Blood and Bone

[Screech]

Fall 89th, 511 AV Every small twitch of her wing felt like some form of fire. Hot blood coursed down the thin membrane, sticking and matting in the black fur, pumping from a torn blood vessel. It was a terrible ache, a soreness that caused her great frustration. She wished she could wrench out the little pin stuck in her wing, but a small part of her bent on saving as much of her as she could resented the fact that tearing out the arrow could harm her and perhaps cripple that part of her wing. She would not admit that she was afraid of losing such a crucial part of her. Zith were not allowed to show fear by default. She had to be strong for the colony, a fierce fighter to earn her mate one day and bring in an even stronger generation of Zith. Where would her colony be if they were all fearful little rodents crawling in their caves and hiding from the world above? They would not be worth their wings. Flexing her wing again, she hissed in discontent at it, trying to menace it into submitting and ending the pain it presented for her enjoyment. Usually, she enjoyed the feeling of blood and the clawing of her skin, but this was just too much. There wasn’t even a good fight to go with how she got the wound. There was her, flying in the sky above Sunberth like she enjoyed doing at night to find her prey, and some frightened nitwit had shot at her. He disappeared before she found him, but he had left his arrow in the fold of her wing to scratch at her hide and gnaw at the nerves there. The Zith lashed out at the nearest pile of garbage, her claws slicing into it and sending waste flying before her fist hit the wall and a series of cracks followed the contact her fist shared with the vertical surface. In shock and anger, she screeched and stepped back, feeling tears of rage beginning to well in her eyes before she blinked them away, consumed with the need to stop herself from attacking something else that would break her bones. She detested this city and its foul inhabitants. Her thoughts sunk into rage-filled madness as she slunk away to the darkness to tend to herself and try to figure out a way to function without causing her body more pain.

[Dhalvasha]

"What a pity," a voice echoed from above her, "A bat without her wings." Above the Zith, Dhalvasha clung to one of the mortar-brick walls. His white hair caught the light of the moon above him like translucent silver, his eyes a piercing red in the darkness. "I do believe," he continued, brushing loose strands from his face, "If this were nature, something would have eaten you by now." Grinning, the spider crawled down the side of the wall, but still beyond Shriek's reach and paused, unhooking a hand from the wall and stroking his chin, thinking.

"You're in luck, little Zith," he said at last, gesturing to the doctor's bag on his belt. "I happen to be an abberation to nature myself, a spider that heals." He held his position though, looking down at her with a mixture of sympathy and wide eyed interest.

Tonight was one of the rare moments Dhalvasha had to himself. The claustrophobic confines of the doctor's hovel tended to close in on him if he wasn't careful. Days lost between cutting and slicing, categorizing and otherwise working. Tonight had had left, to go into the world and see something of worth. Not that Sunberth was any paradigm of human ingenuity, but even gold rimmed mizas could glimmer from the sewers to an observant creature.

The Zith was a find.

The arrow in her wing was well apparent, a clear indication that if not assisted soon, infection might claim her toe-hold on the sky. From Cyphrus, Dhalvahsa had seen Zith before...but rarely up close. There was something beautiful about them, suggestive coronas of red and blue about their fur and the dangerous predatory instinct of their gaze. Of Symenestra and Zith, the two were not so different. One clung to the air and the other to the walls of caves. Both took slaves, but one had no trouble with birth while the other did.

One wondered if there was some strange correlation between it all.

"If you put away your claws, I'll remove the arrow from your wing." Dhalvasha smiled disarmingly, holding out the hand as if in supplication. "I'm sure we can work out a price afterward, but time is of the essence."

