More sessions, more screaming, more crying, and more healing broken bits that I'm finding harder to stitch back together. I can feel my own strength flaking, feel the tiredness pulling my eyelids down.

I blink furiously to try and zap some life back into them and keep them focused on the deep gouge no longer bleeding heavily on her thigh. Arkyn got a little enthusiastic today. I've already healed the other wounds, saving this for last. I stuffed the wound with herbs to help prevent infection, and the plant needed to do its job before I pulled it out and mended the torn muscle and skin. It also allowed for the nutrients of the herbs to enter her bloodstream. She's getting worse.

It's slow progress, but it's progress, nonetheless. Even if I'm yawning every few seconds and swaying in between. I might just collapse down beside her and let sleep overrun me. The cold stone would be an upgrade to the thin layer of hay they've been so gracious to supply me. They took my cot when I refused their demand to restore her vocal cords. A small punishment compared to the bones they shattered in my hands. They shook with a wrenching pain for what could've been days. All the while, I kept my power from mending them so that I could save it to heal her. That was only until the pain became too unbearable to withstand, that I healed them. Not entirely, as it would've surely drained me.

My hands still have small fractures here and there, enough to make it painful to pick up a vial. Even now there's a slight tremor in them. I try to steady them as the last small bit of cells multiply and seal the two halves of her leg together. I wipe the remaining blood off with a wet cloth, careful to not apply too much pressure and cause her to wince. I hate when she winces at my touch. It feels as if I'm the torturer, here to cause her pain.

I finish up, waving another hand over her body to clear her of all injuries. Nothing but pristine tissue echoes back. "Rest up."

I go to stand, but her hand catches my wrist. I hold in my wince, afraid she'll freak out if she thinks she hurt me. "Left," she whispers, her voice coarse and tired too.

I silently curse my tired brain. I had almost forgotten that she likes to be laid on her left side to rest. I don't know why, as it's the right side that allows you to fall asleep quicker. From day one she's laid on her left side, and if I forget to do so, she claws and moans until I roll her over. It's just about the only thing the girl can remember, though I fear it's a physical memory like a habit of biting your nails. It's harder to get rid of than the images of you laughing with someone or crying for someone else.

"Sorry. Here." I place one hand beneath her shoulders, the other under her hip, and slowly roll her onto her side.

She's too weak to do it on her own, and I ignore the pain lancing up my arm as I make sure she won't fall forward or backward. Once she's on her side her eyes fall closed, and I listen as her heart slows. Not by much, as she's losing the fight against death at the moment, but by enough to tell me she's already falling into a deep rest. Her sleep used to be a light thing. Something that would have her eyes snapping open at the first sound of the door opening. Now it takes me putting a hand on her head and shooting more signals into her brain to get her to wake.

I try standing, but my legs feel leaden. I so badly want to sleep, but if I sleep now then the guards will carry me out, and I'll be too dead asleep to wake if they decide to do anything more than put me to bed.

The thought of their filthy hands on me has me throwing whatever strength I have left into my lower half and moving as quickly as possible up the stairs and through my cell door. I take two steps into the stale room before my knees buckle and I plop down on the pokey hay. Blissful darkness sweeps over me, letting whatever dreams or nightmares run wild.
I haven't had a dream in a long time, and the nightmares are all the same as when I'm awake. They're filled with the sound of her screams and the snaps and pops of breaking bones and tearing ligaments and tendons. It's all so horrific, and now it's unrelenting no matter where I go or what state I'm in.

*****

Something's here.

I sit up, my head snapping this way and that to find the source that has the hair on my arms standing. The healing gift isn't just good for stitching paper cuts. If the power hadn't sent a signal of warning through me, I may have never woken.

I listen for the girl's heartbeat, finding it still in a slumbering rhythm. It's slower, but nothing of much alarm that I hadn't seen coming. I can sense the guard outside my cell door. He's tired, bored, and hungry.
Well, that makes two of us.

Still, something's off, and it's in the room, or else I wouldn't feel it so clearly. There's only darkness here, making it hard to navigate without the guard opening the door to let the torchlight in.

I hate this cell. Hate how its darkness is used to torture me with my own thoughts. It's ten times worse when my bleedings come in. It's happened once already, and since I can't track more than a few minutes pass, I don't know when it's coming again. Though it might not considering my severe malnourishment. I've lost a lot of weight, and they only feed me every now and then, forgetting to do so cause, you know, I'm not a human being who kind of needs food to live.

