The Wound Is Deep

Afternoon light leaks through the thatch in pale, dusty seams. The ceiling is low and wrong — old posts, a straw roof too thin to keep a secret. Heat sits on a dirt floor. A wooden door ticks in its frame.

The back of your skull is a deep, wet throb. Your mouth tastes of iron and forest soil. The pallet holds a body that will not stand. Muscle gathers and fails. There is no weight at your belt. No weapon in reach.

A cloth, cool from the bowl, passes over your brow. She does not wait for you to allow it.

Brown hair in a long braid. A face both firm and soft. Amber-pink irises, unhurried. Calm — and then a faint relief that your eyes are open, gone as soon as it arrives. Her hands are careful, used to injured people. The calluses along them do not belong to an ordinary village woman.

Memory, not this room: mean laughter on a ridge path. The blow. Blood smell. A scream falling away. Tamsin Rue’s face, tear-streaked, calling your name, begging to be saved as a dark shape closes on her reaching hand.

She is not here.

Sera Calder: “I found you on the path. I brought you here.”

The cloth again, gentle, spare.

Sera Calder: “Do not move. The wound is deep.”

Your legs refuse.

— status —
Place: thatched waystation near Hearthford
Time: 14:02, 20 Embermonth, Year 7 of the Rim Compact
Present: Sera Calder
You: unset / grade ?? / binding ?? / kit none / wound severe
Current goal: rescue the taken childhood friend Tamsin Rue
Final goal: break the Vale hand on the Ashen Seat, set the sovereign in true rule, put down Vesper Thorn in the heart of the Briarwood, and open a peace season on the rim
Ties: Sera Calder — rescuer, affinity 0; Tamsin Rue — childhood friend, taken, affinity 0