2022-05-20 - Bloodied Beak

Had Della even made it to the bathroom? She's collapsed, arms and legs every which way like a classic crime scene outline, an upwelling of blood staining the side of her creamy cotton nightgown.

Staining her side.

Where she'd been stabbed.

Dirt clings to her feet and scratched-up legs and, really, most of the rest of her; leaves rumple her hair, the latter braided in an unfamiliar style, not one she'd sported when she went to bed that night. Though the bleeding's sluggish, at least, her breathing is shallow and rapid, her skin ashen. Her eyes are open, but not quite focused. Low pain-sounds scrape their way from her throat.

"Della? Ava says--" Una's got her phone in hand as she bursts out of her room, the mismatched buttons on her shirt suggesting she's dressed-- half-dressed-- in a hurry. "Della," she says-- breathes-- as she thrusts the phone into the nearest pocket and darts across the hallway and to her knees to get to the other woman.

"JULES," she yells, without looking up: she's seeking, instead, to reach for Della's hand so that she can clasp it between both of hers. She's a blunt instrument, when it comes to using her power; she doesn't know how the body works, only that she has power within her that can help and heal. "Della, I've got you. You're safe now. Della."

The warmth of her power spreads via her clinging hands, and with it, the faintest hint of sugar and spice; cinnamon, maybe, scenting the thread that weaves its way from hand to body.

With the yell, Jules emerges from her room, looking rumpled in an old t-shirt and the kind of soft shorts that serve as pyjamas. “What?” she begins as her door swings open, only to stop there and come fully alert as she sees Una bent over Della’s body.

“Della,” she breathes, eyes wide, and can’t move fast enough to get to her housemate’s other side, opposite Una. “Come on, Della,” she urges, and without further thought, without checking to see what Una’s done already, Jules reaches to put her own hands just above the bloodstain. To apply pressure, yes, but also to see if she can’t encourage that wound to close.

Warmth.

It's half-shocking, between the two of them: not just a warm blanket over a chilled body but heat: not a lobster dropped into a pot, but enough that Della twists partly into those hands, partly away. She sighs. One, more diffuse, healing takes care of even the scratches en route to the larger injuries, softening the bruising, making it all more bearable; the other, focused, addresses the primary concern, the wound ejecting bits of detritus, the bleeding slowing, stopping. Whatever magic helps the edges of her skin come together smoothly, no doubt she'll be grateful later in all her vanity, but for now it'll scab and, with the wrong treatment, scar.

Her color is better; her breathing is deeper, rougher. Her eyelids flutter. There's no saving Della's gown, but perhaps what's not bloodstained could be sewn into something else, not a fashion-forward fabric but a stabilizer.

She could use a stabilizer. Or maybe she has them. One hand's trapped under her body still; the other curves its fingers within Una's.

"...Home?"

Una's brown eyes shift upwards towards Jules just for a moment in acknowledgement of her arrival, though it's the shortest of moments, really: she drops them again, intent and intense upon Della's prone form.

Her sigh is one of undeniable relief as, right before her eyes-- their eyes!-- the healing begins to take hold. Her swallow, though, is still thick and sharp, like she's fighting back the urge to cry-- the lump, already forming in her throat.

So it's a little rough, in the end, the way she says, "You're home, Della. You're safe. We've got you. Jules and I. See? You're going to be okay." Her fingers squeeze, tight and tighter still.

“We got you.” Jules adds her own voice. The words matter less than the comfort they aim to give. She lets out her own sigh, feeling that power leave her own self, seeing how it restores Della’s color. Once the work is done, Jules sits back on her heels and shifts her hand to Della’s shoulder, where she too offers a light squeeze.

“You ready to get up?” she asks, voice pitched low. “Get you back into bed, get you some clean clothes?” Jules doesn’t dare suggest a shower; too soon to tell if Della can really support her own weight, standing.

Della's fingers give under that squeeze; they don't break. She's just on the limp side of, of everything.

They sigh; she exhales again.

"So tired," isn't a 'no.' Her mouth shapes, 'Can try.'

Getting up won't be easy, but once there, and with someone to lean on, she can totter where they direct her. That one hand's still not in use; she's clutching a shard of wood that had once been elaborately painted, and inside, a pointed oval. An eye. A space where that eye should have been.

"Bed?" is less of a question than it sounds, probably, given the way Una is already glancing up to judge the distance between here and there, and what might be involved to collectively get their housemate between the two. She's not tall, but she's sturdy enough, and though the getting-Della-to-her-feet process is a challenge, the rest is a little less of one, with both Jules and Una to assist.

There is no try: there's just support, and at least in this, if not much else, Una is sure.

"You're safe now," she repeats. "You can go back to sleep, and we'll watch, and you'll be safe."

Jules might well be the strongest of the three, and she shoulders as much of Della's weight as she can in this process of getting the taller woman upright. "Come on now," she instructs, keeping her tone chipper. "It's not so far."