I have two choices. Sit here and stare into the black labyrinth until whoever, or whatever, slits my throat. Or, try and navigate the dark by feeling with my hands until I've found the threat, or feel that I'm simply scaring myself and nothing's actually here. Neither has very appealing aspects, but I'd rather find myself being a scared little shit than bleeding out with no one to know until I'm already dead.

Sending a quick prayer to the Gods and their Saints, I slowly pull my legs to the edge of the hay. There's no way to move on these thick needles soundlessly. I lift my knees, lowering my feet onto the cold ground. I almost knee myself in the face as I quickly pull them back up. My foot touched something...wet. I shakingly touch the liquid at the bottom of my foot.

Please don't be blood.

Gods what kind of panic I'd go into if I found a dead man on the floor. I might hurl all over my bed or soil myself and the only clothes I have. Then again, I don't think the contents could make me smell much worse than I already do. If this isn't hell, then having to scrub this all off as well as detangle the bird's nest atop my head, will be.

I bring my moist finger to my face. It doesn't smell of anything unpleasant. In fact, it doesn't seem to have a scent to it at all. Poison? Perhaps they've decided they're tired of me and lathered the floor in some sort of poison. But what poison? I've heard and studied all possible tinctures and how to counteract their effects. All poisons that are scentless need to be ingested to work, and the liquid isn't burning my skin. So no. Not poison.

Siscilla said to use all five of our senses to determine something of unknown origin, and if that didn't work, then follow a gut instinct. Since my sight, hearing, touch, and smell senses have yet to determine the substance, there's only one option left. Taste.

Saints don't be deadly.

I lift my fingers to my mouth, taking a quick whiff before settling them on my tongue. That's odd. I raise my hand again, this time closing my mouth around my fingertips.

Water. It's...water.

How in heathens did water git in here? Granted it's not clean water but it's definitely not the murky "bath" water that they bring me every now and then. It tastes sort of...grassy. As if it was scooped up from a puddle in a grass field or something.

Deeming the floor free of a corpse, I stand on the wet ground. The water is a thin layer, but I can still vaguely sense the ripples as I wiggle my toes. Tapping my foot, I try and find the source of the leak, following the path where the water's density rises.
There was a time when all I wanted to do was run barefoot on the cobblestone streets, stomping and splashing in the biggest of puddles. Men and women would scorn me for being eighteen and running like a wild child of five years. I suppose that this will ruin that fantasy.

I keep tapping, ignoring the end of my gown that hits my ankles with a wet splotch. I finally find the biggest puddle somewhere near the back wall if my navigation is correct. I jump two-footed, stealing myself for a moment. A few of the droplets hit something and it...it glows.

Right, cause this couldn't get any weirder.

I stomp my foot, pushing most of the splash toward where the light was last. A neon turquoise color shimmers as if it were the remnants of a fallen star. It shines - first dimmer, then brighter, then it lets the dark consume it again. This doesn't seem to me to be a danger, but then again, most beautiful things are dangerous.

I listen for a moment, not wanting to miss a single thing that might sneak up on me. Not hearing anything, I take a few steps back.
I really hope the guard outside doesn't hear this.

Before I can change my mind, I kick at the water, launching a wave of it forward. The splash meets with whatever's there, and everywhere that the drops land, a big splotch of glowing blue starfall lights up. I take it all in, finding the light was actually moving like the wind, or a winding river, twisting in swirls and snake-like lazy patterns. It moves as if it were alive, circling like glittering dust before me. I can't make out what it could be, nor does any of my training help me understand it.

I'm still watching the star fall move when I realize that the glow hasn't dimmed as it earlier did. The dust-like particles start drifting toward each other, forming a swirling circle directly at my eye level.

"What in Saint's sake-"

The star fall bursts, spreading outward in every direction before curving, circling, and flowing like layered feathers.

I follow one of its paths to the ground, watching as it takes form into a...a...massive paw with claws. Another just like it appears beside it, and two more behind it. I know better than to try and run when one swipe of those claws would have my organs spilling out.
I don't want to look, don't want to find what has managed to slip into my cell, but my curiosity overtakes me, and I find myself staring upward into the richest violet eyes I've ever seen. They'd be absolutely breathtaking if my breath wasn't snatched by the huge water wolf who owns the eyes, standing no more than a foot away from me.

"Please don't eat me."