As Tallulah does so, the two inside of the cage stand up. Micah did mention they were alive, but he conveniently didn't add that one of the two had clearly been pulled off the horse they stole by what distinctly looks like dogs. Tallulah draws her lips back at the sight of the large gauze wrapping around the left leg of one of the pair. They draw closer to the door but don't touch it–already aware of the electrical current on the door.
The first is a young elf-kin in the early stages of his life who seems to have gotten the worst of the pair in the encounter. His leg is bandaged up–the bandages are nearly soaked through already with blood–and he limps quite severely when he moves. Holding him up and helping him to walk is a woman who appears quite a bit older than he is–though when Tallulah recognizes her, she also knows the woman is much older than Tallulah is as well. The woman has a very plain look, and if one were unkind, they would call her unattractive, with thinned brown hair and eyes a bit too small for her face, with a nose just a hair too long and thin. Tallulah recognizes her as one of the couple broonies of the village. Her lips turn down at the corners, her frown deepening as empathy for them bubbles through some of the emotional hardenings she'd been working on the past week or so.
"Lewis and Etta… what happened?"
Lewis starts to talk but immediately starts coughing. He continues for a good ten seconds, long enough that Etta starts trying to help calm him down by patting his back.
"Do you both have any water?"
Etta looks at Tallulah with baleful eyes full of betrayal. Tallulah takes a half step back, unexpecting such a hateful look from someone she would have considered a friendly acquaintance only a week ago. She spits at Tallulah, which sizzles on the bars in front of them both. She holds her stare for another few seconds before finally electing to snap at Tallulah verbally in faerie-speech.
"What do you care, traitor?"
Tallulah pauses, hesitating only momentarily before speaking in their shared tongue.
"A traitor? What do you even mean? Where have you heard this from? I've chosen so that we can get you all back to the village through a seam!"
A sarcastic laugh escapes Lewis' dry lips. His soft brown hair is trimmed close to his head, though it's grown out a little since they were back at the village. He generally helps the game warden with the animals around the village, so it makes sense to Tallulah that he probably thought he could steal a horse and get away. Beads of sweat drip from Lewis' face.
"Right."
Tallulah furrows her brow; how can she defend herself if they won't tell her where this rumor started? She looks back and forth between the two, trying to convince them through her body language alone that she wants to help them. It doesn't work on Lewis, but unexpectedly, Etta softens her tone slightly when she responds.
"They didn't give us any water; we could use some and some fresh bandages, too."
Tallulah turns around and looks at Bragi, who is relaxing behind her in one of the chairs. She clears her throat before talking to him in ordinary speech, which he will understand.
"Could we get some fresh bandages and some water for them? It's not much to ask for."
"It's your decision. I was ordered to listen to what you decree about them."
"Okay, they need a few water bottles and fresh gauze." Tallulah turns back to the cell but pauses and looks back at Bragi before adding, "Now, if you please."
Bragi looked indifferent about the whole proceedings until Tallulah told him to do something now. He exhaled a loud stream of air from his nose and reached up to his mouth with a small walkie-talkie radio before irritatedly blurting into it.
"Bragi here. Bring four bottles of water and two fresh boxes of gauze." He releases the button pointedly before looking back at Tallulah. "Anything else, Your Highness?"
"No, that should do it for now." Choosing not to rise to Bragi's bait, she instead turns back to the two faeries locked in the prison cell in front of her. She returns to speaking with them in the fey's tongue.
"They'll bring you some water and fresh bandages. Can you answer my questions, please? I don't understand where this hate is coming from."
Etta helps Lewis back down to sit on the ground with his back against the plain, thick, solid concrete wall of the cell's rear. Tallulah notes he looks feverish, probably making Etta's anxiety go into overdrive as a broonie.
Etta is what humans would call a professional homemaker–which is generally the same for most broonies who find themselves as Wilder. Broonies aid typically one person or family, willingly and unwaveringly, until their agreed-upon service time passes. If Tallulah remembers correctly, Lewis' family–who just lost their patriarch when the vampires attacked them in the glade–employs Etta, so it makes sense that they would have fled together.
Etta walks back to the front of the cage but keeps herself free of the shocking door while she speaks in fey to Tallulah.
"You dress in their clothes, sleep in their home, and tell us nothing."
"Now, that last part is just not true; I come out every night and talk with anyone who wants to and answer questions or see about getting them what they are asking for. You're not being fair."
"Aye, but that doesn't explain why they're saying they're going to 'sort us into juice boxes' once given the go-ahead by their liege lord."
Tallulah raises her eyebrows a little in confusion.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I heard it with my own ears, so don't try to deny it." Lewis pipes up from the back wall, also speaking the language faeries do.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"I'm not denying that you heard what you heard, Lewis; this is just the first I've heard of it. I'm going to go ahead and assume that's why you chose to steal a horse from the nearby barn and try to get away?"
"You're more clever than you look, Tallulah."
"There's no need for that. Come on, I want to help you."
"And somehow you're also stupider than you look, simultaneously." Lewis sarcastically continues at her.
Tallulah exhales, realizing she's not getting anywhere with them. She steps back, pinching her nose with her fingers and closing her eyes in frustration. Bragi chuckles a few feet behind her, then murmurs at her.
"Trouble with the family, eh?"
"No, they're just… they're upset. I'll sort it out. I just need some time."
A little beep on Bragi's walkie-talkie radio causes him to push off his chair with an exaggerated grunt and walk over to unlock the secure door. He doesn't let whoever is on the other side inside but instead comes back with precisely four bottles of water and two boxes of gauze you can get at any pharmacy. He starts to heft the large gallon water bottles into Tallulah's arms without her permission. As she's struggling to balance them, he casually sets the two tiny gauze boxes on top of the bottles like he's utterly oblivious to her struggle.
