The fight was already over by the time David arrived. He was a fast runner by any measure, but the speed and skill Samantha had displayed in getting to James was beyond anything a human should normally even be capable of.
As fast she was, he arrived only seconds behind her. But when he got there, there was little left for him to do. He found Samantha holding a dead animal out at arm's length. Her eyes blazed with anger at the thing, something David found entirely justified given the condition James was in.
James, battered and bloodied, leaned against the wall for support. His own attention stayed fixed on Samantha and the dead thing she was squeezing like a wet sponge. She seemed to be only moderately injured, so David focused on James first.
"Actually, I think I'm fine," James shakily concluded as David began tending to his wounds.
"Like hell you are."
"It's just that..." James started, then trailed off, his eyes still on Samantha.
"Oh," David acknowledged. Samantha was starting to tremble. Perhaps she needed some help after all.
"Uh... here," David pushed a few strips of cloth for bandages into James's hands. "Anywhere you're bleeding too badly, you can use these to put some pressure. I'll be right back."
Samantha's situation had deteriorated quickly. In just those few seconds, she had gone from okay, to bad, to scary-bad.
"Samantha?" he called. She didn't respond.
"Give me just a second," he called over his shoulder to James as he moved to talk to her.
She was shuddering with what looked like fear or shock. Her eyes were glazed over, entirely unresponsive, lost somewhere in her own head.
"Samantha, are you okay?" As he spoke, he put his arm on her shoulder. That touch seemed to snap her out of whatever spiral she'd gotten pulled into.
She looked up at him, and immediately she looked a thousand times better. The shaking and swaying stopped, her breathing went back to normal, the tension she carried all over herself suddenly melted. She seemed like herself again. She nodded at him, and he felt suddenly better about everything. They could do this. She would be fine.
For the briefest of moments when she had looked up at him, right before the fog cleared from her head, he thought he saw a sparkle of brilliance in her green eyes. Not the color green, but the idea of green, the memory of it. Green like sound of pine trees whipping in the furious wind and rain, or green like the smell of grass swaying to the chill of a coming storm. It flashed in his head like a bundle of lost memories, experienced for just one familiar moment that made him smile. And then it was gone.
And now he wasn't certain it had ever been there at all. Samantha's eyes were deep brown, just like they always had been.
"What color are your..." he began, but then stopped himself. That wasn't even a useful question. Plus, Samantha looked embarrassed now that he had started to ask her, so best to not go there right now. He swallowed his next words, and instead just gave her another friendly squeeze on the shoulder to let her know he cared.
"I'm going to check up on James again real quick, just hold tight for a minute more. Is that okay?"
Samantha nodded again. David could tell something pretty severe was bothering her, but he didn't know what to ask or what to say. He had always considered himself to be reasonably good with people; in fact, he thought that he had always been pretty good with Samantha in particular. However, situations like this always baffled him. It often seemed like the best he could hope for was to not accidentally make things worse.
Injuries, though? Injuries were something he understood. He went back to see how James was holding up.
James, it turned out, wasn't holding up at all.
"I can't... this just isn't working," said James, trying to wrap up his bloodied left hand in the cloth bandage. The cloth strip was far too small for what he was attempting. It kept slipping, and the pressure from attempting to wrap his hand kept him wincing in pain. At least he was seated now.
"Don't worry about the hand," David said. "As soon as we get inside, Evie will fix you up for real. What I'm worried about is stuff like this..."
James handed back the cloth strips, and David carefully wrapped up a spot on his right arm that had been spurting blood too freely to be safe.
"I think it nicked a blood vessel here," he explained. "You'll be fine either way. We have wizard doctors now, so bandages are probably obsolete. But we should at least make a respectable effort to keep your blood inside you till Evelyn can seal it up properly. And you can hold this to your head so you don't drip blood down your ear-hole--that looks like it would be annoying. You holding up okay?"
He honestly had no idea whether James would be "fine either way," but he was intentionally casual about it all in order to help manage James's stress level. Samantha was stressed enough for all of them combined, and while he didn't know how to help her, he could at least keep James from losing it.
