open | Dead and Drowned

She had been here an awful long time - from a distance she looked indistinguishable from a corpse, the kind that wash up on the shores of the beach once they find their ways out of the canals, the bloody and battered refuse of a big city. A woolen cloak with fine silver threading spread out on the parched ground and jutting from under it an arm and leg twisted awkwardly away from the general lump of a body beneath.

At a glance one could make out few, if any, details of the person beneath and could hardly be faulted for missing the shallow rise and fall of breath. She had laid there for quite a while, long enough for the surface of her cloak to dry, the heavy wool sheltering a meager pool of liquid that had pooled beneath her. River water, brackish and full of silt but clear once it had settled, had tinged pink from slow-oozing wounds. Vivid violet bruises bloomed across pale flesh in the shape of hands, boots, and river rocks encountered in the tumult of rapids, swelling her right eye shut entirely.

That she was alive at all appeared a miracle, but then so was appearing from thin air - which she had. One minute she wasn't and the next she had arrived. There was no announcement, no fanfare, no crackle of eldritch energy - only the vague scent of ozone and, of course, the simple fact of her existence - a fact she became painfully aware of only now,  her shallow breathing suddenly punctuated by a deep, gulping breath and a full-bodied flop not unlike that of a desperately land-bound fish onto her back. What grace and elegance she had been trained to exercise was now well forgotten after an ordeal that had left her entirely lost and unmoored from her understanding of time itself. How long had it been? Where was she?

She remembered death - or praying for it - and then nothing. Her head swam in agony as she attempted to recount anything that came before the great struggle that had led her here, or even how she had managed to arrive. She remembered nothing, and glanced toward her only clue, the mysterious dagger, ominously unfamiliar in her right hand. When she moved to bring it closer to her body she found the fingers of her right hand uncooperative and her shoulder painfully stiff, issuing a soft, muted howl of discomfort though clenched teeth as her muscles seized in an attempt to brace against the wave of painful complaint.

Sucking in several deep breaths she tried again, pinning the dagger to the black glass and dragging it toward her painfully with an animal growl. "Bastard-" Barely intelligible her voice rasped from a parched throat. She poured a lot of venom into the word, focusing her one open eye on the dagger as she repeated the process, taking several breaks to recover between hauling the knife to her side and passing it to a fumbling left hand with a right hand that seemed to only half remember how to function. Frustration rattled in each shallow gasping breath, whistling softly in her throat. She closed her eyes, desperately trying to calm her breathing as she clutched the dagger protectively to her belly, laying in mute exhaustion in the warm afternoon sun amid the sodden folds of her cloak with the warm wet threat of rain blowing from the coast.

Slowly the whistle eased out of her breathing, though the continuous ache of the gash in her belly made it difficult to draw a full breath. Already it had stained the white fabric of her shirt (slashed to ribbons and well beyond its functional lifespan) a bright shade of red and ruined what remained of a mauve leather vest. It was imperative to bind her wounds but the very thought of moving filled her with such dread that she continued to linger there, eyes shut as the storm continued to fill in overhead, threatening now with periodic rumbles of thunder and strobes of lightening, perhaps hoping to wake up in her bed (she thought she had a bed - she certainly deserved a bed) as if from a dream. Waking into undeath had been a common nightmare (why? She did not linger on the question as it made her head swim and ache) but this was something different. The dead did not bruise, the dead did not bleed - not bright red blood, anyway. No, she wasn't dead. Not yet.

And that was unfortunate - she imagined undeath to be quite a bit less painful when the body was little more than a vehicle anymore. The assumption and knowledge came to her as if by instinct, some rote memory. She was concerned, instead, that she would need to heal from these wounds - wounds that had left her somewhat relieved when she woke on the shore, assuming her slip from consciousness to be a merciful end to her suffering. No, stricken with global discomfort and and a tragically lucid consciousness there was no easy out afforded to her.

Typical. Her expression relaxed at the thought with a sort of detached acceptance. Just my luck.

The Spire had been opened, and though it's lower levels had been caved in and its upper roof dissolved, still it thrust defiantly skyward. With its guardian gone it could be approached with impunity, but still it was the grave of several brave - if foolish - individuals, and others who had been loyal to the very end, bitter or glorious in turn.

Jigano knew of the portal in the lower reaches, and of the valiant serpent that had guarded it for centuries, and he kept meaning to try and unearth it, but there were still so many other things that needed doing, seeking, learning, answering that he had found himself too busy to return and begin the task of unearthing what had been lost.

