Herbalists' Cache Tēähkomeûnts

vague timeline

“I am here to help your chieftain.”
Ayovi’s voice is firmer than she feels. There is a great strain in the saatsine and none who walk the camp are without it. She stands just beyond the place where Sun Eater rests. An injured woman— the wife of Blackfell, had fled and so there was one who remained wounded: Saatsine’s own chief.
It is hard to remain impartial, but medicine has never been about taking sides.
The huntress adjusts the pack of herbs and roots she’d reclaimed and reordered from the snow and softens the rain’s pelt in her eyes.

Edited! My b I got my characters confused.

By the time she catches sight of the woman, it is raining pretty hard. Sulukinak sidles up to where the woman stands, watches her pluck the herbs back up to her grasp, and decides for herself if she is to be trusted.

You are healer? Her voice cuts through the soft din of the rain. She does not move to lead them anywhere just yet. There is an edge of distrust present in her voice but more prevalent is the tension in her body, a flightiness.

this woman smells of the bearskin warrior. dark fang is immediate in his reaction, appearing from the brush that guards the healing den of his brother. he was not fond of skorpa, but his eyes cannot gauge any reason to not trust his woman who comes to heal.
he is rather brusque, however, in his coming forward. blood pool eyes looking upon her ravenously. it is the look of a voracious man who knew no limits worn upon his smug face.
he seeks to cut himself between his niece and this woman. looking down a mangled snout at her, cheshire grin. snow want heal? dark fang asks for clarification.
he looks to sulukinak, then a sharp jerk of his head, ordering for her to take bearskin's wife. take. gravel voice is harsh. show chieftain.
he stands to watch. he thinks dark fang must come to know how the bearskin won such a beautiful wife.

“Yes,” she nods to the shadowy woman who’d appeared to question her. She gestures towards the pack of greenery across her shoulders, presenting her side to offer them for inspection.
It is not until the brash entrance of a man that the huntress flinches back a step. His eyes are not flickering with the contempt she expects but a look that lingers; frown etching into an unsettling grin only just legible beneath the crossing scars that net his dark face.
Again she is confronted with this decision. Were they fools to come here and risk so much? She’d seen first hand what Faust was capable of. She knew nothing of the Saatsine.
Ayovi waits. Though both guardians seem obliging, she would not proceed until led.

The woman barely answers before the hulking figure of her half-uncle appears, and when his voice booms with command, she bristles and stares him down rather than move with any prompting. He was not chieftain; he was nobody to Sulukinak, and she did not appreciate the tone of his voice, as if he held any sway over her behavior.

She flashes her front teeth at him, petulant, and does not move until Dark Fang has seen the challenge in her bright, wide eyes. She cuts around him with the expert finesse of one used to stalking quietly; and then beside the healer, ushers her along without another glance to the stranger man.

Sulukinak wasn't about to turn away the access to healing, not when her uncle needed it so desperately. The woman did not smell of Darukaal and that eased some of the girl's frayed nerves. Come, then.

Away they go, but at a pace set by Sulukinak rather than the demand of some man's ego.

last from DF! feel free to reference him in background

sulukinak does not move. not when he tells. instead she shows teeth. bright and white and full of fire. dark fang stares. his dark head cocks slightly, expression unreadable but clearly amused. he sees her challenge. he meets it with an exhale of putrid breath.
going to watch her stalk around him with the grace of a hunter. she was good—at that. he would not forget.
"pup teeth." he mutters in bored response, seeing her go.
as they move, he watches the healer moreso. pretty, soft, carrying roots like treasure. he thinks he could take her throat if he wanted. she would make for great offering. but he doesn’t.
"i watch," he says. a warning. then he is still and unmoving. a stone in the storm.

Ayovi does not know what she had expected— perhaps a clash would erupt between the two in competition for status. The Saatsine could not hope to win a war amidst so much derision, and it strikes her that their work here could very well be for nothing.
The huntress gathers her breath, adjusts the fur-pack along her withers, and follows carefully at the hocks of the shadow woman to where @Kusax̱asaa lay beyond.

when exhaustion did not ground sun eater, he sat up as often as he was able, slowly mending through the hours. sinew stood stark; flaps of bloody flesh hung down over reddened ivory hints here and there.

sharp his head rose at the tread of sulukinak and dark fang — and a third. yes. he knew this one, this pretty mountain-runner with the ugly husband. the woman who had called for peace between the clans.

tongue seethed to lick his jaws. "they trust, to let you close," sun eater said of his watchful bloodkin.

