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Description
Hauling his broken body over to the protection of the tree was no easy task, as he was at least half a foot taller than me, and many times heavier.  After that, I struggled solidly through nine days and nine nights to entrap the frail life within his body and fan it into flame once more. I forebore sleep and most food, taking only enough to sustain me as I poured my energy into the dying dragon, reforming organs, knitting bones, sealing flesh, and subverting fever.

On the first day, the greatest task before me was to clean his wounds sufficiently for healing, so that he would not take any gangrene or other ill effects.  I set at him with rags, warm water, and a distilled moonshine.  Gently peeling  away the bits of cloth and hardened leather armor that clung to his bleeding flesh, I then stripped him entirely of boots, weapons, armor, and clothing. A casual part of my brain noted that his legs were digitigrade, and he was possessed of draconic feet with three splayed toes ending in wicked claws.  His muscular body lacked scalation completely, and the only other apparent indicator of his draconity were his taloned fingers; long and silvery-white, and caked underneath with strips of flesh.  I had never been called on to heal a shape-shifting dragon before, and had no knowledge of their inner workings.  Seeing the similarities between his shape and my own except for sex, I hoped that the anatomy would be cooperative. Upon removing the first layer of grime, I was able to clean his abdominal area enough to carefully reinstate the spilled intestines with a bit of empathic prodding.  Loosely I closed the wound; it would need more attention before long.  There was a rasping, gurgling hitch to his breathing that worried me over the possibility of a punctured lung, but I would have to see to that later. His broken and badly lacerated left leg I washed thoroughly with moonshine and hot water and temporarily set in a crude splint that I’d fashioned from a few limbs that the oak had granted me and tethered it with strips of linen.

With those most serious injuries attended to, I washed his face in order to ascertain the seriousness of his head injuries.  His whole head was a mess, and I scrubbed vigorously at his hair and scalp, trying to determine the origin of so much blood.  The water in my bucket had dyed a deep red before I finally realized that his hair was the very same hue as the gore I was trying to remove.  Shock grabbed me, and my numbed fingers dropped the rag, staring.  He fit every description I’d ever heard; the hollow cheekbones, the long, aquiline nose, the sardonically arched eyebrows…

I whispered vehement denials but the force of recognition was too strong, and I knew, whether I liked it or not, exactly who he was.  Lying helpless in my care was the God of Carnage; the bloody drake Rafael, feared by all.  His power, bloodlust, and cruelty were legend.  Even among his own warlike people he carried names like “Kinslayer.”  I was working to save the life of a murderer, with my intuition twinging like a needle in my side the whole time.  Finally my practical mind took over and shook off my disconcertment like a dog shaking off water.  This man was a patient, like any other, and in need of my help, no matter what his past.

Fortunately he had only one serious cut on his head, and it was a diagonal slash across his forehead, deep enough to show flashes of bone beneath.  Painful and messy, but not incredibly dangerous, it also accounted for the sheer amount of blood on his face.  I saved my energy for the more life-threatening hurts, as his entire body seemed to be covered with similar gashes.  After seeing his own talons up close it came as no surprise.

Most of the second day had been spent ensuring that he would not drown in his own blood before I could mend the hole.  He had indeed suffered a punctured lung, but it had proven fairly simple to remedy with the right application of energies and insight, though time-consuming.  It was not until the third day that I had any certainty at all that he would survive and that my efforts would not be in vain.  His breathing had evened out, and the progress on his intestines was going well, but he had lost serious amounts of blood.  There was nothing I could do about that loss except feed him my own strength and hope, as much as it wore on my own reserves.  There were times, in those brief moments when I allowed myself to pause for a rest, when my hand would somehow find its way into that thick tangle of crimson hair, and once again I had to shake away the unnerving notion of saving a killer.

By the fourth day I had reset the leg and covered the exposed flesh of his leg with poultices to encourage regrowth of the skin.  The break was a compound fracture and as such I had to be very careful of the surrounding veins and arteries.  In order to be able to do the kind of healing I needed to on that leg, I had to be very precise in piecing the bones back together.  A few times the generation of completely new fragments of bone was needed to smooth things out.  Sometimes I thought my eyes would permanently cross from the strained concentration required to achieve such a thing.

By the fifth day I knitted the bones of his mangled leg back together such that he would again be able to stand on it. Much of the lost skin had regrown, and I worried less about blood loss in that area.  If he had been less muscular, my job might have been easier, given the circulation problems I encountered, but he probably would have died before I reached him in the first place. After a healer spends a great deal of time and personal energy saving the life of any patient, an irreversible bond begins to form, and regardless of that patient’s waking nature we can’t help but become attached. That lull can be dangerous.