Of course, there was also the pall of hollow victory that hung around the place, which had spurred the tensions between Natural and Outlander, torn friendships apart, and left a scar over the relations between so many people.

So, even though Jigano often passed the Spire on his way to visit Rory, he did not usually stop there. Nor would he have today, if the weather had not taken a swift and serious turn for the worse. But he was given little choice in the matter as lightning flashed brilliantly across the sky and Isuma reep!ed and dove into his hood to shiver as thunder rolled ominously, deep and rib-shaking in its power.

He was clad as he usually was, in a sleeveless light gray overtunic that fell to his knees and a wide-sleeved pale green undertunic tucked into brown breeches and calf-high soft boots. His white hair was long and pulled into a tail today, back from a sharp-featured, foxy face and clear blue eyes. A small winged creature was tucked mostly beneath his hair behind his shoulders, curled up in a wide hood that had been recently sewn onto the back of the overtunic, and a rapier of the old style rested comfortably at his hip.

After a quick check of the sky, Jigano grimaced and turned his steps towards the Spire, deciding discretion was the better part of valor and that the storm would be better waited out in the dry interior. Except that someone had discarded a bundle of old laundry in front of the obelisk, he noted as he neared it. Wet and dirty laundry, and bloody to boot...

"Gods least fortunate," the bard swore softly to himself as he broke into a jog towards the prone person who had collapsed on the ground. As he neared he raised his voice, reaching out to try and touch the person's shoulder gently as he knelt beside them - her? "What happened? Were you attacked?"

Ground-shaking as the thunder was it thrummed through her, punctuated every so often by a distant (but growing closer) crack of bright light and noise that announced the coming storm. The wind had picked up to a brisk notch, carrying on it lost leaves and petals of flowering trees knocked loose to the distant white noise of branches shaking in the distance. The first thunks of bullet-like drops struck the ground infrequently for a time, but it did not disguise footsteps padding over the terrain toward her - slowly and then at a quicker clip.

The woman's body wound tight as a drawn bowstring as the footsteps drew near, her eyes snapping open as the blurred figure with long pale hair reached down toward her. It was a sight of startling familiarity and a feeling she could not entirely place - not quite hostile and not quite relieved she was instead felt a deep and viscerally painful pang of confusion as her body lunged away from the grasping hand, clumsily swatting at the outstretched fingers with the dagger. The steel clattered against glass to little effect as it fell from an unpracticed left hand.

With great effort the witch drew herself up onto her elbows, staring with one wide, searching eye at the stranger, rubbing the place where his fingertips had brushed an exposed shoulder, the sleeve ripped away at the seams and sagging into the crook of her elbow. She made a motion as if dusting that spot off - a brief and rote wag her left hand that seemed more part of a program than a conscious thought - looking at the hand with baleful mistrust, watching his hands a while longer before turning her attention to his face.

"Do not touch me..." the witch trailed off, baring her teeth and offering what seemed to be an automatic growl, for she did not skip a beat following it to even attempt to look ashamed at her lapse of manners. She stared at him, her expression screwed up in concentration as she struggled to focus on the face before her. Sometimes if she blinked she could glimpse fine details, but she quickly gave up on attempting to piece together his face - the effort of concentration was giving her a stellar headache, blooms of white pain spiderwebbing her vision.

So she improvised. Long white hair, lanky, fit- she understood the general gist of the man, speaking with firm confidence her guess. "Do not touch me elf." Haughty and remarkably eloquent despite the creak of misuse in her voice and the vague spacey bewilderment one might expect of a person waking up in a strange land in a completely different season with presumably heavy head trauma and bloodloss.

Her gaze went distant for a moment, tracking somewhere beyond his left shoulder as if in a daze only to snap back to the general direction of his face and then the dagger she had sort of flailed in his direction, then his face again. "God's less fortunate-" she parroted the phrase, head tipping to the side - the woman grimaced, her good eye squeezing shut with dog-like whine. If only she could remember-

"What regional dialect is that?" She blurted the question suddenly, having drawn a blank and lulled into a vacant stare for a short while. Her tone had far changed from the defensive hostility with which she had greeted his approach, instead suggesting an interest piqued and a natural curiosity, as though his answer might reveal the answer to some intriguing riddle or puzzle.

