Aramora

Chapter 10: Rat

Beautiful artwork made by Randompeephere <3

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As Naomi slowly starts regaining consciousness, the pain in her chest and shoulder sets in. It's not as bad as last night, but it still pulses with an agonizingly burning sting. She can feel the wounds wrapped tightly with cloth. The ground beneath her is hard; the only cushioning from the scratch cot spread out over the dirt and dried leaves of the forest floor. The sun is beaming down on her face, shining on her closed eyelids. Despite the warmth, the autumn air remains crisp to leave a comfortable combination of hot and cold.

It takes a lot to muster the will to slowly blink her eyes open. As she does, she sees the rock lip reaching partly overhead to create a small cave in the hillside where she is at the edge of the forest. She notices the sound of a crackling fire to her right and tries turning her head, but stops as her body still needs time to regain feeling and become used to the pain.

"Ah, good mornin', sleeping beauty. I was beginning to think you were probably dead," the familiar voice of Lavern says with a clear smirk in his tone. Hearing him, she momentarily forgets the pain and whips her head his way.

He's sitting beside the fire, holding a piece of raw meat severed with a long, sharp stick over the flames. He's not wearing his leather armor, just the white undershirt and black trousers. He has a few cuts and scratches on his arms, but nothing that needs bandaging. His bag is leaned against the wall of the cave behind him along with his weapons and armor.

Her first instinct is to try getting up to go over to him, but as she remembers her current condition, she opts to just narrow her eyes at him through the pain. She grunts and tries to prop her head up a little, but the movement makes the pulsing burn resurface. "Lavern... you're... okay," she winces, her voice sounds hoarse and her throat feels torn. She lets out a weak cough and clears her throat, which only adds to the pain.

Lavern snickers and shifts to sit with one leg crossed under him. "Me? Yeah, I'm right as rain. You, however," he looks her over and meets her eyes with a sly grin. "You look like total shit," he chuckles and pulls the meat off the fire, blowing on it and taking a big bite.

Naomi growls painfully and glances down at her body, her eyes tracing the bandages covering her chest and shoulder, as well as her bicep. "What... happened? How am I not dead...?" she rasps and coughs again, trying to clear her feeble voice to speak somewhat properly.

Lavern shrugs and tears another piece of meat off with his teeth. "I had some restoration elixirs in my bag. It stopped the bleeding and sped up the healing process. But, as you can see, it's going to take a bit longer before you fully recover," he explains.

"But... what happened?" she repeats, hearing her voice retain some semblance of familiarity.

Lavern takes another bite and checks her eyes. "What's the last thing you remember?" he asks simply. Naomi closes her eyes and watches the scene of last night somehow replay in her mind, despite her main focus at the time being on how she was pretty damn certain she was going to die. But she didn't somehow.

She takes a deep breath and grits her teeth as the rising of her chest results in fanning the flames of her burning injuries. "I remember... Malachi, Nesosa, and I split up to try... finding a werewolf so we could lead it back to Nesosa... but... one found me and..." She opens her eyes and looks down at herself again before returning her gaze to Lavern.

"It attacked me... but I lived because..." she closes her eyes again as she fights to remember the last parts of the scene, but it's all hazy from her consciousness slipping by that point.