During the sixth and seventh days, I spent most of my time ensuring that his injured intestines were whole and fitting in the correct body cavity spaces along with some maintenance work on the organs in that area, as a few had tried to fail. I had a few circulation problems, because of the sheer density of his muscles and his body’s own incredible durability.  Whatever part of my mind that wasn’t fully concentrated on forcing his recalcitrant systems to cooperate found sympathy for this hardy individual, and cheered him on from the sidelines.  His coma was still so deep that I worried that my efforts would go to waste regardless of whether he was ever fully healed.
On the eighth day his intestines were fully functional again. By this point I had also closed many of the deeper cuts scattered all over his person. Just as a depressive is most likely to attempt suicide during the recovery, so my ward was at a very fragile point in his ordeal.  If the very last of his strength gave out, there would be little I could do to keep his heart pumping blood and his lungs working.  All of my bones complained and my fingers were so stiff I could barely bend them, but my tired mind battled on.

The ninth day came, and I spent it sealing the last of his injuries and pouring strength into him.  He was still extremely weak, and his great heart did not beat as strongly as it should, but I could finally rest. After wrapping him in a woolen blanket, I simply lay down beside him on the bloodstained ground and passed out.

Morning rousted me, and I checked to be sure that my patient had not taken any worrisome turns while I’d slept.  He had not, and I felt confident enough for the first time to wander down the hill for a time and rinse the blood, sweat, and grime from my aching body.  Washing my hair was a blessing in itself.  I longed to tarry in the cool stream, but I did not feel it wise to leave my charge unsupervised.  The great tree could not do much more than shelter him on its own, and so, wearily, I made my way back.

At his side once more, I ate a strip of dried venison and some cheese that I had wrapped in leaves and stowed under the roots in the cool earth.  I looked him over and felt pleased at my labors, though a shadow passed over me at the thought of what to do with him when he awoke, and I tried to ignore the part of me that insisted that he probably never would.

Late in the afternoon, as I sat with my back to him, combing out my hair, I felt the weight of eyes on me.  I turned carefully, and came into contact with the most forceful glare I have ever encountered.  He was too weak to do more than tilt his head in order to see me, but there was a furious strength behind those fierce eyes.  They were brilliant blue fire, and flickered with resentment; the pupils were thin slits, like a venomous snake.  He opened his mouth to speak, and a croak issued forth instead.  Coughing, his irises flared red-rimmed yellow, and he attempted a second time.

“Why have you done this?” he demanded, and, even weak as he was, his voice was so deep I felt it in my sternum.

“Whatever do you mean, my lord?” I ventured, careful to keep my own voice neutral.

“Your people know me. Why have you saved my life?” His words dripped scorn.  I felt briefly as though my skin should blister under the heat of that glare and remembered all of the injured animals I had worked with in the past. That route was best; gentle, calm, and absolutely firm.

“You were in need of assistance, were you not?”

“Why is it that you assist me, and not my nemesis?”

“She was beyond assistance, lord.”

He panted for a moment, considering.  To me it was obvious that talk was a tremendous strain on his reserves, and even more obvious that he hated me for knowing it.

“Be calm.  No harm will come to you in my care,” I assured him.  His eyes narrowed to slits, but he said nothing.  I could feel the rage flowing off of him in waves.  He was easy to read; strong as he normally was, he hated being helpless, hated being so vulnerable to me. “You need to rest.  Your body has not recovered from its ordeal, nor will it for some days.”

Moving to his side, I offered him water from a bowl.  I could see him thinking to refuse out of stubborn pride, but dehydration won out in the end.  Struggling to remain wakeful, sleep yet won out over his battered systems.  I sighed the sigh of the longsuffering; healers and mothers know it all too well.

Description
Hauling his broken body over to the protection of the tree was no easy task, as he was at least half a foot taller than me, and many times heavier.  After that, I struggled solidly through nine days and nine nights to entrap the frail life within his body and fan it into flame once more. I forebore sleep and most food, taking only enough to sustain me as I poured my energy into the dying dragon, reforming organs, knitting bones, sealing flesh, and subverting fever.