So the woman wasn't unconscious after all, Jigano realized as he jerked back and away from her sudden movement and the flicker of light against steel. For a moment blue eyes hardened like ice as he let a hand drop to the hilt of his sword in case this was some bandit trick to lure in an unwary mark, but the pale woman's apparent confusion seemed to indicate something far less sinister. A head wound, perhaps? Or a fever? Heedless of the occasional flickers of rain, the bard crouched again, just out of reach of the dark haired waif, and tilted his head to the side as he examined her - far more successfully than she was managing to do for him.

"All right, I won't," he said soothingly, holding empty hands up in a peaceful gesture. But then she repeated herself, with an added epithet at the end, and he first blinked, and then didn't bother to hide the burst of laughter, completely out of place in the tense situation and yet he couldn't help himself. "Elf? I daresay you're more elf than I am, young lady," he chuckled, reaching up to tap at his own rounded ear. "Why on earth would you..." he trailed off, peering at her more closely in concern, then clicked his tongue. "Ah. Looks like you might have taken a bump on the head. So explanations won't do much good at this point in time." He sighed, standing and giving her a slight berth as he angled around her and past, to the entryway to the Spire.

"But since it seems we're both about to be caught in the rain, do you think you could crawl over here to shelter? I can try and answer your questions to pass the time while we wait for the storm to die down," he added, oddly cheerful though his tone held a bit of rueful amusement at having stumbled across another new Outlander. "You're in Caido now, young lady. My name is Jigano, and that concussion you're sporting isn't going to make things any easier to understand, I'm afraid...
" Not that he wouldn't go to assist her if she asked it, but since she seemed so adamant on not being touched, the pragmatic man saw no reason to invite a shivving by trying to force unwanted help on her. Worst case scenario, he could just wait for her to fall unconscious and then bring her inside and tie her wounds up, he decided with another wry shake of his head.

Despite her initial hostilities, the witch soon calmed, appearing remarkably agreeable as Jiango began to move away from her, even paying him a smile - small and polite and mustering only the most subtle of winces, though her gaze did not follow him immediately. Instead, she stared vacantly at the barren landscape around them, processing.

The thip thip thip of raindrops grew heavier and closer as she continued to consider that perhaps she was the elf, where the hell 'Caido' might be, how the hell she had arrived, and at a slight delay what exactly he might mean by a 'bump on the head'. As the first stinging drop struck her head, the woman seemed entirely distracted by her own misfortune, tipping her head down and allowing the rain to run down her nose and into the lap of her ruined clothing as delicate, practiced fingers probed the swollen and broken flesh. "Oh-" The smile had faded by now, replaced by a look of vague disappointment. "So that's going to leave a mark." Somehow she sounded a bit let down by the news, though she did not comment on it further.

Instead, she struggled. Standing was remarkably difficult with a damaged leg and a belly wound, harder still with a right arm that seemed to have given up the ghost and was doing well enough to remain wrapped loosely about her middle. Several times she checked the flat, practically concave surface of her belly to confirm that her guts weren't about to make a break for it before lurching unsteadily to her knees - one tense moment saw her snarl mutely in what must have been deep discomfort, her left arm buckling at the elbow beneath her weight, forcing her rock back on her heels to collect her bearings again.

Between the increasingly louder claps of thunder, Jigano might have made out a nervous peal of laughter but the practically helpless nature of her situation made her not only stubborn but exceptionally good at acting as if he did not exist. It was not until well after she had resorted to literally crawling to the tower's entrance (and boy, did that seem like a mean blow for the girl's pride), using its glassy surface to climb to her feet, that she acknowledged that he existed. Well after she had straightened what remained of her clothing to appear more presentable and gently patted the water from her good eye with careful fingers. Sniffing a deep breath she partially leaned, partially clung against the wall in a way she hoped wasn't obvious, squinting in an attempt to make out what was inside the spire properly. "I left my dagger - do you want to get that for me?"

True to his word the bard stayed where he was, in the entryway of the Spire, dry and out of the rain while Melinoe stayed put and got soaked. Watching her struggle to move was hard enough, and he winced internally as she battled her wounds - and her pride - to make her way unaided into the shelter of the Spire. She seemed to determined to ignore him, but he felt no such compunction not to study her as she gathered herself to her feet, taking note of her various injuries and passing the time by mentally cataloguing what he would need to do to bind and stabilize them. The head trauma and the gut wound were the trickiest. He couldn't do much for either out here, so they'd be making a slow, painful trip to the Infirmary once the rain passed.

