Ain't No Rest [Private]

[Ezrihel]

The pagan moon hovered swollen and weighty in the sky, bathing the forest below in iridescent, silver moonlight. It was almost silent save for the crickets and a few lonely animal calls. The cool night air carried damp forest scents all around, lofting flickering torchbugs into the branches above. The dreamy creatures below could call the canopy it's own living night sky if they really wanted to.

A tiny hooded figure shuffled through the fragrant underbrush, carelessly causing noise. Small grubby hands picked glowing mushrooms off trees and moss from rocks with meticulous selectivity. A twisted bundle of sticks made for an exquisite tail and perch for woodland critters to laze about on. Leaf like ears poked from under the rough threaded hood, listening intently to the soothing sounds of the dark.

Twi was the name that the nymph went by. In all honesty their real name had been forgotten countless years ago, and they lived such a solitary life that it was a miracle that even they could remember some semblance of a title. They pursed their lips, pausing to count how much of each ingredient they'd gathered thus far. Twelve illumi mushrooms, five scraps of moon moss, fourteen pairs of luna moth wings- now those were a favorite of theirs to use-

An ear flicked.

What was that smell?

It was somewhat repulsive. Manufactured, fake, tanned- grossly human. Twi's large, alien eyes narrowed as they sniffed at the wind. Shifting their ingredient basket onto their back, they rapped their walking stick on the earth three times. The moss at their feet gained a subtle glow, forming a bio-luminescent pathway. The Nymph took tentative steps, worried and somewhat furious that humans were in their area of the forest. Hadn't they just recently come to an agreement to let the spirit be? Humans were always meddling and mucking about, chopping whatever tree down and uprooting growth all willy nilly. Well, this spirit wasn't going to stand by idling and tolerate such an atrocity-ee-ee...

The forest protector froze as it came upon the source of the disturbance. It's small wooden mouth popped open and hung in shock at the sight.

The ground was depressed, strange blue fluid spilled all throughout the clearing lead in trails to some sort of... human? No- It's leg was missing, and the last time Twi checked, humans didn't have blue blood or let out sparks... nor did their eyes flicker with an eerie, unnatural light. An automaton cloaked in human trappings was here? In Twi's forest?

The nymph made to move closer but stumbled backwards when she finally noticed the thing in the center of the clearing. Okay, this one was definitely a human as far as it could tell, no glowy blue ichor or ghastly flicker eyes. That, and it reeked of human and meat. With only a small bit of panic, Twi plucked several fireflies from her tail and stuffed them into her lantern, holding it up near where she guessed the head of this thing to be.

Yikes. Human, male by the looks of it, and dying at best. She put the lamp down and crouched by the man, studying his face with a morbid curiosity. She was startled out of her gaze by the automaton shuddering, lights desperately trying to fully come on. Twi glared with disdain and distrust at the thing for spooking her before returning to her observations.

He was bloody, the arm next to her was twisted unnaturally- broken. Her eyes trailed down his form, lingering over his worn leather armor. It looked like the decorative cloth parts of his outfit were shred up and threadbare from whatever it was that smooshed him into the ground. She sneered when her stare finally reached his leg; it was bent up, the leg of the wrecked automaton twisted up around it and holding it in place. The blue and red blood smeared together in purple stains on his tan skin and clothes. She lifted the lantern closer to his shattered leg. Fragmented bone shards pierced through his boots and his knee was backwards- and it stank like raw, hot bloody meat.

She wondered how long he'd laid there, on the floor of the clearing, letting bugs crawl all over him and into his open wounds. Sighing, she made to stand- the man was pointless, a lost cause from the looks of it. It'd be more merciful to kill him now than to let him suffer and bleed out. The machine was probably beyond whatever paltry repairs she could cook up as well. Her tiny paw like hand fingered her harvesting knife as she mulled over it all.

