Hestra found it increasingly difficult to rest. She cursed herself for having let her guard down. How could she have been so reckless? To let her consciousness slip away from her in such a wanton fashion. She stared into the fire and listened to the sounds of the night. The insects chirping somewhere in the darkness nearby. The babbling brook they made camp beside. The night was almost as warm as her cheeks. Hestra wondered how she had come to find herself asleep in the arms of the creature she feared. He must have carried her sleeping form all the long way back to camp, then simply laid down and taken her with him. He remained where she had left him, on his cot, and while she refused to look at him, she had the sneaking suspicion that he watched her still. The prickling of her neck was increasingly difficult to ignore.
In the first wee moments of the morn, as the sun made its creeping way above the mountaintops in the distance, Hestra stirred. The members of the party were all yet dozing in their cots as she began to putter about her morning routine. She felt so odd, not having any clients to tend to, no running roster of medical appointments that must be fulfilled by day's end. She offhandedly wondered how the whole healers and heroes party agreement was meant to go about. Were they to come to her when they were injured? Was she meant to administer routine checkups? She supposed she would simply have to seek further clarification once the others woke. Hestra swayed as she stood. She was finding it difficult to concentrate. Her head felt hot and a little foggy, as though her thoughts were underwater, and while she could make them out if she pondered them long enough, they remained obscured. Her side ached something awful. Hestra grabbed her medicine bag, and walked towards the edge of camp in the dim light. She wanted to change her bandages in private. She could hear the babbling brook nearby, and thought that flushing the wound may do her some good, so she followed the sound in the near-but-not-quite yet-daylight.
Once Hestra could see the water, she shed her layers like a wilted flower sheds its petals. She observed her wounded side and sighed in disappointment. It was raw and red and angry. Not at all healing the way that it ought to. Perhaps the exertion of the day's activities, the constant josteling and movement, had reopened the wound and prevented it from healing. It also certainly didn't help that she was covered in dust and dirt from traveling on foot. Hestra gingerly cleansed the wound with water from the brook, and bathed herself, wading into the water until she was submerged to her waist. The water was absolutely fridgid. Strangely enough, she found that she did not mind, the chill felt rather nice, it was soothing to her hot skin. She sighed in contentment, watching her tendrils of hair slide along the surface of the water like pale snakes.
As the chill of the water began to go shift from inviting to shiver inducing, and Hestra began to wade back to the bank of the brook, she heard it. The snapping of a twig branch from somewhere behind her. Hestra was, by nature, a very private person and was not fond of the idea of being party to conversation while being fully nude. Hestra was of course fully familiar with the human form; She had seen too many cadavers and medical emergencies to be particularly offended by nudity; she simply preferred to have slightly more control over how she was perceived. Preferably through layers of protective fabric, rather than the harsh, naked, vulnerable truth of her skin. She heard a cluck of disappointment. "Really now, you could have invited me to join you, you know." Hestra knew without turning exactly who it was that was addressing her. That tone of mockery and entitlement could hardly be ascribed to any other member of her party. "If you do not require immediate medical attention, I would prefer to bathe alone." Hestra called back to the vampire, only to be rewarded with a snort. "It looks like you are the one in need of medical attention. I can smell the infection in your blood from here." He retorted. Hestra shivered. "Really now," He continued; " A healer really ought to take better care of themselves, I thought you had finally snuck off to abandon us to our own devices, but here I find you catching your death of cold." Hestra shivered once more. Her head was beginning to ache. "You seem to make it a habit of following me." The vampire laughed, "I cant let the only healer foolish enough to join a party with such a slim chance at survival fall to an untimely demise before we've made full use of them! Trust you me, my sweet, we will have a meriad of medical emergencies to keep you busy soon enough. It comes with the territory of risking life and limb for glory." "Is that why you're here?" Hestra asked him. "For glory?" Astarion fell silent behind her for a moment. Almost long enough to warrant the hope that perhaps he had grown bored from their conversation and left. "For Freedom." Came his answer, spoken so softly you almost didn't hear it over the sound of the water. "And yourself, my delicious little darling, what makes you so different from the others hmm? Why are you here?" He asked her. Hestra answered him without hesitation. Reciting the mantra that had so often picked her up, propelled her forward, carried her on, and drove her with the passion she possesed. The one singular truth that she believed in. "Becasue everyone is deserving of care."
