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She woke up to the morning rays from the sun.
The coyote’s olive eyes blinked drearily as she smiled — the action sluggish and somewhat dull. Her mind was surprisingly empty, as if someone had taken a cloth and simply wiped it clean of everything. Moments passed as she simply looked at the sunshine before she started to finally start thinking again. She felt content enough, but it was bugging her about where she was. She wasn’t in her make-shift shelter, which was a red flag to begin with. It seemed like a trivial matter, of course, but it was enough to gnaw at the back of her mind like a rabid rodent. It wasn’t until many more moments later that she could actually move. At first just shifted to a more comfortable position, brushing lightly against something warm. Alive. She looked to see, of course, Laurel. Still sleeping, as far as she could tell.
Oh. The thought resounded in her mind like the peal of a bell, and memories came crashing down on her like someone had let loose the floodgates. She didn’t panic — not at all. She was merely… confused. And somewhat curious. Nothing very overwhelming, though; she was still pretty blessed with a mostly-positive attitude. She felt warm and content, so she continued to be still and enjoy the feeling. It soon, however, began to shift and warp. The warmth spread over her until it lay over her like a blanket of fire, mostly centered around her throat. She realized that swallowing was as painful as sliding a knife down a sandpaper throat. That made her panic.
She slipped away from him as smoothly as possible, trying not to disturb him too much. She automatically moved towards the lake, dropping immediately to her knees in the shallows. The cool water was like the purest medicine to her, and she drank several huge gulps. After her thirst was satiated — for now, at least — she rolled back to sit down right in the shallow water. Her breathing was low and quick, eventually crescendoing until she was violently coughing. Around an entire minute of hacking and wheezing, her body decided to give up to simply breathe again. She concentrated on regulating her breathing, squeezing her eyes shut.
Reality had caught up on her. And it had taken its revenge.
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How long had it been since he had someone to fill the niche of being curled up beside him? Or really, how long it had been since he had bothered to fill that niche for someone else? The details of the evening before weren't necessarily lost on him, but it had vividly entertained him through one dream to another. Sometimes the dreams were that of memories, other times they made absolutely no sense at all. Actually, most of the time they didn't make any sense at all, and that was the point in which he generally woke up. But when he started to stir, comfortable with where he was, he noticed that the body that had been lying beside him hours before was missing. But the mess of bedding where she had been was still warm.
So once he had composed himself enough not to have a bleary-eyed vision, he sat up with a wince and drew a hand to his head. Ah, yes, that little tidbit. His ears pulsed at the beat of his heart with fell in tune with the throbbing in the forefront of his skull, no doubt just a couple of signs of just how hungover (or lack thereof) he was. But it wasn't as bas as he thought for now, and the first thing that came to his mind was getting food in his stomach; but only after he found Nikita. So he headed out of the tent, not bothering to dress for the time being and stumbled off through the forest.
It was early enough in the morning that from the sights and smells of everything, no one else had really woke up yet. The fire hadn't been stoked since he had started it yesterday afternoon, and was completely out by then. As he rounded the path through the forest towards the lake, the sound of coughing gradually made its way to his ears and he honed on it as best as he could—was that the same cough Nikita had last night? The details had gone about as fuzzy as his brain had been mush. Yet as he came over the slope before it slid down to meet the lake, it was indeed who he was looking. This time around, concern etched its way onto his face before any others.
“You okay? That's cough is getting rough.”
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She saw nothing, and heard nothing more than the sound of her own breathing, the rush of blood in her ears, and the gentle sounds of the morning and the lake. The latter might have calmed her if it weren’t for the fact that she felt as though she was getting worse, and by the day. Who knew how she would be afflicted tomorrow? Would it be worse? Would new symptoms appear, or would old ones worsen? She had half a mind to restrict herself into some quarantine somewhere so no one else could get infected (though it was probably too late for Laurel). She loosened the tension that had been gathering in her shoulders, trying to get back to that clear, somewhat-optimistic state of mind she had had not only moments ago. She would have continued to try — and fail — if it weren’t for his voice drifting down to the shoreline.
Nikita shivered slightly, though she couldn’t exactly pinpoint what emotion caused it. She was pretty sure it was nothing negative. She simply attributed it to the cool water for the moment. She took a rattling deep breath, making sure that there were no coughs that were waiting to ambush her words as soon as they came from her mouth. “Never been better,” she rasped, her mouth a grim line as she stared over the lake. It seemed that not even such an illness would distract her from her usual sharp sarcasm. “Then again, maybe I should go and stay in the sick shack for a while. I’m sure Jasper and whoever else is in there needs some company.” At first she wasn’t serious, but, a moment after saying it, it did seem to make sense. Perhaps this thing wouldn’t spread if they stuck around in one place until… it was cured. Or whatever else happened to them. She could already feel the ghost of crushing guilt sitting on her shoulders now, thinking about how she would feel if Laurel came down with it now too. No doubt in her mind it would be all her fault. She groaned to herself at the thought.