She slings her arm around Della's back, under her shoulder, as she helps her back to her room. While she's noticed that Della's holding on to something, the fist is too tight to establish what, and it's really not Jules' first concern at this moment. "There you go," she says instead, talking all the way. "One foot in front of the other, and here's your bed."

The old dark bed, rented with the furnished room; the pale sheets with their woven-in patterns, the duvet thrown back. The bloody bed.

There are so many ways in which it could have been worse. From a birthing, or something less desired. From a greater injury, one that would leave blood pooled, still scarlet, smelling of a butcher's shop. This is a smaller stain, a little larger than an unclenched fist, a cross-section of a human heart; it's already darkened, getting sticky. It ends in a smear.

A towel would cover it.

There isn't much of a blood trail, either: only a drop here and there, waiting for bare feet.

Della walks where they direct her, uncaring about any of that; she's still shocky, but perceptibly better, responding to their words and their touch even after their healing. This isn't just broken nails and blisters. She murmurs something, here and there, but it's hard to hear.

Della always makes her bed; if she doesn't do anything else, she does that. Maybe next time she'll buy darker sheets.

It's a good thing Jules is strong, and can take most of Della's weight: Una glances over her shoulder to try and meet Jules' gaze, gesturing with her chin at the bed, the bloody, bloody bed. "Let me change these," she says, waiting a moment before she ducks out to try and pull away the sheets so that Della can at least sit on the edge, the non-bloody edge while the redhead gets to work.

Does she pause, just for a moment, to look, properly look, at that blood stain? She does, of course she does, but now is not the time for examining things-- if there ever is a time, when you're not a scientist, not a detective, just not the person for that-- and so she pulls it away, pulls all the sheets away to be taken away and cleaned.

"I'll get some clean ones. We'll get it all sorted, okay Della? And we'll be here-- I'll be here, anyway-- all day, as long as you need me."

Jules bites her lip when she sees the bed. "I got you," she repeats, willing for Della to lean against her fully. She doesn't particularly want to lead Della back to her bed, not until there's clean sheets.

"I have class this morning," she tells Una, voice low, before the redhead scoots out to find that change of sheets. "Do I need to skip?"

Della does lean, all the better if she can drape one arm around Jules' shoulders: for balance, not for dancing. The words go by her -- except for where she whispers, "Okay," and even that agreement could as well have been to anything at all Una'd said. If she has Jules' shoulders by then, maybe she can also tilt her nose into the other woman's neck, and sigh.

Sometime later -- how long? they know better than she does -- "Like the huckleberries. Ferns." A little while later, "The path." If what she's holding digs into the back of Jules' shoulder, it's not on purpose, nor for long.

"...Sorted."

"No," says Una. "I can stay. I just need to get Nimue from Ava-- she's hurt too. You go to class."

First, though, there need to be clean sheets: fresh linen stretched out over the mattress, fitted sheet and top sheet both. "Huckleberries?" she wonders, aiming her tone to be conversational rather than inquisitive. "Hey, don't worry, Della. You're safe now. Nothing more is going to hurt you, okay?"

"Okay." Jules isn't leaving yet though, and certainly not when Della is leaning on her like this.

"What about the huckleberries?" The question's conversational, as if Della's not half-delirious and making zero sense. "Can you tell us about them?"

Once the sheets are on, she'll guide Della to her bed and help her arrange herself, pulling the top sheet back and over, adjusting pillows. If the duvet's not wrecked, she'll gently bring it up, too.

Wrecked is relative. Della, in her sodden nightgown, doesn't object.

(Or thank them; one imagines she will, later.)

"The huckleberries in the kitchen," she says. "We were all out there."

"It wasn't supposed to be that bad. Was it?"

"My shoulders hurt." But if checked, they'd only reveal calluses from months or years of basket-carrying, even the few abrasions from being knocked around already healed.

"We won. Supposedly we won. I don't think we would have... if it were later."

"Do you want a clean nightgown, Della?" Una's not about to start stripping her housemate without permission, though her gaze has already dropped to the other woman's attire which, under the circumstances, might not be best left alone.

"Huckleberries are delicious," she adds, a little hesitantly. "I'm glad they survived. I'm glad you won."

Jules trades a look with Una right around now -- is she getting this?

Nightgown, right. The sheets she's pulled up around Della are folded down just a moment later.

"Do we need to get her checked out at the hospital?" she asks Una, voice low and tight with concern.

"If it's not cold."

Della is agreeable, even to the point of trying to swing her legs out, even though her mostly-healed side still causes a wince and a hiss.

"When Jules left there were huckleberries in the kitchen. We had huckleberries and ferns and rabbits that we caught. We caught them before the Dream, not in the Dream, but I knew that they were there. The others mostly wanted something big. Which would have been good to bring back. Are you hungry?"

"There was a river."

Getting this? No. Not really. The tiny shake of Una's head is pretty clear about that, but so's the shrug she offers: she can deal, whatever comes.