"Yeah. I'm fine," said James. He was starting to look like it, too. Not physically, of course. Physically he still looked like he'd lost a wrestling match against a chainsaw. But emotionally, things were looking better. He had calmed down significantly in the last half a minute. David continued his emergency first-aid, staunching the worst of the blood loss to stabilize him before taking them back to the house.
"They're not called wizard doctors," James volunteered, "they're just called healers."
"How is there even a word for it already? Evelyn just invented the idea yesterday. She's literally the only one in existence."
"That's just what they're called. I didn't make it up," James shrugged.
David worried that this was the "mana" thing all over again. He would like to believe that using gaming terms for real-world phenomena wouldn't result in people jumping to stupid conclusions and accidentally killing themselves on their own bad ideas. He wanted to think that people were smart enough to see reality for what it was, at least when their life was on the line. Unfortunately, experiencing the COVID pandemic first-hand was a depressing wake-up call.
"How did this even happen, anyway?" David asked to change the subject.
James gave the brief version of events while David finished addressing the remaining spots where serious blood loss would be a concern. Samantha seemed to be listening quietly to the story, but she didn't chime in with any details or ask any questions.
"...but then Samantha flew down right out of the sky like a meteor and smashed into the ground right in front of me. And then she picked up the badger-whatever-thing, and it was still super mad and it tried to bite her and she just looked at it just like, 'Grrr!!' Like she wasn't gonna take any more of its bullshit. And she looked at it, and it died."
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah. I know, right?"
"How?"
"I donno. She looked at it really hard. Like she was really angry at it. And then it just died. Just like that."
"That's... huh. Well, I think we're done here. Can you walk?"
"Yeah, I think so. Just give..." James trailed off and then frowned.
"Is Samantha gonna be okay?" he asked with suddenly nervous concern.
She had been perfectly fine not more than sixty seconds ago, and she hadn't said a single word. She hadn't even made a sound. But now she was shaking again, swaying on her feet as she intently squeezed the dead raccoon, an expression of terrified determination on her face and tears leaking down her cheeks.
"Samantha? What's going on, are you okay?" He rushed back to her side.
Just like last time, when he touched her shoulder Samantha looked up at him and relaxed, returning to herself. She drew a panting breath like she was coming up for air, from somewhere deep and dark, and she looked suddenly confused as to why she was mercilessly strangling a dead animal. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing out a few more tears.
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Once again, he thought he saw that flash of green in her eyes for a moment; a memory of a memory, and then it was gone. Seconds later he was pretty sure he hadn't seen anything at all, and the shift in his perception confused him. He looked more closely at her eyes to see if there was some clue in there for him to find. There wasn't. Because of course there wasn't.
Samantha noticed him staring at her and seemed worried; not uncomfortable about the attention, more like worried that he would discover something terrible. She looked back at the animal, but this time less confused and more distrustful. She glared at it as if it were still alive and threatening her.
"Samantha?" She blinked at hearing her name, but didn't look away from the dead raccoon. She was acting odd. Not just hurt; she wasn't acting like herself, and he was getting increasingly worried about her. Something wasn't right at all. He originally thought that she was overwhelmed by the anxiety of the situation, but this was different. This was... wrong.
"Samantha?"
She didn't respond at all this time. With a quietly ferocious growl, she gritted her teeth and squeezed the raccoon with even more intensity, her muscles straining. David could hear the cracking and popping of tiny bones, while at the same time she whimpered like she was being beaten by an unseen monster.
"SAMANTHA!"
He yelled loud enough to be heard back at the house. He knew he shouldn't have yelled at her, but he was worried.
Her breath caught. She looked at him, surprised and confused. After a moment she dropped the animal and stepped back. She dropped to the ground, hugged her knees, and cried with quiet, exhausted sobs punctuated by shaky breaths. She looked like she had just gone through seven kinds of hell.
David still had no idea what was up. This was clearly about more than just an animal attack; but for the life of him, he had no idea what was wrong. Unfortunately, now was definitely not a good time to ask her about it. She really needed a break.
