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Reya could hear the expletives coming up the stairway before she could see the cat, its ghostly pale face, or the shoulder dripping blood from a long gash.

"Siv!" Aris nearly turned head over heels as he ran to the feline. "What h-happened?"

"What do you think happened? What's the only fucking thing that could ever possibly happen in this boring shithole of a town? Just give me a fucking guess."

"No..." gasped Melly.

"Yup, we've got a weasel carcass out there with a big ass indentation that looks an awful lot like a horseshoe. Townsfolk're on the edge of a riot." Reya looked at Torren. He still had a large scoop of stew churning slowly in his mouth. He met her eyes and then turned back to look at Aris.

The beagle was busy inspecting the wound on the cats shoulder. Siv shrugged him off, turning until the dog was on his good side. Aris didn't push the issue, and backed up.

"Whether whatever horse did it intended to kill that weasel or not, we need to get it out of the town as soon as possible. What's it look like right now?" Melly chimed in.

"That Etresian guy... the fuck's his name again? Whatever. He's holding people off until you can get there to talk some sense."

"Aris, suit up and find me as soon as possible," the badger bounded down the steps without another word. Aris scampered after her. He paused for a moment at the top of the steps, turning his attention back on the smaller otter.

"Reya, take a look at his shoulder, please! Don't let him go if it's anything worse than a scrape."

Siv groaned. "Thanks, mom." He turned to follow Aris, but only took a single step before the firm grip of Torren's teeth clenched around the scruff of his neck.

"Torren! Stop!" Reya cried out, startled, "he got bit in the shoulder, you could really hurt him if you carry him like that!" Torren immediately dropped the cat, who, having already shown his displeasure, seemed to have given up.

Reya tried to push the fur around the wound to the side, but she still had trouble identifying the severity of the cut. Siv's constant twitching and cursing didn't help. From what she was able to see, it didn't seem like a bad injury, but the blood made it difficult to get a good look.

"I need cold water and some clean cloth," she mumbled to herself. "Torren, please keep him here for me." He nodded after a moment of hesitation, and a not-so-subtle glance at her bandaged paws. "Don't move!" She commanded the cat who was still wincing at the pain of his wound being touched.

Reya limped quickly down towards the basement. She nearly tripped as she was turning past the ground floor and caught a short glimpse of Aris fumbling to fit his small crossbow to the side of his outfit; however, she caught herself and moved on.

The basement was a cold stone room. Candles in various stages of melting were scattered haphazardly over the floor and counter-tops. It also had several stacks of boxes near its edges, but was mostly filled with a disorganized mess of preservable foods and drinks. She didn't see any water, but there was plenty of beer.

She grabbed a bottle of whiskey from a nearby counter-top. Alcohol wasn't as good as simple salt water for cleaning out open wounds. It's not that alcohol wasn't effective, it was slightly too effective. Whereas salt water rinsed a wound out and cleaned any dirt or grime, alcohol burned away the rot alongside the blood and flesh around it, which led to a much slower healing process. However, with a bite wound, she didn't just have to deal with dirt and grime, the real danger was in the other animal's saliva. The otter grimaced as she thought about how much less Siv was about to like her. She'd just met him too! She didn't like leaving poor first impressions. Nevertheless, she knew that she had to do what she had to do.

Reya snagged a cleaning rag from the counter-top next to what was frankly the biggest pot of stew she had ever seen. The clean beige rag was easy to spot in contrast to the absolutely filthy countertop. The little otter's stomach flipped and she quickly backed away from the rancid stench. After whispering a word of thanks that she hadn't seen any of Melly's handiwork before she ate the stew, Reya slung one of the many small knapsacks hung on pegs in the wall around her neck, careful not to let it bump into her broken paw, fitted the flask inside and cloth inside, and turned tail out of the basement.

When she reemerged into the attic Siv was sporting a scowling face, a tail twitching with agitation, and a back turned to the hapless looking Torren. Reya didn't even have to ask what was wrong, a single roll of the big otter's eyes told her everything.

"Your fucking bodyguard here-"

"Won't say anything. Yeah, I know," Reya finished for the cat, "he's mute."

"Shit."

"Yup." She tried to look as serious as possible. His swearing did annoy her and helped to keep her indignation from sounding _completely_fake. Torren obviously wasn't falling for it, but he didn't, and couldn't, say anything to give her away.

"So-"

"Mhm, you're being a huge jerk," the otter paused, trying to drag out the silence for as long as she could without him interjecting. After half of a second, she realized that she'd have more fun talking than she would trying to toy with the cat's awkward situation. "Make it up for him by staying still while I do this, okay?"

The cat grunted and turned his head away from the two otters. "Whatever. Just get it over with."

Reya limped over to Siv and dropped the knapsack onto the ground. He looked startled for a moment, but the surprise quickly dropped from his face. The otter suspected that he hadn't noticed her injury until now. She briefly considered teasing him about it, but she already felt guilty herself for guilting him into good behavior. However, with the tense silence that had descended upon the room, she found herself itching to talk.