She watched his chest rise and fall with laboring effort, noticing for the first time how he was positioned. His other, far less broken, arm was outstretched, as if reaching out to the automaton. He had tried to drag himself over to it- probably before passing out from the shock and pain.

Her brows furrowed deeply. Empathy. This torn up man somehow had empathy for an unnatural machination.

Fine. Fine! She thought as she began to indignantly ruffle around in her satchel: withdrawing a mortar and pestle, a waterskin, a wineskin, several small bags of various herbs and ingredients, moon blessed smelling salts, a large square of decorated fabric and a bolt of rough hemp cloth.

With a moody scoff she took a swig of the wine, coughing at the sweetness before driving her walking stick into the ground and hanging the lamp from it. She spread the altar cloth on the leaf litter and quietly set to grinding her herbs into a salve for his cuts and wounds, and a powdery medicine for drinking. She pulled a cup from her bag and tossed the powder in, pouring wine in afterwards.

The Nymph grabbed her smelling salts, opened the pouch and thrust them under his nose. His eyes opened wide as he came to, then she was the on the receiving end of a squinty eyed stare.

“Good. You’re alive enough to actually wake up.” She clucked softly, holding the cup of wine and medicine out to him, “here, drink this. It’s medicine, might taste bitter, but it’s drink it or ultimate agony. Here’s my wineskin, chase the medicine with it until you float.” He squinted at her more.

“No, not literally,” came her exasperated response. “It’s not magical wine, this will all just be easier if you’re drunk. I’m going to set your bones.”

“I needed to be awake for this?” The injured man quipped with rhetoric.

“I like to see reactions when I do this. Also helps to know you’re not beyond all hope, now hush and get to drinking. You can move your neck fine, right?” He grimaced, obviously struggling to hold his head up in his worn state. She cocked an irked eyebrow and kneeled, sliding her arm under his head.

He lifted the cup to his mouth with his good hand, shuddering at the taste of the tart medicine. The wine did little to help. “What are you?”

“Ack- I’m... Mmm. I’m a Nymph. A forest spirit. You seemed to have crash landed in my home and I don’t really appreciate that all too much. What with all the blood and nasty smells. You people do know how much leather stinks, right? Almost as much as raw meat does, and you reek of both.” She plucked the cup from his hand and pushed the wineskin into its place.

He took a swig. “Not that I don’t appreciate this but if you have so much disdain for my kind, then why bother helping me?”

She huffed. “It’s complicated, but if you must know it’s because even mangled and half dead you have a trait I don’t see enough in ‘your kind’. Now hurry up and drink, the wine and medicine will dull a lot of the pain. When I get done patching you up, we can drag your automaton back to my house and you can work whatever hocus pocus on it that you want while you rest.”

“Iris!” The broken man jolted upright, startling the poor nymph half to death. And I thought he was gonna be the dead one by the end of the night. With a sort of frenzied panic and confusion he whipped his head back and forth looking for the android. It was off to his right, slumped against a tree. Very much to Twi’s own shock and panic, he started dragging himself along the ground with his two good limbs.

“Hey!! Stop that! I just barely got you back to a half living state- your leg is nearly torn in half, and you’re dragging your open wound through the dirt and bloody maggot mud!” She grasped at his hood and tugged back, “please sit still! I’ll go grab your automaton, just stay still and stop making things worse!”

He complied and rolled over onto his back before groaning in pain as his burst of adrenaline wore off. Twi scampered over to the android, finally able to get a decent look at the creation. It certainly didn’t smell anywhere near as bad as people did at least. It looked like a woman, long white hair and incredibly milky skin complexion. Blue liquid dripped lazily from the corners of its mouth, and it’s glassy eyes stared blankly, azure mechanical irises constantly focusing and defocusing on some unknown point.

The Nymph grabbed it under the shoulders and drug it towards her... patient, if one could call him that.

“Now, let me just get to setting those bones back into place before some ‘medical professional’ decides to saw them off. This should only hurt... well, let’s hope not too much.”