It promised to be painfully unpleasant for both of them, though the girl far more than him. And it meant he wouldn't be getting out to see Rory today after all.

Blasted conscience.

He raised a single pale brow as she gathered her dignity about herself, as haughty as any spoiled princess in her castle, and though her words were phrased as a request they lacked courtesy... and she still hadn't given her name. "You mean the dagger you attempted to stab me with a few minutes ago? No, I do not," he responded, drily amused. "But it will still be there when the rain stops and we can get it then. Assuming you haven't bled out by then. What happened to you?" His curiosity was eating him alive, though if she'd arrived by portal, her recent past was likely a moot point.

Still and less wadded up didn't make her look any less like hamburger wrapped in someone's dated Sunday's best, the white of her shirt practically lost to the mud and gore. The cloak, heavy and freshly sodden from the unforgiving torrent her pride had trapped her in visibly weighed her down, rounding her shoulders and bending her forward. The gash across her left inner thigh buried beneath layers of heavy durable black cloth appeared painful, though thankfully superficial. The head wound, hideously obvious, carried the obvious and heavily evidenced promise of blunt trauma, but worse suggested perhaps damage to the eye, perhaps even the orbital socket. With scarcely any skin left to leave marks on after whatever encounter she had with a meat grinder, one would hope that she might settle down, a pale net of scars both silver and pink, however, suggested how improbable it would be to wish for such a thing. Like a tiny dog, she didn't really seem to understand the scale and limitations of her own physical being.

With an exasperated sigh she leaned into the cool surface of the doorway, pinching the bridge of her nose only to hiss and automatically adjust her fingers away from the injuries to the right of her face, as though he were trying her patience. "You don't want to, but won't you? You owe me a fighting chance - you have two legs, I have a gut wound." Made perfect sense to her - she spoke with an entirely straight face (excusing the way it had been rearranged, anyway). "We'll stay here until the rain stops. Then you'll get it." She said it as though that settled it, lowering her hand and lifting her face to make an attempt at an intimidating stare down...

She had a remarkably whole and clean (if not somewhat lopsided) smile, all things considered, even flashing a sharp sliver of teeth. Even more remarkable was that this absolute asshole evidently recognized her own audacity, chuckling weakly. "Anyway, what does it look like happened?" She leaned away, attempting to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the stone. It sure was shiny but the broken surface of planes and chips did not offer her a clear picture. "I was going North-" Her brow furrowed, her voice softening as she concentrated, trying to push through the angry wall of agony that made her memories seem not entirely her own. Snippets appeared out of order, crashing and melding into one another, terror interspaced by unknowing. "Don't you have brigands here in Caido? Highway men? Bandits? Villains?" Wiggling the fingers of her left hand she made light of the query, as if they were discussing the monster in a child's closet and not what appeared to have been a near(?) death experience. "Must have thrown me in the river - it was a wet autumn and the water high..."

"You'd have tried to stab me, were our roles reversed." The accusation held no malice. She spoke as if simply stating a fact, as though a violent sense of self-preservation was simply a facet of human nature. Using the wall for support she sidled inside, sniffing the air like a dog as she leaned into the wall and posted out her left leg as to limit movement in the knee. "I wish I had more answers for you, but I'm going to sit - how do they treat infections here?" Sliding into a sit with her left leg stretched before her she worked single handedly to unfasten the cloak pin at her throat, only to find the cloth uncooperative and her anemic body unwilling to do anything with the sodden mess... so she instead wiggled away from it, a pained "aaaaaaahhhh" ugly and echoing in the dark hall. "Maybe I want to bleed out. Ever seen a man die of infection? It's a lot more pleasant and quicker to bleed."

"I don't owe you anything," Jigano pointed out reasonably, in a courteous tone. "And frankly I'm not sure you should be trusted with it right now anyways. You already lost it once, after all." He leaned a shoulder against his own wall, keeping her approved distance between them, and crossed his arms over his chest - more to keep from trying to reach out and help her than anything else. It also kept his hands in sight and away from his weapon, in an attempt to soothe her paranoia. Not that he could blame her, given her sorry state. Something or someone had done that to her, and the head wound might have addled her past normal rationality.

