8) Healer, feed yourself

How did the coyote know… Okay, it must have followed my scent to find me, and I could see something that much like a dog figuring out that if I helped it I might be able to fix its pup.

After hesitating for a moment, I opened the back door. The coyote danced aside and nearly knocked me over by pressing up against my leg as I made my way down the steps. Luckily I had both of my hands on the railing since I was feeling that woozy, but still, “Careful, even if the fall didn’t hurt me, landing on your pup won’t do it much good.”

The mother whined as I sat down on the bottom step, unsure how I was going to get back up again, and pressed my hand on top of the coyote pup.

Its body was cold to the touch, but after a moment I could feel its chest rise slightly. "Still alive then?"

I sighed. It would have been so much simpler if it was dead. My tank was dry… but what did I have to lose? Beatrice would mourn me, but it wasn't like she wouldn't have to face losing me someday soon enough anyways.

Pressing my hand against the little blood coated furball’s head, I slowly began to pull from all around me as I forced a trickle of warmth down my arm to the palm of my hand and into the pup.

No prompt this time, I guess I had done this enough the boxes didn’t feel the need to ask.

I kept it up until I felt the little thing take in a deeper breath and shudder just before I passed out.

It was more of the smell of coyote spit that woke me up than the feeling of dampness as the mom licked my face. After weakly pushing her away from me, I begin to slowly crawl my way up the three steps to my back door. After laying on the back porch for a while I noticed the way the sunlight seemed to visibly inch along the cement in front of me over the next few hours.

The smell of my steak beginning to burn roused me enough to claw the back screen door open and make my way on my hands and knees to flop down leaning up against the stove.

Reaching up, I clawed at the dial for the oven either to turn it off or all the way up on high. I wasn’t sure which one as my mind wasn’t working well enough to figure out which way it was supposed to turn the knob from this angle.

Keeling over onto my side, I pried at the cupboard door under the sink until I got it open and then worked on popping open a tiny can of cheap store brand pop I kept under there for when my blood sugar crashed.

Cream soda, so as to not tempt me to raid it just for something that tasted good.

The words, “Bleagh, warm soda,” came out as something like “Bla, wyr sod.” as I ended up pouring about half of it over my face while trying to get it in my mouth.

The pup, the one that wasn’t hurt, began to lick the soda up from the floor in front of my face. Oh good, it got in somehow. Great.

Something cold got pressed up against my stomach, and the mother coyote curled up in front of me with what had to be the hurt pup between us.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I didn’t so much pass out again as fell asleep. I had never known that the kitchen floor was so comfy.

The healthy pup's effort to lick the sticky dried up soda off my face woke me up late in the afternoon. I had a headache and another pup was still pressed up against my stomach. Digging out an old but clean dish rag from under the sink, I wrapped the still bloody fur ball in it for warmth and slowly began the process of getting to my feet.

Pulling myself up with one hand on top of the cupboard door, I got one foot under me. With both hands on the edge of the sink, I pushed up with my foot until I could get my other leg under me, then I could heave myself up on wobbly legs until I was bent over the sink trying to catch my breath while the darkness in my vision slowly faded away.

Running some water into the glass tumbler already sitting in the sink, I slowly sipped at it until I felt ready to check on my steak.

Something cold poked me in the side, but at least the tumbler didn’t break as I let out a soft “Ah…” and it dropped to rattle around in the basin before I realized it was the mother coyote with a damp muzzle.

Where did it find something to drink…?

Ew. I guess I should put down a bowl of water before she goes back to the bathroom.

At least I had kept up with scrubbing in there with a toilet brush every morning. You got to stay ahead of things like that.

I filled a mostly clean dish in the sink with water and set it down for the pup to drink, only spilling about half of it out on the floor. After a moment I was even able to straighten up again.

The steak wasn’t too badly burned, but it was dry as hell and the vegetables had dried up into little hard charred lumps. As the coyote pressed its head past my legs to check out the smell inside the oven I considered just letting her have it. But not just no, hell no. That steak was expensive, even on near expiration date sale prices. “We can share, but I’m getting at least half.”

The baking pan was only a smidge too warm to get out bare handed from the cooling stove, so I carried it to the table with an oven mitt, gave the coyote a look, and pushed it to the middle of the table before going for a knife and fork.

One slightly charred piece of potato for me, one for her, one overcooked slice of steak for me, one for… the healthy pup as the mother coyote dropped it in front of her kid. It jumped on it and carried it off to a corner of the kitchen. Its back turned to us as it gnawed on the dried out meat with an occasional distrusting glance at me and its mother.

Despite divvying up the meat between the two of us in small chunks to make it last, I still nearly choked on the bits I was eagerly stuffing the bits of meat down my throat with the least amount of chewing as possible. All without the light dab of ketchup I would normally dip the meat into.

Yeah, ketchup on steak? Blah, blah, blah. I don’t ruin the flavor of steak with ketchup, what I do is flavor the ketchup with steak. Which works better when there's some juice left in the meat.

Besides, it’s not like it was a great cut of meat.

With something in my stomach, I was able to move around enough to fill and drink down a glass and a half of water and smear some peanut butter on the last real slice of bread with two big spoonfuls of blackberry preserves. The thin heel of the loaf that I would normally rip up and toss out for the birds got some peanut butter scooped onto it for the mother coyote.

After I slowly, deliberately finished dessert, I set the baking pan down to keep the mom distracted. Tucking the dishrag in around the injured pup, I picked it up to rest in my lap as I sat down at the table again.

[ Do you wish to channel Life into Spirit Coyote? ]

[ Yes / No ]

“… Spirit what?”

I felt at the pup, the slashes on its face and neck were still open, but just oozy rather than bleeding. And it looked like its left eye was a goner, but otherwise, it looked like a normal animal. So, Spirit what?

Spirit... still injured I guess. The mother had ignored the baking dish and even ignored its other pup who had started licking at the baked-on grease. Instead, she was just looking at me as her body began to tense up before she whined again. "Fine, relax already. I'm doing it."

I placed my hand over the cuts on its face. “Yes, do the channel thing.” Then I slowed down the flow of warmth out of my hand so I didn’t overdo it again.

As I felt my hunger grow again, I could see a white light within the pup’s cuts before they closed up and turned into reddish scar tissue. Another flare of light glowed from between the pup’s swollen eyelid before it seemed to collapse into a now hollow cavity as the coyote began to stir in my hands.

It turned its head up to look at me with its one blue eye, then relaxed before twisting its head around to weakly lick at my hand.

Cute.

Dipping my finger into my half full tumbler of water, I began letting it drip off my fingertip and into its mouth until it stirred itself enough to begin licking at the water and I could hold the glass to its muzzle.

At my feet, the mother pushed her other pup away with her nose and pulled the baking pan close to her with her paw before she began trying to lick it free of burned on fat and spices.