He told her that she was safe now, that everyone was okay. He told her that her quick actions were why James was still safe and that it was done and she could rest. She nodded without looking up.
A minute or two passed while she came down from the adrenaline. He told James to hurry back to the house to get his injuries tended, but James was just as worried about Samantha as he was. As her breathing slowly calmed and her shaking subsided, they collected everything that they intended to take back to the house. David also took a quick look at the raccoon's body to perhaps find some answers.
Where Samantha had gripped it there were dozens of deep punctures which utterly shredded the animal's insides without noticeably damaging its skin. This had used the same sort of magically sharp blade that had cut the animal's paws off, slicing through soft tissue and bone at the same time without even the slightest friction or tearing. The magical blades had entered the animal right under Samantha's palm, leaving dozens of tiny holes as if it had been stabbed to death with a pencil before having its innards puréed.
He tried to imagine what sort of weapon or capability Samantha had used to protect James. Whatever it was, it would be invaluable in defending themselves later on if she could teach it to the rest of them. She was in no condition to talk about it right now, though. It could wait.
"I think I should go lie down," she finally said, her voice quiet and unsteady. They were the first words she had actually spoken. He found himself relieved that she was finally talking again. It was a milestone he didn't realize he had even been worrying about.
"Can you please help me?" she added in a whisper. She had to force that last bit out like she was reluctant to admit she wasn't invincible. He again found himself feeling relieved, this time because he had her permission to take care of her instead of having to let her do everything herself. It was exactly what he needed to hear.
"Don't worry," he said with a smile, "I've got you."
And with that, he picked her up.
She was by far the lightest person in their group. In fact, she didn't even change position when he lifted her up. She stayed curled up in a ball as he carried her against his chest, continuing to hug her knees with her eyes closed, her head now resting against his shoulder.
Her breathing still came unsteadily, like she was fighting tears with each breath. A few times she whimpered quietly, or whispered something to herself. At one point, David was able to make out the words she whispered so quietly.
"It's the eyes. Always those eyes," she said.
"What eyes?" David wasn't sure whether she was talking to him or just thinking out loud.
"I can't make them go away. I try, but they won't go away," she replied a bit louder but still in a whisper. "Every time I close my eyes, it looks at me. They glowed. Like dark fire and blood. Destruction in the shadows. They hate me."
He wasn't sure whether she meant that literally, but he sure hoped not.
"It'll get better," he said, "let's just get through this."
"It's all so broken. The sounds. The air. The sky. The world. It doesn't feel right. All broken and changing."
"Don't worry. I'll keep you safe."
For a while they walked in silence. A sort of pattern had developed since the fight that repeated over and over several times on their way to the house: She'd start out relaxed and lucid, then he could feel her slowly start to tense up, to shake slightly, grit her teeth, and pull herself tighter into a ball, entirely unresponsive. Then just at the point where he felt like he should say something, all at once it would end with the weirdest sensation. Each time, he would feel a brisk rush all over that made his hair stand on end, which seemed to somehow come from her. And at that moment, she'd come back alive as if resurfacing from underwater.
The cycle slowed a bit each time around, with her spending more time lucid and less time unresponsive. He would have found that fact comforting were it not for how worrisome the whole situation was to begin with. It seemed like it was taking a toll on her.
"David?"
She didn't look up, instead just squeezed his arm before continuing.
"David, I'm so scared."
She buried her face in his neck, her tears now dripping down his skin into his shirt. He didn't know what else to say. He said he would keep her safe. But honestly, could he? Given all the things he had just seen her do, did she even need his help?
He couldn't help but compare her performance with the raccoon against his own actions the night before with the mountain lion. The difference was stark and a little disheartening. He had managed to barely keep himself alive by some inexplicable miracle plus an abundance of dumb luck. Samantha, by contrast, had thrown herself into the thick of it to protect someone she cared about. She had been everything David wanted to be; he wished he could do half of what she had demonstrated. He had merely managed to escape, while Samantha had somehow turned an impossible situation into one where she made the important things happen, physics be damned.
