Gideon managed to hit on the perfect combination of words to comfort Arialla, pious as she always had been. The gods were here with her; they must have sent this man to help her. She touched her neck. "You healed me?"
It didn't occur to Arialla, because that wasn't the way she thought, to ask why, if the gods were watching over her, they hadn't sent Gideon a little sooner -- sent someone to save her during her attack, and not just after. She knew that even the gods could not prevent all the evil in the world -- could not protect their followers from everything even if they wished to. Especially when it came to the machinations of rival gods.
And speaking of rival gods ... "I was attacked ... A cloaked figure; I didn't see a face. I'm not even sure if it was a man or a woman. They were shorter than me, though. They shocked me somehow -- I couldn't move -- and then ..." She raised a hand to her neck again, fingers trembling. "They bit me."
Arialla took a long, unsteady breath. Her panic was fading now, replaced by a sort of wounded confusion, that she could be struck down like this in what she'd come to consider her home. She hadn't put together yet that her attacker was Ascended; she didn't understand what had happened at all.
But she did look up at Gideon and add, "Thank you. If you hadn't come along ..."
please don't take my sunshine away
