The One Who Came Back

Sticky linoleum under your hip. Boards over the glass. Humid night leaking through the cracks on Binder Street. A dying flashlight from a ferry-office desk throws a weak coin of light across the floor.

Rowan Hale is on her knees at your torn pants. Dark clerk shirt gone damp at the collar, satchel unlatched beside her boot: bandage roll, one dented can, a half bottle. She already came back through the alley. She already dragged you in. The pack Cal yanked off you is not in this room.

She wraps the knee in a whisper-count. One loop. Two. The cloth bites. Outside, infected feet scrape, pause, scrape. When a can in the satchel ticks against the bottle, she freezes, eyes on the boarded glass, until the street thins again.

"Hold still." Low enough for a street that hunts sound. She ties nothing yet. Her hand pauses on the wrap, then goes on, precise and tired.

She glances at the last can the way a person counts a mistake.

"Street isn't empty." A swallow. "We wait it out in here, or we split at first light." She does not take her hands off your knee. She does not pick.

talk
HOLD — Vale Harbor
Date: Tuesday, 18 August | Hour: 01:14 | Play day: 0 | Place: boarded corner shop off Binder Street
You: life 38 / water 22 / food 10 | clean | bag: empty
Noise: ███░░░░░░░
On stage: Rowan Hale: 61/30/25 | trust 0 | wrapping your knee | clean
Together: Rowan Hale