's stretched out on the edge of the layer, near to the entrance, with a pounding headache that is not helped by the continuous bouts of coughing that rattle her narrow frame. her chest feels cottony, and her nose seems to have become its own miniature fountain. 

she starts on another bout of hacking coughs that's punctuated by a long grown when it's over. she's thirsty, but not quite enough to move yet.

it's the hacking coughs that draws salvatore from the already thinning veil of slumber; it would take time before he trusted anyone enough to sleep as soundly as he had in the shared space with stitch and frankie. at first, with a shuffle and a languid stretch he thinks maybe he's just imagined it and eyes flutter shut only to open with resigned reluctance as he hears it a second bout of hacking. ❝gross —❞ salvatore mumbles under his breath; forgetting for the briefest of moments that it wasn't frankie coughing up a bit of bone she accidentally swallowed.

right...

he pushes himself to his paws and makes the trek to the mouth of the lair where the onslaught of sunlight causes his coalglow eye to squint shut while, eerily if not expectantly, his blind eye does not react to the stimuli.❝you uh, you gonna live there, kid?❞ salvatore asks with a small smile, as if his stupid little joke was funny ( it wasn't ). the small smile vanishes just as quickly as it appears, however; as the fact that when it comes to healing he's entirely useless settles in.

it takes her a moment to place the distinct wrongness in her gut. his eyes—one squinted shut, dark and seeing, the other still and pale and blind. immediately, her own gaze drops, and suddenly her attention is moreso on not looking directly at his eyes as subtly as possible instead of reacting to the presence of a stranger. 

he's talking, then, and another min-coughing fit seizes her. it takes a moment, but then, "no. I've got a week left, tops." she does her best to look mournful and stare down at the ground (a great excuse not to focus on his dead eye) but can not help the tiny quirk of her muzzle—it's exceedingly rare that the girl makes any sort of attempt at humour.

eyesight gradually adjusts to the dawnlight and slowly coalglow eye opens in full to take in the landscape sprawled out before them as far as it could see; stopping where the ivory, emerald and brown of snows and trees melts into the glowing horizon. for a moment, salvatore is nearly disoriented by the fact that it is land that stretches as far as he can see instead of the yawning glimmer of the fierce sea. a bout of homesickness rises within, constricting his throat for a few moments — cajoling a small clear of his throat in an effort to stamp it out.

missing the loch felt like missing a knife shoved into his back, or the press of looming teeth at his throat.

❝shit that's rough,❞ salvatore rumbles with a slow shake of his head; playing along to her continuation of his own joke — glad that she hadn't taken offense to it. ❝but hey, you got only a week left to live ...might as well live it up. do whatever the hell you want, right?❞ he says with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulder, grinning down at her in full now to accommodate the playful tones of his voice.

a snort of amusement leaves him then. ❝i'm salvatore. or sal for short.❞

she glances back up when he speaks, the eye thing becomes less important, suddenly, when he grins. she wrangles with the smile on her own muzzle, offering a shrug of her shoulders as if to imply; what can you do? she eventually wins the brief struggle with her features, schooling them back into a slightly off-looking seriousness. 

"you're right. any recommendations?" she asks, her muzzle growing slightly crooked as the smile begins to win the battle for dominance occurring in her facial muscles. "I'm moonshine. you can call me mo, moony, or whatever work." she shifts, straightening slightly as she forces down another looming bout of coughs. "I fell in a lake—" she motions roughly in the direction of arrow lake, a place she's certainly not keen on visiting anytime soon. "I think that's why I'm, well, gross. and dying." she offers by way of explanation.

any recommendations?

❝oh, i got plenty,❞ salvatore says matter-of-factly. ❝world domination, to start —❞ he jokes with a small laugh. ❝go big or go home 'n all that.❞ impossible, sure; but in theoretical world of if he ever had a week to live what was the harm in trying? wasn't like he'd be around long anyway so even if he tried a swift death was indefinitely better than a slow, prolonged one.

❝it's a pleasure to meet you, mo.❞ as his mother favored shorter nicknames ( except in frankie's case since she was the favored child and all ) so too does sal, it seems.

jokes pushed aside, salvatore peers down at her as she admits that she fell in a lake and lets out a small bubble of laughter when she says she thinks that's why she's 'gross and dying'. ❝what're the chances that bhe,❞ he realizes seconds after he said it that he addressed her by nickname instead of title. ❝recruited a healer, you think?❞ he asks though easily it could be a rhetorical question. ❝yeah, i don't know jack shit about medicinal remedies,❞ salvatore admits with an apology in his voice. ❝but it's probably just a cold.❞ though coming from the guy that just admitted he knew nothing about healing it probably wasn't half as reassuring as he meant it to be.