1172 oh god tl;dr only I would frigging do this at the end of a damn thread. 8| 8| 8| tl;dr - daww caring for the poor cass :c
Myrika is by Aly!
Although quiet, Myrika's hands occasionally rubbed and stroked in attempt to comfort, knowing all the while they were feeble efforts. She did not otherwise know where to start, however -- although she had been trusted with hard secrets and truths before, they had been offered readily. She hadn't needed to pry at Sparrow to learn the trauma behind her customary form; Vesper's sister had shared this all her own, perhaps instinctively trusting Myrika for her kindness or easily-lent ears. She had not pressed Ezekiel for his reason of departure, though she had regretted this later. Kaena offered secrets and seemed to be relieved to be rid of them. Myri bore some of Halo's hurt, too, though her cousin had spoken little of the incident that had taken her eyes. It had been Myri's teeth to save Halo's life, after all, at the cost of the wolf attacker's life.
She listened with mounting upset at the noises Cassie made, and the lapses in those noises, where the relative quiet spoke volumes all on its own. Despite her own mounting anxieties, the redhead stilled herself and remained the pillar against which her sister might lean, at least for a little while and in a little way. Myri only shook her head slowly and squeezed gently, hoping the small gesture would not agitate her sister's aches and pains too greatly, shifting closer into the warmth of her sister's pale arms. Though she was soon stiff and vaguely sore from her position, she did not move, for the noises of crying had ceased. Some time thereafter, as she listened to the slow rhythm of breath, Myrika decided Cassandra to be asleep.
Disentangling her arms carefully, she put a hand behind Cassie's head before moving her own. She stood, still using the hand to keep her sister's head in a comfortable position, and stretched quietly, letting the feeling return to her arms and legs before she moved again. After leaning the pale-furred head back gently, she slid an arm between back and chair and the other beneath knees. She stood back up and cradled the smaller canine the few feet toward the pile of pelts serving as her bed.
The tall hybrid arranged the slim coyote's form comfortably, but turned back toward the bucket first. The water within was thick with muck, so she took it and dumped it beside the schoolhouse. Then it was to the spring, where she took the time to dab her own fur where it was greasy or crusted. Water sloshed over the bucket's edge near the desk as she reentered her room, but Myrika ignored it and instead took a clean rag and both the comb and the brush. Setting these down, she hesitated a moment, ruminating in thought, and stood back up to quietly slink toward Halo's room. Therein, she found a small leather sack she recognized, and long, pale strips of bandage. Returning to her own room, she slid in the water on the slick tile and only by virtue of the desk and long, strong arms saved herself from breaking a tooth or a cheekbone against the hard floor.
If nothing else, though, her ungraceful fall was at least quiet, except for the soft thud her palm made against the desk's edge. She held herself there for a moment, glancing through the dimness and listening. Only a faint horse's snort answered her small noise, and finally, the hybrid righted herself. Kneeling again beside Cassie, she opened the pouch and dumped three or four pinches into the small metal cup. She was not a healer by any stretch of the imagination, but she had bound Halo's wounds and watched Enkiel at his work a time or two, too. The Aquila was not, therefore, useless -- yet she yearned for her jackal-cousin's skilled hands and vast knowledge, all the same.
Pouring carefully from the clean water in the bucket, Myri wetted the pale stuff and mixed it with a finger. Hesitating over the large shoulder wound a moment, she contemplated rinsing it, and decided it would wait until tomorrow. The water's shock might wake her sister, at worst, and at best it would make their bed wet and uncomfortable. She touched the skin just beside the wound, feeling for swelling and heat. The flesh was warm, but there was no fire of fever. Satisfied, she stuck two fingers into the paste, and moved to smear it as gently as she could against the injury. It was a little too watery -- Kaena made it better. Still, it worked well enough, and only a few gray-white drops landed on the dark pelt below. Myrika repeated this process on the rest of her sister's visible wounds.
The paste applied, she wrapped the bandage as best she could around the pale shoulder, though it was an awkward spot and she did not have so great a number of bandages as to wrap around as many times as she might have liked. Ascertaining the tightness of the bandages was not too great, Myrika surveyed the rest of her sister's pale fur, and set to work with the rag, moving quietly and slowly as possible. She did not, in the end, employ the comb -- she feared tugging and pulling in any fur might hurt or wake Cassie. She instead settled on using the brush a few times, sitting up near her sister's head to carefully slide the soft-bristled thing through her sister's hair.
Feeling she could do no more, the woman set the brush aside. Her fingers ran over the notched ear, brushed a still-stiff and dirt-hardened lock of hair away from a moon-pale cheek, and finally dropped away. She stared a while, and finally put herself carefully beside the smaller figure, laying one arm across Cassie's torso as if to hold her there if she tried to escape in the night. There was no holding her here, though, as much as there was no holding their father here, no holding Ezekiel or Enkiel here. Maybe someday, she might have the good sense to shrug Inferni from her shoulders and stalk west into the sunset with all the rest, but she had tethered herself here too many times over -- and there was nowhere else.
Though she curled up beside Cassie for a very long time, sleep refused to come to her, or maybe she refused to acquiesce to it. Perhaps she dozed a very brief while, but a shuffle outside drew her up out of the few moments of rest she'd had. Lifting her head, she found the sky pale blue-yellow, turning gold toward the east. A hunched figure, gray and old, lead Cahal in toward the stables. Myrika buried her head against the uninjured shoulder beside her and closed her eyes again, knowing all the while the futility of her effort.