"It's spring here," he offered as her story trailed off. "And we do have brigands, but frankly it's the banshees and the stone golems you should be more worried about. Or the Land Shark. Though it fed during the winter so hopefully it'll hibernate for a while longer. You generally don't have to worry about head trauma with that one, though." You didn't have to worry about anything. Being devoured whole didn't tend to leave much room for recriminations, and he still shivered at the thought of the great beast's teeth closing around the massive wolf as if it were a one-bite appetizer. But he spoke mostly to keep her awake and paying attention than any real belief that she'd remember his words in a week's time.

"I would not have," Jigano stated pleasantly, just as calm and factual as she as he reached up to rub at something behind his neck. "On account of knowing when my pride is getting me killed, and telling it to go to hell so I can let others help me." Oh, he was a paranoid ass, but she made him look downright Remi-like! It was an odd comparison to consider, and he chuckled softly to himself. The chuckle turned to a sigh as she struggled out of her cloak, again refusing to ask for help, and he turned his head a little mournfully to look out at the rain so she would not have a witness to her humiliation as the cloak nearly bested her.

"We have magical healers, here, as well as some very good traditionally-trained medics," he said dryly. "And your wounds were probably less infected before you went slithering through the mud. You're just making more work for yourself by the time we finally get you to the Infirmary. Your body is still going to have to do the heavy lifting of knitting itself back together, even if Vai or Isla mend the worst of it with their magecraft." He glanced back to arch a silvery brow at her, smiling crookedly. "I'm probably going to get sent for efas herb to bring down your fever and clean out those injuries, so on a personal note I'd appreciate you making less work for me while you're at it." One thing a bard knew was that different people required different approaches. There were those who responded best to gentleness, and others who would only respect strength. This girl, he judged by her arrogance, might respect a rational and pragmatic approach... or at least, she would if the head wound wasn't making a hash of her mental faculties. But either way, he had no intention of letting her bully him, no matter the size of the personality in her drowned-kitten body.

"Spring." She parroted the word, considering the possibility that she had lost time along with with everything else. Addled as her thoughts were, the witch was convinced that he wasn't correct about a great deal, but was willing to accept his answers until she could find her own.

Still, she evidently found a great deal of humor in her brush with death and subsequent reawakening as he rattled off a list of creatures that could perhaps have been familiar by name if nothing else. It was as though he had told a lovely joke, eliciting a disbelieving note of laughter. At least she seemed a cheerful sort. "And you don't think you owe me a dagger? 'Oh, everything will try to murder you and you're practically chumming the water - why would you need a dagger of all things?'" She laughed again, shaking her head before tipping her head back against the stone. "Eh-" She waved her left hand dismissively and closed her eye, attempting to quell the throbbing headache that mirth had wrought.

Still, the thought of the landshark lingered in her mind - strangely she did not associate it with an animal but a scene, emotions, and briefly a face. A girl, dressed in green. Almond cookies in a metal tin. A grave with wilting lavender. Guilt. Remorse. She hugged herself, murmuring a drowsy apology to no one in particular.

As the rain beat the scorched earth into mud outside she grew quiet, and for a while it wasn't certain if she had dozed off or if she was merely listening. Even she probably wasn't too certain of which until she broke the silence, her words careful and slow, slurred with exhaustion as the window of lucidity offered by adrenaline began to close. "How would you know if I was going to help you?" When she did look at him again, she studied the fuzzy blob color until the pain forced her to shut her eyes again, and feeling quite helpless and overwhelmed by the thick, suffocating blanket of discomfort, she turned her face the other way to hide any hint of emotional duress that she could feel pricking behind her eyes. Feeling very much lost and alone the last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of a stranger with the unrealistic expectation that strangers were not inherently dangerous, especially when you could scarcely recall who it was that landed you here in the first place. Sure, it wasn't him specifically that she remembered, but for some reason she did not feel particularly trusting of her own perception of things. People lied, illusions existed. Trust got you killed - it was a lesson that had been beaten into the very fiber of her being and did not associate with any specific memory but rather her existence as a whole. Her arms fell limp in her lap, pinching the webbing of her right hand and glued her tongue to the top of her mouth with a clicking swallow.

She tried to listen, she did, but most of the words and names meant nothing special to her. She could understand them if she concentrated, but it was becoming very hard to concentrate. Still, it kept the tears at bay. The words magecraft and magic seemed to bolster and soothe her worried mind if only slightly, something familiar in a sea of strangeness for her to grab onto, but it was the mention of the efas herb that drew her attention the most. "Efas herb - where does that grow?" Her voice creaked, and she again seemed willing to at least listen to him, swayed by a snippet of knowledge.

