My feet swing idly on a dock, toes lightly brushing against cool, dark water.

A girl stands on the water in front of me. I cannot see her face. She uses Magic to blur it from my memory.

She flexes her fingers and wind gusts around us.

“This—“

Katsurou came awake suddenly.

The ceiling above him was not familiar. He lay very still, using his eyes to map as much as he could.

He was in a bed that was too small for him, his legs bent to length. To his left was a wall with a window, sun shining through it.

The walls around him seemed to be stacked logs; a cabin of some sort?

“You’re awake.”

He tilted his head towards the voice to see a short woman sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed. A small knife was in her hand, as well as a small chunk of wood.

She whittled away at the wood, but he knew that wasn’t a wood carving knife. He recognized the curve of the blade and the savage, serrated edges.

He curled his lip. “Volkodlak.” He spat.

“Trust me, I’m not any more fond of you being here than you are.”

“I thought the Volkodlak hunted, not played with their food.”

“So you were being hunted by one of my kinsmen. Thought I could smell something rotten on you.”

He frowned.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You needn’t fear me as one of a pack, just fear me as me. I’m a lone wolf.” She grinned toothily at him.

“I heard your kind go insane alone.” So this entire situation really wasn’t comforting.

“Some do. I haven’t. Much.” She shrugged. “If I had my way, you would have died in the Forest vorona. But someone has decided your life is worth the trouble.”

“What’s that supposed to me—“

“I’m back!” Someone sang from outside the door. It opened, and in walked a woman dressed all in warm browns.

She wore an ankle-length dress, with one side hooked up to a loop on her belt to give her more freedom to move. A corset bound her torso, and she wore rather impractical looking heeled boots. Her hair was wound back into a large knot at the base of her skull.

She smiled, startled, at him. “Oh, you’re awake! That’s wonderful.” She bustled in and sat a basket down on the in the center of the one-roomed cabin. “I’m Xenia, a healer. I found you in the woods and had Iskra here help me bring you back.”

“The… woods.” He said slowly. Iskra made a sound between a scoff and a sigh.

“The Forest. She went wandering after a fox in the Maiden’s Forest and found you.”

Wide eyed, Katsurou looked her up and down. From her getup, to her unblemished and unscarred skin, to her willowy form, she looked ill-equipped to go into the Maiden’s Forest. Hell, anyone was ill-equipped to go in there, the trees tried to fucking eat you!

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“You… are very lucky to be alive,” he said slowly.

“Oh, I know that!” She said brightly. “Anyways—“

Anyways she said…

“I’ll be treating you, unless there’s someone you’d rather have treat you. I must warn you, the Akuma compound is about three days away from here, so any treatment will have to wait until then and I’d rather treat you right now before you contract lycanthropy-based rabies or other Corruption diseases."

He kind of had no idea what she just said. “It’s fine, though I’m not sure how much you can do…”

“Quite a lot, actually. Please sit up and still as I take off your bandages!”

He slowly sat up, groaning in pain. She gently went to undress his wound. He tried to glance at it and immediately looked away, gorge rising. Self-love was a thing, but seeing that stuff wasn’t it.

“Perfect. I’ve got some wolfsbane-steeped water right here, please standby.” She grabbed a bucket that sloshed a bit and set it on the bed.

She slipped a hand into her pocket and pulled out a knife. He recoiled back.

“Woah—“

A hand clamped gently but firmly to the back of his neck.

“Please remain calm.”

At the word, he felt his heartbeat slow down and his body relax, even as his brain sluggishly told him to panic and fight back.

She removed the hand from his neck and sliced it open with the hand holding the knife before squeezing her hand into the bucket of steeped water. He—mentally—thought he would normally feel sick

Her hand was back, this time over his chest, before his heartbeat could kick into gear again and any rising panic diminished quickly, forcing him to only logically panic, which felt as impossible and awful as it sounded.

“What are you doing?” He asked calmly. “Stop that. Stop touching me.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Tengu-san,” She sounded just as amicable as he, “I need to control your blood flow for this.”

“You sound stupid using honorifics, just call me Katsurou— stop doing whatever you’re doing.”

She crooked two fingers with her free hand and the water spiraled upwards in a thin stream, tinted pink from her blood. He tried to scooch away. “What are you going to do with that? You’re Blood?”

“This is going to be used to clean out your wound. And yes.”

And with that, the stream of water came closer to him, settling on the gash in his side. He looked up at the ceiling, feeling the mixture bubble and writhe as he winced in discomfort.

“I apologize, you appear to be very reactive to my Magic. Here comes the hard part.”

This wasn’t the hard part?

He opened his mouth and looked down to protest, but instead watched, transfixed, as she pulled her hand away and the water followed, clear of color before falling with a splat on the floor. Then she crossed her fingers and her blood, he was assuming, that was left over did something. The skin on the edges of his wound tightened and stretched, making it itchy, but then they were suddenly pulled together by cross stitches of red.

“Is that your blood?” He asked, somewhere between awed and horrified.

“Mmhm.” She flicked her hand and the red lost its’s shape, oozing down his side.

She picked up a cloth from somewhere and wiped his side, revealing new and tender, but un-slashed, pink skin.

“You should be good to go. The wolfsbane should have cleansed you of any Corrupted Magic caused by insanity due to not having a pack,” he glanced at Iskra, who just smiled at him again without any humor, “and you’re all sealed up, so you shouldn’t bleed out. If you start to see blemishes underneath your skin, you should find a healer to cut you open and treat you normally. It’ll take longer but,” she shrugged. “I apologize for not doing this last night, but I needed you to be producing Magic at least semi-regularly and you were abysmally low on it when I found you.”

“…thanks.” His heartbeat seemed to be returning to normal, as well as all his other emotional-physical responses. He leaned away from her, a bit scared if he was being honest. “Now how in the hell did you do that? You’re not Akuma.” He had just saw her use a Water Form.

She blinked. “Of course not, I’m not part of any Bloodline at all.”

“That’s impossible. You just said you were Blood.”

“I am.”

“You’re certainly not weak.”

“Well, that’s debatable?” She flopped her delicate wrist, showing it off, “I’m rather flimsy. I can’t punch worth a damn.”

“Your Magic is strong.”

She blinked again and tilted her head to the side. “I’ve been told that my Magical levels are perfectly average.”

They were going around in circles. “You shouldn’t have been able to heal me!” He finally burst out. “You’re not a part of my Bloodline.”

She looked genuinely confused. “And?”

“I told you this, Xenia,” Iskra sounded oh-so-exasperated. “Most people can only heal within their Bloodline because of Magical Resonance.”

“Ohhhhh…” she tapped a finger against her lip. “Well then, I’m not sure! I’ve always been able to do this.”

Unbelievable.

“What, and I cannot stress this enough, the actual fuck?”