A great deal of surprise would have been visible upon her face if it were not shrouded with caution. They did not even trust each other, Ayovi wished to point out. But she feared Saatsine’s retaliation; even the chieftain’s own despite his injuries. She recalls Star Eater’s portrayal of this man and moves with great care, placing her pouch near her feet and dipping her nose, just enough deference to show respect without appearing submissive.
He sits up and her gaze goes immediately to the single blue pierce.
“I am here to heal, Chieftain,” her eyes turn slowly from his face and she takes one step closer to examine the many still-gaping wounds at his throat and shoulders. Some appear half-healed, others now draining thickly. They would all need to be re-opened and packed, a process long and painful.
Ayovi moves briskly for her pack now, gathering and assembling the green clusters, grateful for the normalcy of this task to cut whatever tension she felt when meeting Sun Eater’s face.

heal.

his only intercession with it thus far had been a whirl of white fur; the girl ishmira sent to tend him. but she had not lingered nor stayed, and he had not seen her again. this entire thing too, only scarcely remembered. through his own stubbornness he felt he had stayed alive.

greenpoint smell of herbs rose to his nostrils. sun eater tested the fragrance and then grunted, sitting back on his haunches and beckoning her closer. if dark fang and sulukinak trusted, he had no choice but to follow suit. her deference pleased him; the careful movements of her gravid form were baubles to his gaze.

she would find him a silent patient, tense where the agonies slashed hardest, otherwise fixed and seething in a burning quiet.

Sharp-scented tarragon is folded into tidy clusters. Ayovi’s ears are drawn toward the chief’s rolling breaths as the clearing goes silent save for the pacing of the dark man and woman just beyond sight.
“My husband came to you. Did you hear him speak?” She asks, not yet knowing if Skorpa had been able to pass the brigade of Sun Eater’s sentries. She assumes he did not, for in sex and stature alone the norseman would not fly above suspicion so easily as his wife does.
“The glacier bribed us for an allegiance,” Ayovi goes on, “and we refused.” But this did not mean others followed suit. Saatsine’s chief would now know an army marched toward the cache, and what the leader decided to do with the knowledge was his choice.
The huntress’ gaze holds over the single sharp eye, as if trying to read him; to see the callous husband Star Eater had spoken of. The chieftain seemed tame enough, but she was not going to give him the chance to prove her wrong. Ayovi reaches for the first cut: a long, puss-embedded gash along the strong neck, and prises open the scabbed skin. She clears away infection, sterilizes the raw flesh with witch hazel, and packs threads of strongly-scented tarragon into the wound.
“These must be re-dressed each day to prevent infection.”

a shake given of mauled head. "not him. sister and brother bring me message." a breath. another. he felt he would remember always the poignantly specific scent of the herb which ayovi now pressed into his wound.

he grunted at the rip of his own flesh, but he had woven when the healer had done it, and only recovered to laugh in soft sardony. "maybe. i try, ayovi." bandages, poultices; battle-teeth came and deemed it less worthwhile.

darukaal. "you have thank of saatsine chieftain." a bribe could be a worthy thing, but in this context it only reflected the underhanded nature of what had gone on behind his back. even now he did not know all the details.

"they say — my wife say, this my fault." single eye cut to the alabaster cheekbone, pulled away again as pain settled into his marrow.

Sister, and brother. Perhaps this explained their friction: siblings grappling for their brother’s esteem. It was a critical time within the camp, and like stones the beasts under pressure would crystalize or fracture.
“I will help, if you call off your guard.” Another tear, more blood and infection cleared away with bundles of moss and witch hazel, then packed and sealed with linseed and leaves found around the cache. A slow process. “I’m sorry for the sting; it needs to be done.”
The healer dabs her paws as the accented voice rolls again, pressing this time for an answer not unlike the one she wanted. Ayovi stills to look into the single eye.
“Is it?”