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For the most part things seemed back to normal. Save for people being sick. As he bent to pick up the bottle that had rolled away from him the night before, casting a careful look over Nikita's hunch frame as she spoke. In any other circumstance he might have laughed at the fact Laurent's makeshift home was being called a sick shack, but a more sober mind drew up the plain truth to what was in there. What had been going on and what would continue to go on. “You're not that sick,” he mentioned as he peered into the bottle where the sand and lake water had managed to mix with the liquor that remained. “Putting you in there would only make you sicker. You're not seizing, you're not hallucinating, no reason for you to go in there over a sore throat and a cough.” As far as he was concerned right then and there, she just had a cold. Colds went away, unless they went to their chest, at which point it became a much serious thing.
Of course, what really didn't help was their lack of having someone who knew all of the medical gibberish. He turned the bottle upside down and shook the contents from it over the dry sand, realising it was wasted. A little hair of the dog would have set back the rusting cogs in his brain from grinding together, but it could wait. “Y’think you can stomach some food? Maybe if we scare up something we'll both feel better.” Food generally helped where booze didn't in his mind and if neither one of those worked then something else could be substituted in. Grass and reeds, water, whatever. Roughage generally worked too. For now though, he didn't have too many intentions of bringing up the night before just because he didn't remember too many parts of it and even then, he almost thought if finding food didn't work, he'd surely go back to sleep once they'd gone their separate ways.
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She snorted gently at his comment, the sound muffled by her forarms. Not that sick, eh? Well, she sure as hell wasn’t bright-eyed and bushy-tailed either. His words didn’t install any hope in her, however; quite the opposite. All she could infer from it was that she probably had hallucinations and seizures to go through if this was going to get any worse. Just what she wanted, to accompany the throat-on-fire and generally shitty feeling! Well… that or “sore throat and cough”. She frowned, feeling as though that were the understatement of the year. If anyone else had compared her malady with the common cold, she would have punched them. If she had the energy to do so, that is.
Food? The whole idea of eating had become less and less important to her nowadays. She was pretty sure it was attributed to the illness… but who knew? She didn’t feel necessarily sick when she thought of finding something to eat, but it wasn’t exactly at the top of her things she wanted to do. And yet, seeing as though the last time she ate something had been nearly a day and a half ago, she decided she better try before her body simply gave out due to lack of nutrition. She hauled herself to her feet — being sure to do so rather slowly, so the blood wouldn’t rush from her head and knock her out — and then faced Laurel. “Sure. Food sounds good,” she said, frowning fiercely at the hoarse sound of her own voice. She absentmindedly began to walk back towards the main camp. “Any ideas?” She didn't have any.
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“I was thinkin’ fish, but I didn't bring the pole out,” he mentioned, scratching his face passively with his free hand. “But we might have something laying around the camp that we could eat. I'm pretty sure someone was cooking something the other night that smelled pretty good.” Provided there was anything left of whatever it was, of course. But either way it would give him a chance to slip into his usual attire. “There's always the apples and mulberries if you're up for that, though.” Even if mulberries were too small to be overly filling, the apples might have worked. They were bigger, anyhow. Though he could have just gone and got the rod too, for that matter. It didn't matter to him, even though he did want to try and treat her to breakfast because he thought it would as least make her feel a little bit better.
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He ran through the options and, as he spoke, she felt… nothing. Absolutely nothing. Her mind didn’t catch interest at the sound of any of the food, if not getting a little more averted to the idea of eating. She frowned, realizing that it was, of course, her decision to figure out what they would have to hunt down for breakfast. Nikita wasn’t really the biggest fan of decisions (even those given to her by those trying to be polite). So, in the end, she merely shrugged and peered around the camp as it began to take more definite form in the brightening light. “Uhh, I dunno. Can’t say I’m really choosey. Whatever’s lying around, I guess.” And, right upon saying that, she spotted a stack of crates that they had carried out from the city. Lying in one of the smaller ones near the top of the stack was a bunch of apples, probably picked from some trees somewhere just a few days prior. To prove her spoken point, she grabbed one and took a quick bite of it. And then she started to absent-mindedly walk around the camp, looking for whatever else might actually catch her interest.
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This post fails, I shouldn't have ate food because now I want to sleep. :|
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Back at the camp, his eyes blandly looked over what all they actually had. With the sickness flying around, who had time to actually store anything? It didn't help that some of their group was a little scattered at the moment either, but Laurel wasn't really one to boss them around. They were free to do as they pleased, that was the whole point of anything. His olive-tinted eyes scanned over the things that were scattered about, only resting on an old metal milk container he had lifted off of a farm. Filled with water, he had intentions of putting fish in it, thinking it would have been a good way to keep any that were still alive in the land of the living. Plus the whole added advantage of having to bob for fish, maybe. Peering into the container, much to his luck (or maybe even dismay) was one fish. It had died from the looks of it; belly-up and drifting. So he pulled it out and looked it over, not finding anything that insisted that it had started to rot. At which point thereafter he found Nikita wandering the camp site and he simply waved it in her direction before skewering it and resetting the fire to light it.