”Lass, you dropped the dagger on your own. I don’t owe you anything,” he repeated, though his voice was oddly gentle as he humored her with conversation. ”Nor was I the one to wound you so sorely. Right now you need bandages more than weapons.” Not that he expected her to listen to him, much less agree. But until she let him close enough to try and start putting pieces back together, the best he could do was keep her awake and talking. Head wounds were nasty things, and he was glad Isla had passed on her knowledge of how to treat them before she had… Well. That was a story for another time.

He wasn’t inclined to let her fall asleep in her state, no matter how it might have made carrying her easier. He never let the silence pass for more than a minute or two before he shifted his weight, or coughed, or cleared his throat – any number of annoying little sounds to prevent her from sliding towards unconsciousness. Carrying her was going to be no picnic, and that was before the storm complicated things!

Her sudden question, however mumbled, brought his attention back to her and he chuckled a little. ”Generally if someone is trying to kill you, they don’t start with small talk and asking what happened,” he explained. ”They approach quietly and they stab, or they stand back and shoot bolts or arrows into your body to make sure the job is done right. And if they think you’re already dead and are coming to loot your corpse, they don’t try and talk to you.”

He crouched, bringing himself closer to her level, though he kept his distance. She was drifting, and he frowned slightly as he tried to decide what to do with her when the storm passed. The Infirmary, as soon as possible, but he was no thick-thewed powerhouse like Remi, to lift someone and carry them over field and dale. Still, she was a scrawny thing, and had lost a lot of blood. If he could get her as far as the Sanctuary he could get help bringing her the rest of the way…

Her question brought the smile back to his face and he chuckled again at her curiosity. ”It only grows in the Labyrinth. Nasty place. The hedge walls are full of thorns and they move once you’re inside to try and trap you. The speaking squirrels lure you in deeper and deeper until the boggarts make their move. If they can’t scare you to death by taking nightmare images from your mind, they can still do a number on you with wicked teeth and claws. Not a place to go without a guide, or preparation for how to get out again,” he cautioned, though the little princess wouldn’t be going anywhere near it anytime soon, not with those injuries.

Suppose you don't, she agreed, though it did not lessen the suspicion with which she viewed the annoying stranger. He was doing everything right, she guessed, though it was painfully difficult to think critically. It felt strangely familiar, the shame of recognizing the shortcoming, though she did not dwell there for long. Her thoughts were far more comfortable set to static, interrupted periodically by a "ahem" - worth noting, perhaps, was that she no longer seemed to find it necessary to track his movements visually, though she did acknowledge his efforts to keep her awake with an annoyed tapping of her right toe in a water-logged leather boot.

As he crouched down, she did however cast him a brief stare through a squinted eye, her expression lacking the characteristic animal snarl, and only a soft rattle of a growl in the back of her throat. Improvement! "Stabbing started well before small-talk." The correction was blunt and matter of fact. It had. Survival felt more important to her than anything in that moment - she did not know the concept of sacrifice as it did not apply to survival, altruism an alien concept, or perhaps just difficult to attribute to others. One could not completely fault her misgivings, however. Corpses were good looting, and she had heard the wolves all along the river that night. Whether it was the stench of sulfur or the presence of a much more fearsome predator, something had kept her from becoming dinner that night though she did not trust it to bear her far beyond the doorstep of this new world. She was beginning to have mixed feelings about survival anyway, and might have gladly cut her head off to be rid of the nuisance. It made it easier to appreciate the strange man.

"Intelligent hedges?" She opened her eye a bit wider, only to sit back and resume squinting sourly as he went on to describe the squirrels and bogarts, her nose wrinkling weakly with a humorously dry "Sounds absolutely delightful" to illustrate her distaste. What might have actually sounded delightful, however, was the lessening of the rain outside. As the pattering petered off. Glancing between him and the cloak she considered it a moment before reaching out to grab a handful of the wet wool, determined apparently to take it with her, as if the approaching end of the shower were her cue. "Why not just cultivate it?" She watched him, waiting to follow his lead.

"Not here, it didn't," he pointed out with perhaps infuriating equanimity. "Though given that you didn't know you'd been Portalled away, and the size of that bump on your head, I can't really blame your paranoia." She was responsive again, at least, not so near to passing out on him with a head wound of unknown seriousness, and Jigano managed a crooked smile as she focused onto his words with gratifying clarity.