[Screech]

"I am not a bat, nor an aberration," Screech hissed to that menacing figure stuck to the wall. She had never seen one of his kind before, and found his appearance to be of some interest to her. He called himself a spider, and she could see the resemblance. "Why should I trust a self-named aberration?" Screech's black eyes glittered as she considered jumping at him and ripping him down from his perch. After all, he could have been the one to stick an arrow in her wing. As she tensed to jump, her wing twinged in discomfort and she hissed at it, hating the weakness it presented. Screech had to admit that the spider-doctor had a point when he said something would have eaten her by now. Nature worked in mysterious ways, but it was a predictable thing. She would have been dead if she were at home in Eyktol. She didn't trust the man even as he offered her help, instinctively seeing him as a threat to her injured self. His claws alone looked threatening. However, she cursed inwardly at her own hesitation... If he tried to attack her, she would kill him and perhaps sustain herself upon his flesh. Despite his advantage in size, Screech still viewed him as weakling prey. He wouldn't dare cross a wounded Zith will full use of her claws unless he was stupid, she reasoned. "Fine," she ended up snarling, visibly lowering her defenses, even though er fur bristled at the thought of her needing help. She would end up strongly disliking that spider creature for this, and her hatred of humans for causing the issue in the first place would grow even further. The Zith stepped back from the wall, her muscles tensed as she watched the creature descend to her level, into her reach. She would watch him out of black eyes, not trusting him for a second even though she was allowing him to remove the arrow.

EditsWtf? My spelling errors were ridiculous. I have no idea what I was trying to say anymore, but somehow... you understood. That's ten points... I resent my iPod for the calamity it created.

[Dhalvasha]

"On the contrary," Dhalvasha exclaimed, scuttling down the wall till his feet settled on the ground, "You're a Zith playing at being human...why else would you consign yourself to this city?" He approached slowly, catching her black eyes with his own. Along the line of contact he speared a stream of Djed between them. Hypnotism was the art of Kings and Paupers, and Dhalvasha soothed the angry Zith, whispering mantras of promise and ease into her mind with each step he took. The familiar muscle of Djed flexed, fresh rush of sensation brought beyond his faintly glowing eyes. He entered the Zith's mind, awash in her unsteady aggression, placated by how similar she was to Irriari. He expressed his intent to heal, not to harm, a surprising offer certainly, but one he took seriously.

Stepping close to the thin creature, the symenestra extended a clawed hand to survey her wing. Running a claw across her membrane he grinned at how easy it would be to shred it, deny her the sky permanently. Certainly it wasn't the end result, the claws settled at the shaft of the arrow, but the thought remained, a curdling what-if at the back of his mind.

"I will need to break the arrow and remove both halves," He murmured to himself, touching the injury gingerly before removing his claws. "We will discuss payment for my services after I've removed the arrow...but before I've treated the wound itself."

He grinned at her, his fangs extended in hungry reminder of what he was, eyes flashing a dizzying crimson against the night, "You wouldn't want to risk an infection by leaving after that, my dear, a Zith without its wings might as well be a human without his arms."

He was reminded of the man he and Veldrys treated long ago, a Symenestra who had almost lost his leg. The act of being unable to climb alone was enough to consign the poor man to a life of pity and remorse, but luckily he had pulled through with little more than a limp. This Zith would be much the same, the arrow had not yet laid in long enough to make her infected, but certainly it was only a matter of time till some human with a grudge came up with a reason to needle her again.

Maybe he wouldn't be around at that time.

Alas, it was the woe of a doctor. He could not control his patient, only advise. And advising a Zith not to fight was the equivalent of advising a dog not to bark. It would happen regardless and he had no reason to stop it.

So he opted not to bother.

He broke the arrow with a sudden snap, re-aligning his eyes with Screech to release a fresh stream of hypnotic Djed into her system. It was dangerous enough that he forced the letter a bit, piercing her mind with multiple points of Hypnotic entry. All of it was subliminal, the suggestive backbeat of relaxation and trust while the doctor did his work. It was all to convince her not to lash at him, to separate flesh from bone at an importune time.

He pulled both spars from her wing, casting the jagged pieces away and stepping back, opening his medical bag.

"What manner of goods do you have to barter?" He asked her pointedly, glancing over his medical preparations. "In the absence of money, we can broker another sort of arrangement."