As they got closer to the house, James looked back at where they came from, now able to see the obstacle course Samantha had sprinted through.
"How did you get over that wall?" he marveled.
Samantha didn't answer. The pattern of her breathing suggested she was consciously trying to keep herself calm and stave off the next attack. So he answered instead, hoping that overhearing the discussion would help her mindset and perhaps reduce whatever was afflicting her.
"You should have seen it, James. The moment she heard your voice she absolutely tore across the field towards where you were. She ran a straight line from that building there to the wall by that tree. She went over, under, and through everything in between without even slowing down."
"Seriously? But what about the blackberry bushes?"
"She jumped over them."
"Jumped over them?"
It was a good twenty foot horizontal leap and higher than Samantha was tall.
"It was exactly as cool as it sounds."
David was pretty sure Samantha was listening now. Her breathing had gotten a lot quieter and she was gripping his arm a little more tightly. He didn't stop bragging about her, though.
"But still, how'd she get over the wall?" asked James.
"Like an olympic gymnast with wings."
"Huh?"
"She ran straight up the wall, then jumped to that tree branch, and then backflipped over the wall. That's the last I saw of her till I caught up with you."
"Daaamn...."
"Exactly."
"You know, she got there just in time to stop it from biting off my eyeball."
"I think..." David started, and then slowed down to think carefully about his words. "I think you all don't realize how lucky we are that she's with us. Did you know that she joined us just by chance? We met her yesterday on our way to find Evelyn."
"Seriously? I thought she was staying here already."
"Nah, she was living next door taking care of the horses and agreed to come with us."
"Wow. Things could have gone a lot worse, then."
"Exactly. There's a whole lot of stuff that would not have been okay if Samantha hadn't been there."
"Story of my life," James muttered.
As they got closer to the house, Samantha wiped her tear-soaked face on his shirt. He still didn't know what she needed right now, but overhearing the people you care about talk with each other about how much they appreciate you? That's something everyone could use a little more of.
----------------------------------------
"Evie!" David yelled as he came within earshot of the house, "Can you come help us, please?" He was a firm believer that you were never in too much of a rush to be polite.
"I'm working on something," she called from inside. "Give me just a minute to finish up here first."
David stood corrected. Apparently he shouldn't always be polite.
"No!" he yelled back.
"What?"
"No waiting."
"Seriously?"
"Now, Evelyn. Right now!"
The sound of swearing, scooting chairs and rustling paper came from inside. She continued to grumble the whole way out, but once she actually saw them, everything changed.
"I swear David, learn some damn patience. I wouldn't have asked you to wait if I wasn't already doing something imp-- Oh my god. Ohmygod ohmygod-- James! What happened to your-- oh no, your arm too?" The more injuries she saw, the faster she started talking, "Look at your other hand! How did this... Oh god, your legs! Are you okay?"
"Um... No?" James looked positively dumbfounded at the question. "No. Not really. Also, it got my back too. And a few bites on my stomach. And it also bit a piece of my ear off."
"David! Did you see what happened to James?"
There's no such thing as a stupid question -- Except, as it turns out, never mind. Apparently there is.
Evelyn turned to lob some more dumb questions at him, and gasped when she finally noticed that he was carrying someone in his arms. "David! That's Samantha! She's hurt!"
"Yeah. I'm aware."
"DAAAAD!!" Evelyn was apparently not a believer in David's politeness principle. "Get your ass out here! And bring the reserves with you."
After last night, they had decided to keep about a third of the healing crystals fully charged as "reserves" in case of a medical emergency. It didn't amount to a lot of long-term healing, but if used carefully it was enough to stabilize about four people with injuries that would otherwise be fatal.
She put her hand on Samantha, but David stopped her.
"James first," he said, quietly but firmly.
"Samantha though," James objected, "she's not okay."
"James first," Samantha confirmed in a hoarse whisper. "I'll be fine."
Perhaps it was a lie. But then again, even lies have power.