Once his hands are free, Bragi walks over to the cell and growls at Etta with his unbelievably deep voice.
"Back up to the wall. She's going to bring you some items inside. Don't move from the wall, or I'll make you wish you'd listened the first time."
Etta turns her instantly re-ignited baleful gaze onto Bragi, but she complies and moves back until she's standing on the far side of the cell next to Lewis, with her back to the wall. Bragi, satisfied, unlocks the cell and unelectrifies its door with a keypad on the wall, then walks back over to open the door and gestures Tallulah in. She struggles with the oversized bottles but gets inside anyway. She carefully set the bottles in the center before picking up the gauze boxes from where they fell in the cell while she struggled with the bottles. She offers them to Etta, who doesn't take them from her until Tallulah insistently holds them at her for another few seconds.
"Alright, come on back out." Bragi gruffly says.
Tallulah looks at Etta and Lewis once more before backing out of the cell and stepping back to allow Bragi to close the cell once again. He walks right back to the keypad, setting the door to its electrified state and engaging the locking mechanism for that cell once again. Once Bragi sits back in the metal chair he'd chosen before, Tallulah returns to the cell and speaks in faerie.
"Assuming you heard someone saying it truly and not just being bad-tempered or trying to scare you, why didn't you come to me? I thought I proved true to the village when I tried to stop the vampires from attacking everyone the night we found ourselves there."
"Aye, you did stand up to them, you're right, but then you got quickly lured in by them and forgot the rest of us. Why would we think that you'd even believe us?"
"Come on, be fair, Etta. I've been out there every single night." Tallulah sighs loudly.
"Aye, and every night, you're minimizing people's concerns and anger about our situation."
"What can I do to prove to you that I care and made a deal with them for all of you?"
"What's it matter? They're going to kill the two of us anyway because we tried to escape their mountain prison retreat."
"No, they aren't; they sent me here to decide what kind of punishment you should both have. They're having to put down the horse, you know?"
Etta slowly moves while talking to start re-dressing Lewis' leg wound. Tallulah watches the unwrapping and grimaces a hair at the wound once it's uncovered.
"He needs more than gauze."
"Aye, he does. I don't think they will grant us some medical treatment or even Old Keelia's healing ointments and charms."
"Stop saying that. I just told you that I'm here to determine what to do." Tallulah finally snaps back at Etta.
Etta tightly wraps up Lewis' leg once again, not completely stopping the blood flow but doing what she can with the tools at her disposal. Tallulah folds her hands loosely over her abdomen while watching Etta work.
"Okay, Tallulah. It doesn't matter what we should have done; we already did what we did. Now we need to know what's going to come of it."
"I just want you to understand that we're trying to find a fey in a nearby city who either has access to the seams or knows of a Deore so we can get you all back home. I'm sure the horse is expensive, but they're beyond wealthy, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal."
"So you're saying you won't have us punished at all?"
"I didn't say that; you did cause the death of their property–which you tried to steal after they'd been feeding and housing us on their property."
"We feed and house our ducks in the village too, you know; that doesn't mean when it's time to make meat of them that we don't do it."
"The ducks don't try to take off with the village reafan because they overheard a tale about stuffed duck dinners."
"You see? Sarcastic and don't believe us none. This is why we didn't come to you, Tallulah."
Tallulah sighs, irritation starting to grow once again. She steps back a couple of feet, turning away from Etta as she works on bandaging and watering Lewis first before taking care of a couple of scratches on herself.
Bragi chuckles at her again, which draws Tallulah's irritated gaze.
"Whoa, whoa, don't shoot." Bragi laughs at his own joke, then adjusts how he's loosely holding his assault rifle pointed towards the ground, which just makes Tallulah shake her head and grimace.
"Do you know how much that horse was worth?"
"Sure, but it's not the worth of the horse they'll care about–hell, not even its future expected winnings or studding fees."
"What is it, then?" Tallulah inquires carefully of Bragi as if she doesn't want to know the answer or expects it to be worse than it is.
"It's about how you choose to handle it with your people. Are you light-handed, going to give them a little slap on the wrist and insult the hospitality of the liege lord? Or will you be heavy-handed and upset the poor village folk?"
Tallulah finger-brushes a hand through her silvery gray hair, feeling as though she can feel stress wrinkles on her forehead.
"Mind if I take a seat?"
"Sure thing, little Miss."
She ignores the cutesy term he seems to think himself so clever for using and instead walks over to sit in one of the metal chairs lining the wall. She gives him a few chairs of space and then leans her head back to rest against the concrete. She closes her eyes and then concentrates, letting the moon's weight fill her with energy.
She reaches out with her aura towards Etta and Lewis, enveloping them in the cool feeling of a fall night–crisp and numbing–helping their wounds, which are likely still throbbing, to be soothed and the pain lessened. That's all she can do for their wounds at this stage in her life. When she was younger and full of spring and renewal, she could mend broken bones and close wounds, but that time of her life was long gone.
Tallulah opens her eyes, looking back at the cage where her village's two fey are being held. She doesn't blame them if they genuinely think they're about to all get eaten like the feasts at Beltaine and Samhain. That doesn't make her job any easier, and with Bragi's explanation, she now understands why she's been tasked to do it. It's a test of loyalty, and Tallulah doesn't care for it. The longer she sits and thinks about it, the more irritated she gets with the liege lords' game. Spitefully, she stands from the seat and walks back to the cage, looking at the two inside as they rest. She speaks to them in faerie again.
"I did what I could for you; I hope you feel better."