Going through the drawers of Della's bureau is probably some kind of invasion of privacy, but Una can take on this task and hunt down a clean nightgown: it's important. "That sounds delicious," she says. "Are you hungry, Della? I can bring you up something to eat, once we have you settled. But I can wait here too, if you prefer, and we can let Jules go to class. Once I pick up the baby."

"There's always a river," mutters Jules. The comment isn't really meant for Della. "You should drink some water, too," she adds, pitched a little louder. "Where's your water bottle?" The question is designed to bring Della back to the present; Jules sees the water bottle just there on the nightstand, and she reaches over to take it and offer it to her housemate. "Here, have a sip."

Della's bureau drawers aren't out of character; the main thing that the fabrics have in common is that they feel good, at least to someone with senses similar to Della's. Whenever there's lace, and there sometimes is, it isn't scratchy. If Una does decide to rummage, there's an occasional sachet (or two, or three, usually embroidered). More deeply, in just the right place -- which is to say, right where a thief might look for such things -- a ring box, a little notebook, an also-little but lumpy and zippered bag. Still, the nightgowns aren't hard to find, mostly woven or knit cotton or even silk, with a couple flannel stashed for the season.

But: is Della hungry? "Maybe?" All those lingering aches around her stomach might be from hunger; it's hard to tell. She does take the cue to look sideways, leaning out from Jules to do it, and then taking the bottle with her empty hand. She even drinks without further prompt.

"Why do you always have the baby?" It isn't always. "Maybe a tip jar for cookies." Della hasn't been drinking, nothing but now the water in her bottle, but perhaps healing -- or the dilution of pain -- is its own kind of high. "We didn't fall in the river but we did get attacked and I tried to get into the woods but I must have frozen, it's all I can think of. But nobody abandoned me. But I didn't carry my own weight."

Una doesn't rummage: she has too much respect for her housemates to invade their privacy, even-- maybe especially-- in a moment like this. She picks up the first nightgown she gets her hands on, drawing it out of the drawer and shaking it out to check it before she brings it back to Della and Jules, there on the bed.

"I'll bring you up a sandwich," she promises. "I don't always have the baby. But Ava-- she was hurt too. So we're going to let her rest, and you rest, and Jules study, and that means I need to help as well. You don't always need to carry your own weight. It sounds like-- like you were put in a position where you couldn't. But you made it safely home, and so did everyone else, okay?"

Una doesn't know that. Can't know that. That's not the point.

"Arms up. Let's get you changed."

“There you go,” Jules encourages as Della drinks from her water bottle. “We’ll get you feeling better in no time. Main thing is that you’re home safe now.”

She sets the water bottle aside to help Della sit upright, in as much as she may need it.

At least it's a dark one, that nightgown. Della arranges herself obediently, if careful -- careful-careful-careful -- with her side even now, all set to be de-gowned and re-gowned. There's a fine gold chain about her neck, long enough to have otherwise been invisible. "I could at least have been better," she says with a bit of a frown, even under Una's ministrations, as she switches the broken wood to the other hand. "I don't," don't want to, "believe in couldn't. Even new."

"They're safe, though." Una said so. That's the important thing. "What are you studying, Jules? I missed you."

The old gown is dropped temporarily to the floor, the new one tucked into place with a gentle hand; Una lets her hand linger upon Della's shoulder a few seconds more. "We can practice," she says. "So that if it happens again," and it will, of course, though she doesn't like to linger on that, "you'll be ready."

She could say more in this vein, but Della's own question is a good distraction.

With those three words, Jules melts. She also looks like she might be about to cry as she gingerly settles on the edge of Della’s bed, down by her hips. “Well, I have this class that mixes science and ecology, like how you test for various things in water and soil,” she replies, concentrating on this instead of how her eyes suddenly want to overflow. “The lab component is pretty cool. My final’s next week.”

"Okay." Della's tilted her head, touching Una's hand with her cheek; she can't be counted on to know what she's agreeing to practice, but she's agreeing all the same.

"Will you test our backyard? For our fun fae? Our fun flowery fae. Do you change things too?"

"Except you should go to class. Get to go. And Una and I will rest." And Nimue. If all of that's possible. "I've practiced with the lock, you know." Ravn's practice lock, the one he'd lent Ariadne before. "I keep wanting to put it back together, but I shouldn't." It's also cut in half.

Una meets Della's gaze, smiling down at the other woman. For once, there is no hesitation in the physical contact, not in the giving and not in the receiving. Some moments are like that.

"Of course," she says, though she may not be entirely certain what Della is actually saying. (Given the glance she aims at Jules, brows raised, that might be worth raising to definitely not being certain.)

"Right. Yes. Jules should go to class, and Della's going to get some sleep, and I'm going to go and grab Nimue and be back shortly. And I'll be right here," preferably without a crying baby, "in case Della needs anything."

And to make sure there are no more Dreams, not today.