"So you're a Ranger, right?"

"Obviously," he venomously retorted.

She winced. His type was never fun to talk to. The cat was acting like one of the annoying tax collectors that periodically came around to town; pompous and uncaring, with a better-than-you attitude. She preferred the company of self-indulgent stuck-ups like Weisk to the uncaring jerks that Siv was acting like. She couldn't imagine how Melly put up with him.

However, Reya did not like to give up.

"That's so cool! Why'd you come work so far up here? Did you grow up around here?" She used her teeth to pop the cork off of the alcohol as she spoke; the pungent stench of strong whiskey wafting out. Reya folded the rag around the neck of the flask and carefully poured the alcohol against it. Some of the pungent liquid splashed out, but she didn't think that she could avoid that with only a single working forepaw. Siv seemed to be ignoring her.

"You want some?" Reya asked. It wasn't her whiskey, so she was a bit uneasy about liberally handing it out, but she was sure that Melly wouldn't mind, especially since it was for medicinal purposes. If it would happen to loosen Siv's lips a bit, she wouldn't complain. Either he saw straight through her or was just a sucker for pain, because he didn't say a word.

"Okay, it looks like you've bled as much as you're going to bleed. It can't be older than ten minutes right? Geez, you really should have gotten here faster! Anyway, I'm just going to go straight to cleaning it out. Hold still for me, ok?"

The small otter winced for him as she dabbed the cloth into his wound, gently pulling away any dirt that clung to the surface. He cringed, but stayed quiet, with a look on his face that reminded Reya of a rebellious child unwilling to acknowledge its parents. She nearly broke a smile as the image popped into her mind, but she didn't think that it would be appropriate at the moment, so she held it back. She'd have to remember to mention it to Torren later.

"All right, good job! The next bit's going to hurt a bit more, but you should be fine with how you handled that!" Reya tried to hold a smile, but the cat's attitude was making it very hard. "Torren, grab some..." She nearly dropped the cloth back onto Siv's shoulder as she turned to the larger otter in shock, her eyes wide as saucers.

"My herbs! The stuff you got from the fire! What happened to it?!" She demanded in a panic.

'Don't worry! They're downstairs! Want me to get them?' Torren signed earnestly. Reya's breathing fell back to a normal pace quickly, but her heart kept on beating like a drum.

"And the... the..." She signed the word for book with her one paw. She couldn't have signed with both paws together anyway, but the sign for book was very obviously a book and she didn't want the cat to get any ideas. He seemed less like a noble true-hearted Ranger like she saw Aris as, and more like a hound of the law. And the law wouldn't like to find words written in the old script.

'It's here as well, don't worry.' Torren signed back as he scurried down the staircase.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Until now, the book had been in a back corner of her mind; she hadn't studied with Torren since before the fire. She was never particularly nationalistic, so learning how the old script worked hadn't really bothered her. In her small corner of the world, the only presence of the government was the small yearly tax and the help of the Rangers if particularly heinous criminals found themselves in the region. National law was often taken with a grain of salt. Local law and group ethics usually trumped everything else.

Lenwick was on the edges of the kingdom, but the government made a much greater effort to keep the small port city under control than it did Lenwick's subsidiaries and offshoots. Even despite her location, Reya didn't think that sharing her blatant treason around a branch of the military, even a relatively independent one, was a good idea.

The cat was twitching his ear in irritation. She could tell that he was curious, his body movements were completely betraying his resolve to be an irreconcilable dick. Reya, wasn't as happy about this break in his mental fortitude as she would have been in other circumstances.

"So - uh - just give me a moment, Torren's fetching the bandages! He shouldn't be more than a moment!"

Siv nodded and let the two of them fall back into silence. Reya wiped the visible grime off of the rag in the meantime, lost for anything to do. She was about to tell him how to treat his wound, but he surprisingly spoke first.

"A fire... That's what happened to you?" He turned his harsh yellow eyes to Reya's.

She hadn't expected this. She didn't even realize that she'd mentioned the fire until just then. Reya was at least happy that he hadn't asked about whatever it was that she had asked Torren about. However, the question had caught her off guard and it took her a moment to get her composure back.

"Y-Yeah, the broken one was actually my fault though!" She tried to force a small laugh. The cat didn't seem to think it was that funny. "I couldn't sit still after, you know? Anyway, I may have gone a bit too hard on it!" As she thought about it, the ever-present throb of pain resurfaced to the forefront of her brain.

And the reason for it. Reya clearly saw Sylvia's still-warm corpse flat on the cold stone table where she had lived her last few moments; a harsh impersonal tomb unbefitting of such a loving friend. Her stomach was hopping around as she thought of the rabbit. A lump grew in her throat and her breathing became ragged. She held it back as best she could.

She could see through blurred vision that the cat was waiting for a response of some kind. She hadn't heard a question.