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Both the flash of movement in the corner of her eye along with the smell of a fish being waved around in the air drew Nikita’s attention back to Laurel. Once she saw that he had managed to find something to cook up for breakfast (or lunch; she hadn’t really gotten around to checking the actual time of day yet), she wandered back over and took a seat by the crackling campfire. She continue to nibble on the apple she had found until it was nothing but a core. Thinking to be a little bit less of a litterbug — she usually would have just thrown it over her shoulder to some corner of the clearing — she tossed it in the fire. Finding absolutely nothing drifting around in her head to say (or at least not finding the guts to say what she could have said), she simply sat in silence, watching the fish cook over the revitalized fire.
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_____The silence that filled the air between them wasn't necessary, but he really didn't know what to talk about at that point. Given the events of the previous night being fuzzy in their own right and a brewing headache trying to work its way out through the nerves and blood vessels of his brain, the quiet was nice. The logs on the fire popped and crackled while the apple Nikita had pitched in shrivelled and started to burn and soon the smell of both apple and fish were in the air with the smoke. After a couple of minutes, he let out a sigh and sat back a bit, ignoring the protest of muscles in his back that weren't really happy about sitting straight.
_____Being slumped over was a lot more fun, they insisted. “You want this fish?” he decided to ask, not really cooking himself as much as he was to give to her. An apple was nice to eat, but it wasn't really the kind of thing that he would use to sustain himself constantly. Protein was better, wasn't it? Illness was another one of those things he had mostly avoided in his life for one reason or other.
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She didn’t focus on the silence — what might be awkward for those more inclined to chat away the quiet was pretty comfortable for her. Nikita wasn’t exactly the greatest conversationalist in the world, and she mostly found solace in the increasingly rare moments where one could simply enjoy the company of another without actively thinking about things to say. Much easier on the mind — and pretty great when she was trying to think about as little as possible. She already felt as though she was operating through a haze, a fog that closed around her senses and her reactions. When Laurel did speak up, it took her a few moments to go through her thoughts and respond with a rather lame, “Yeah.” No, perhaps not the best manners for someone offering you something, but being polite wasn’t high on her list of priorities. It wasn’t as if she would refuse, though.
Nikita paused, sinking deeper into a foggy distance for a moment. If you’ve ever been tired enough to where your eye twitches involuntarily, you might understand what trick her illness decided to pull on her next. It was quick as a flash of a thought, a contortion of the muscles of her face ranging from her right eye to the nearby ear. Just looking, it might have looked like she had gotten momentarily upset about something and then dispelled the thought. A moment of confusion followed by a frown came after the first twitch as she fell into waiting to see what would happen. A few moments later, the exact same nervous twitch happened. She ground her teeth silently, though she didn’t outwardly bring attention to what could probably be a new symptom.
Why? Because it might as well not be a symptom to her sickness. Going crazy seemed kind of possible now as well.
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I seriously can't think of much else to do, lawl.
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_____Once the fish had finished cooking, he simply handed her the stick that it was on, knowing that if he tried to pull the it off, it would have been the moment too soon for it to be cool and then it would have ended up like the apple—in the ash and burning—and wasted. “Hopefully I didn't burn the hell out of it, I seem to do that more often than not,” but then again, it didn't matter to him. He had eaten burnt things many times before and occasionally had resolved to bugs, leaves, and whatever else was around.
_____Whether or not those times were voluntary, reader decide. Any notion of throwing something on his backside was forgotten already, and he simply let his posture slouch, letting his arms rest off of his legs. It wasn't even late into the day and he could feel the temperature wanting to climb up (or was that the sickness crawling up on him?) and being near the fire didn't really help out any. But aside from that, there was a distinct pulse in his head that hadn't been there before, but at least he had a handle on his composure for now. It wasn't that bad, yet.
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Okay, fade-out here now. It seems more like a zone-out than a fade-out, though, heh.
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She took the make-shift skewer from him, holding it limply while waiting for it to cool off enough to dare eating. She shrugged at his comment, not caring in the least if it was burned. Over the months, both of them had eaten enough burnt meals to not really notice it anymore. After a few moments of waiting, she deemed it cool enough to eat and proceeded to do so. Strangely enough, the barest hint of an appetite gave her the focus to eat the entire fish; it was weird, because she hadn’t really been feeling the need to actually eat something since she had come down this sickness. Maybe it was letting up… or maybe some symptoms were being blocked out and her body was making room for some worse affliction. But Nikita was ever the pessimist, so who knew! Maybe she was actually getting better.
But she didn’t know what to think of how Laurel was doing. With all the time that he spent around the other sick wolves and her, there was no real reason in her mind why he wouldn’t get sick, unless he was magically immune or simply really damned lucky. She didn’t at all want him to come down with anything… but she hadn’t exactly helped that at all. She frowned, snapping the last bit of edible meat from the fish and tossing the stick and remains into the crackling fire. With nothing else to do, and not really wanting to go and walk around while she was sure she was getting more ill by the moment, she simply sat there in front of the fire. The heat didn’t bother her, as she had always been more cold-natured. She simply watched, in a strange, captivated fashion, as the sticks burned and sent ash, smoke, and sparks into the air. As the smoke wisped up and whirled off into the sky…
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