"Intelligent might be going a bit far... did your world have carnivorous plants? Sundews? I think the hedgemaze is more like that. It reacts on instinct rather than true conscious thought." A curious question, but given some of what he'd seen on Caido it was an entirely sensible one. He flashed a grin at her weak attempt at humor, relieved at the strength it hopefully represented. He couldn't tell if her wounds had stopped bleeding into her soiled and filthy clothing, but as long as the blood loss was slowing she might have a chance...

Assuming she wasn't just almost finished bleeding out entirely, of course.

The fiercest spring showers were often the shortest, and he glanced out the door to note the lightening of the sky. Soon, he'd have to figure out how to get her to trust him enough to lean on him. Better still if he could put some compression on her gashes, but he'd take what he could get. "If we could, we would," he said a little absently before looking back to her with a wry smile. "Some of the most useful medicinal plants here are thoroughly uninterested in being domesticated, though. And given the efas herb's magical properties, it's possible that the magic of the maze is what helps to sustain it. Away from that magic, it loses the properties that make it so special." He arched a pale brow at her, glancing to her possessive hand on her abandoned cloak. "That's only a guess, though. Do you have some skill with plants that you think might be able to manage it?"

Did your world have carnivorous plants?

There is a brief flash of memory, jumbled thoughts that stitched together in an infuriatingly incomplete, dream-like fashion. The sting of salt in the air, a carved wooden figure, orange spores the size of her fist floating down a stream... floating down a stream... Her lip wrinkled as her mind drifted, unable to complete the thought but not liking it one bit. The uncertainty of it made the hair at her nape and along her arms prickle. Returning from the brief memories she cleared her throat and gave a hiccuping affirmation.

"Hu-uh huh. Yeah-" Her gaze dropped to her cloak, drifting back to him after a moment of what might have been dazed silence or deep thought. "Suppose it's a surprise for you and me both, isn't it?" The witch winked at him, though in her current state it looked only like an exceptionally forced blink of her good eye. Earning an 'E' for effort she leaned back into the wall, removing her hand from the cloak after a long pause. "I mean most carnivorous plants have a lure of some sort to attract prey. Is the hedge hunting or is it just... some elven novelty?" As she spoke she carefully skinned the kid glove from her hand and dropped it only to gather it up again, smudging the place it had fallen with a swipe of her fingers before pinning it against her gashed side.

"Wouldn't care to want to lend me a dagger, would you? I'm not carrying this thing soaking wet anywhere. Suppose it'd make a workable sling, maybe bandages... Unless you have something you'd like to share?" Pointedly peering at him she turned her left hand palm up on her thigh. "I suppose we have quite a walk ahead of us -" Shifting her left leg with a grimace she confirmed the wound to be ugly but not overly threatening, what could be seen of it beneath the torn fabric of her trousers. "At the very least gives me a chance to sort out this "hungry hedge maze" of yours."

Her face twisted into an interesting expression which he took to mean 'yes' even before she spoke again. He chuckled at her continued confusion, the sound wry but a little wistful as she recalled memories of his own world with her words. "No elves here, lass. Before the barrier fell it was only humans and changed humans. Now... well. The Fae might be somewhat similar to your elves. We're still learning about them, but don't get caught in the trap of making assumptions from your world to this one," he warned gently. "And it might be hunting, no one seems to know where it came from or when it picked up its unsavory habit." He gave a little shrug, watching her fiddle about with cloaks and gloves and seeping wounds.

"I still don't entirely trust you not to try and stab me again," he pointed out, amused. "But I can cut strips of the fabric for you, if you'd like. I have some healing training and can help you bind those cuts up as well, if you let me close enough. Or I can stay over here, if you'd prefer." Given what she'd said about being attacked, he could understand if she didn't want to trust him just yet. He was just happy that she was finally starting to think about trying to staunch the bleeding.

"Oh, the walk isn't too bad - if you aren't already hurt," he admitted wryly. "If you are, I imagine it will feel quite far indeed. I'll get you to the Infirmary for proper healing, though, fear not." Even if he had to call on stronger people to come help carry her before they were through! Though even his meager strength might be enough to lift her without the weight of the cloak dragging them down. "Is there a name you'd prefer to go by?" he finally asked outright as he reached slowly for the cloak, keeping an eye on her to see if she'd protest and prepared to stop if she did.