"What-was-that?" Reya asked in a single breath.

"... Nothing."

"Oh."

She didn't feel like talking after that; she just felt sore and exhausted. After Torren returned, she finished dressing the cat's wound. The straw bedding on the ground looked incredibly inviting. She hadn't slept in anything resembling a real bed for almost six days at that point. With a nod of good night from Torren, she quickly fell asleep.

A shrill scream of pain from off in the distance woke her up. A glance at the window told her that it was still the middle of the night. Torren was sitting, alert, next to the staircase. Siv was nowhere to be seen.

"You shouldn't have let him go," she mumbled.

'Maybe not,' Torren agreed, 'but whatever's going on, Aris and Melly might need him.'

"How long's it been?"

'Since they left? I'd say two hours, but you can't trust your sense of time under pressure like this.'

"Do you think it's that bad?" The look in Torren's eyes - anxious and fierce - told her the answer before she even asked the question.

'Yes.'

"That scream..."

'They've been going on for a while now.'

"I should -"

'No, you can't!' Torren cut her off with a furious wave of his paws, 'You're in no shape to do anything.'

The thought of asking Torren to go help crossed Reya's mind, but she selfishly decided against it. Based on Melly's reaction earlier, whatever was going on right now was serious, and she didn't want the larger otter away from her side.

Still.

"I think we need to get out of here."

'Why?'

"We're cornered here. If people try to storm this place, we'll be trapped... and who knows what they'd do."

'But why here?'

"Aris said that the horses are a big political thing. If they escalate the rioting against the government, they'll be here as soon as they break into the city hall."

Torren thought for a minute and then nodded. 'You're right, we should leave.'

"Let's leave a note for Aris. Didn't I see a chalkstone somewhere in those boxes? Oh, right!" Reya limped over, and pulled a piece of chalkstone from a small stack she had noticed earlier in all of the clutter. "I can't really write with my paw wrapped like this. Draw a quick map to the river from here, ok? You remember how to get there?"

'Yeah,' the male signed back. He jotted a crude map into the floor underneath Reya's bedding. 'We'll have to hope that they notice this. I don't want anyone else to follow us.'

Reya grabbed a fabric strip from the medical supplies leftover from treating Siv and set it down on top of her bedding. "Hopefully Aris or Melly'll take this as a hint."

'You ready?'

"Yeah, let's go," after a moment, she added, "don't forget the book. I'll take the medical supplies."

She tried carefully to stuff all of her herbs and poultices into the bag she had carried the whiskey up in, carefully trying to keep the herbs from being crushed or torn. She topped the bag off with some of the Ranger-owned medical supplies that Torren had carried up along with her own medicines. She was sure that neither Aris nor Melly would mind.

Torren propped her up again as she made her way down the stairs. She'd done it herself only hours ago, but she wanted to conserve her strength and keep her paws in as little pain as possible for as long as she could.

As they made their way to the bottom of the staircase, another scream rang through the dark building like a banshee's howl. Reya shivered reflexively. It was a cold fall night, and the chill made her fear a physical reality as the haunting sound ran down her spine.

She pressed forward with Torren, pushing him to move a bit faster. He followed her cue and helped her to limp at a speed close to a regular walking pace. She couldn't keep it up for very long, but they needed to at least get away from the Ranger building.

"Which way do we go...?" She wondered aloud as they broke outside into the crisp fall air.

Torren nudged her to the right and she followed his lead.

The shouting grew louder with every step she took, but she moved on without hesitation. As long as they were away from the Lenwick Ranger Headquarters they'd be safe. They'd be safe.

Her mind wasn't focused on anything around her. She moved automatically. The pain was getting worse the more she walked. She felt her paws burst into a fiery pain with every step, but she couldn't stop them if she tried. They were moving with a will of their own.

Reya couldn't see anything except for the otter beside her, holding her up and pushing her forward. It was as if she was back in the forest the night that Sylvia died. Her body moving and acting of its own accord - completely disconnected from her consciousness.

She barely felt the ground under her paws change from sharp gravel to soft grass and then from soft grass to rough forest dirt. She only stopped when she felt Torren's head duck in front of her body, blocking her movement.

With a huff of exhaustion and pain, Reya let herself relax completely into the bigger otter's side. He slowly lay her down onto the forest floor and then circled around in front of her to sit down.

"I'm sorry if I worried you... I zoned out for most of that."

'Are your paws OK?'

"Yeah, they're fine," she lied. They hurt like hell, but she wasn't about to say that. "How long did we walk?"

'Over an hour, I think. We're near the river, but I wanted to stay a bit concealed in case any of the rangers make it here. I don't want to force them to move you.' Reya only caught half of the words he signed, but she understood what he meant.

Reya relaxed her head against the dirt. It wasn't a real bed, but she was exhausted enough that she didn't care.

"Get over here, you big oaf," she mumbled.

She shut her eyes. A moment later she felt a warm furry body wrap around her. She sighed and drifted off to sleep