The young man was startled, "Wha-?" He got out in a coarse, dry voice before coughing in short, violent bursts.

"And he can talk! So not a vegetable after all." Said the woman.

He tilted his head upwards to look at the source of the voice, but he could only roll his eyes back and up into his skull after his feeble neck gave in.

"Well, shit. Seems like I spoke too soon." Her tone suggested indifference. She called out to someone a fair distance behind her. "Two marks if he croaked before the week was out, was it?"

An inaudible grumble came as a reply.

"I said picking up strays was a bad idea. I said it. Not like we got food to spare anyways," she said cheerfully. "besides, we don’t know what kind of nasty diseases those whatchu-callits have. Bring them home, and before you know it, we wake up dead!" The woman seemed to appreciate her humor more than her companion, as he didn’t hear anyone else join her wheezing laughter.

After his coughing fit, the young man tried to speak again. He decided that he wouldn’t have much more success without some water to soothe the sandpaper that was his throat. He wasn’t necessarily thirsty. In fact, he wasn’t necessarily anything other than entirely beat-up.

"W…ater, please..." He managed to get out.

The woman’s laughter stopped abruptly. Silence. Then came a louder, boisterous laugh from outside the tent. The loser of the bet just had their fortune change at the expense of the older woman.

"Gods dammit," said the dejected woman before leaving.

A moment later, he heard hurried footsteps squelching in the mud.

"Good morning," said a cheerful, feminine voice. "Glad to see you’re awake. I’m Ann."

The thirty-something woman’s eyes were a soft, soothing blue. She was pretty in a plain, unassuming way. She had fair, blonde hair tied in twin braids that dangled over her shoulders and rested on his chest as she leaned over his cot. She wore what appeared to be a simple beige tunic and a matching long, flowing dress that evoked an image of a motherly figure or a nurse. A thin belt around her waist accentuated her voluptuous figure. She had a copper-colored pendant hanging from a chain around her neck in the shape of an open palm, fingers pointing downward.

"Water." He croaked.

The woman turned to the table adjacent to the cot and retrieved a vial of purple, incandescent liquid. She hummed an unknown tune while removing the stopper from the vial.

"Not yet, my heart. Let’s try a sip of this first, and we can go from there," the woman replied.

The young man was in no position to object. Anything would be better than nothing. He sipped slowly as she gently pressed the mouth of the glass container to his cracked lips.

The concoction was vile. As the first drop rolled along his dry tongue, he tasted what he could only think of as warm, spoiled milk. It had a thick, gelatinous texture, which didn’t ease consumption at all.

He blinked and smacked his lips together. The dryness was gone, and he could swallow without his body protesting. His throat felt progressively hotter as his heart began to pound in his chest. It was as if the rotten milk he had swallowed had been mixed with molten sugar. At the same rate at which the discomfort came, it passed. He felt slightly better overall, though still weak. He tried speaking once more.

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"Thanks," he muttered. "Thank you," he repeated confidently after establishing his damaged throat wouldn’t reprimand him.

"It’s my pleasure, darling. I couldn’t administer the elixir while you were unconscious. Considering the fact that you might’ve been dead in the mind, it wouldn’t do to waste, would it?" The woman chuckled, eyes smiling all the while.

"I have questions."

"Later," she said, not unkindly. "You’ve been out for two days since Jor and her squad found you on the beach. How about we rest a little bit more, hey? It’s not often that I can do what I was hired to do. You know how it is."

She shushed any further protests. He accepted her doting. The healer hovered around for a while, seeming to be more concerned about the appearance of being busy than actually doing anything. Still humming that merry, alien tune, she asked how he was feeling and explained that he was indeed suffering from malnutrition. It would be a while before he would be healthy.

His thoughts wandered. He tried to reconcile the events that had led to his current predicament, but he kept drawing blanks. It was as if he knew, he was sure, but he couldn’t recall anything before waking up on the beach in dull agony. From his cot, he could hear the sounds of a camp of some sort. The conversations of passersby and the sound of a hammer rhythmically striking something metallic.

Upon closer observation, he noticed his cot was quite crudely made. The floor was packed earth with straw haphazardly scattered around. His carer's clothes appeared to be hand-sewn and made of coarse material. He had the impression of rough burlap or hemp.

Well, that’s odd.

He mused to himself.

When evening approached, she deemed him able to drink and wordlessly offered him a tanned leather waterskin. Surprisingly, his strength had begun to return, and he sat upright to drink water for the first time in who knows how long. Bliss. The liquid was tepid and slightly brackish, but he swallowed it nonetheless. His thoughts were still muddy, but he decided water shouldn’t be this damn good. Perhaps he was pretty thirsty after all.

He nodded in thanks, and the Healer reciprocated with a wink and sauntered back over to the table to rearrange the implements for the umpteenth time. She glanced back at him while leaning over her ‘work’ area, and her lips twitched into a subtle smile.

"You’ll be right as rain in no time," she commented teasingly as she noticed his gaze struggle to follow her.

Embarrassed at being caught out, the young man smothered the thought with a question.

"Miss, are you the doctor here?"

Are you the doctor?!

He cringed internally at his phrasing.

"What was that, sweetie?" She replied without missing a beat. Her significant posterior was still staring him in the face.

"Field-doctor. I mean the medic or healer in this camp?"

"Well, it depends on what you mean by Healer. If you’re asking whether I can work healing into a young man’s tired body, then yes, I’d say I’m a healer of sorts. And please, call me Ann."

He decided the woman was deliberately trying, and succeeding, to make him squirm.

"Right, sorry. Ann." He paused. "I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or anything, but shouldn’t I be eating something? You know, seeing as I feel and look like skin and bones."

She chuckled.

"We’ll see how well the elixir does you. "It's not the highest grade of recovery draughts so you’d most likely be unable to keep anything down until it's run its course."

"Okay, I understand. Thanks."

She glanced once more at him.

"It’s my pleasure, darling. Now, do try to get some rest. I’ll be happy to answer your questions when we get you feeling a bit better, alright?" She said in a sing-song tone before returning to her task, that no doubt required intense concentration.

As darkness settled fully, an almost surreal silence stood vigil over the camp. Gone were the banter and the sounds of activity. The most disturbing thing was not the silence but the lack of the usual miscellaneous sounds that came with nightfall. Something else bothered the young man. He tried to recall what it was but kept running into a wall in his mind.

"Ann?"

"Hmm?" Ann replied, back towards the cot, while fiddling with nondescript implements.

"Why haven’t you asked my name?"

She fumbled, and her humming skipped a beat. She turned to face him.

"Of course, I should’ve spoken sooner."

Strangely, the healer appeared to blush.

"Let’s keep this between us, as the others don’t know. I was sent here for a very specific reason." A pause.

"I was sent here by _________ to meet you."

The young man frowned making sense of what the woman said. He thought his hearing must’ve been impaired. A few heartbeats passed, and her eyes became glossy with tears of happiness. She seemed giddy with joy, yet her tone remained calm and did not express the emotion her eyes conveyed.

"I already know your name, Harbinger."

The world seemed to tremble at those words.