On the first day, the greatest task before me was to clean his wounds sufficiently for healing, so that he would not take any gangrene or other ill effects.  I set at him with rags, warm water, and a distilled moonshine.  Gently peeling  away the bits of cloth and hardened leather armor that clung to his bleeding flesh, I then stripped him entirely of boots, weapons, armor, and clothing. A casual part of my brain noted that his legs were digitigrade, and he was possessed of draconic feet with three splayed toes ending in wicked claws.  His muscular body lacked scalation completely, and the only other apparent indicator of his draconity were his taloned fingers; long and silvery-white, and caked underneath with strips of flesh.  I had never been called on to heal a shape-shifting dragon before, and had no knowledge of their inner workings.  Seeing the similarities between his shape and my own except for sex, I hoped that the anatomy would be cooperative. Upon removing the first layer of grime, I was able to clean his abdominal area enough to carefully reinstate the spilled intestines with a bit of empathic prodding.  Loosely I closed the wound; it would need more attention before long.  There was a rasping, gurgling hitch to his breathing that worried me over the possibility of a punctured lung, but I would have to see to that later. His broken and badly lacerated left leg I washed thoroughly with moonshine and hot water and temporarily set in a crude splint that I’d fashioned from a few limbs that the oak had granted me and tethered it with strips of linen.

With those most serious injuries attended to, I washed his face in order to ascertain the seriousness of his head injuries.  His whole head was a mess, and I scrubbed vigorously at his hair and scalp, trying to determine the origin of so much blood.  The water in my bucket had dyed a deep red before I finally realized that his hair was the very same hue as the gore I was trying to remove.  Shock grabbed me, and my numbed fingers dropped the rag, staring.  He fit every description I’d ever heard; the hollow cheekbones, the long, aquiline nose, the sardonically arched eyebrows…

I whispered vehement denials but the force of recognition was too strong, and I knew, whether I liked it or not, exactly who he was.  Lying helpless in my care was the God of Carnage; the bloody drake Rafael, feared by all.  His power, bloodlust, and cruelty were legend.  Even among his own warlike people he carried names like “Kinslayer.”  I was working to save the life of a murderer, with my intuition twinging like a needle in my side the whole time.  Finally my practical mind took over and shook off my disconcertment like a dog shaking off water.  This man was a patient, like any other, and in need of my help, no matter what his past.

Fortunately he had only one serious cut on his head, and it was a diagonal slash across his forehead, deep enough to show flashes of bone beneath.  Painful and messy, but not incredibly dangerous, it also accounted for the sheer amount of blood on his face.  I saved my energy for the more life-threatening hurts, as his entire body seemed to be covered with similar gashes.  After seeing his own talons up close it came as no surprise.

Most of the second day had been spent ensuring that he would not drown in his own blood before I could mend the hole.  He had indeed suffered a punctured lung, but it had proven fairly simple to remedy with the right application of energies and insight, though time-consuming.  It was not until the third day that I had any certainty at all that he would survive and that my efforts would not be in vain.  His breathing had evened out, and the progress on his intestines was going well, but he had lost serious amounts of blood.  There was nothing I could do about that loss except feed him my own strength and hope, as much as it wore on my own reserves.  There were times, in those brief moments when I allowed myself to pause for a rest, when my hand would somehow find its way into that thick tangle of crimson hair, and once again I had to shake away the unnerving notion of saving a killer.

By the fourth day I had reset the leg and covered the exposed flesh of his leg with poultices to encourage regrowth of the skin.  The break was a compound fracture and as such I had to be very careful of the surrounding veins and arteries.  In order to be able to do the kind of healing I needed to on that leg, I had to be very precise in piecing the bones back together.  A few times the generation of completely new fragments of bone was needed to smooth things out.  Sometimes I thought my eyes would permanently cross from the strained concentration required to achieve such a thing.

By the fifth day I knitted the bones of his mangled leg back together such that he would again be able to stand on it. Much of the lost skin had regrown, and I worried less about blood loss in that area.  If he had been less muscular, my job might have been easier, given the circulation problems I encountered, but he probably would have died before I reached him in the first place. After a healer spends a great deal of time and personal energy saving the life of any patient, an irreversible bond begins to form, and regardless of that patient’s waking nature we can’t help but become attached. That lull can be dangerous.

During the sixth and seventh days, I spent most of my time ensuring that his injured intestines were whole and fitting in the correct body cavity spaces along with some maintenance work on the organs in that area, as a few had tried to fail. I had a few circulation problems, because of the sheer density of his muscles and his body’s own incredible durability.  Whatever part of my mind that wasn’t fully concentrated on forcing his recalcitrant systems to cooperate found sympathy for this hardy individual, and cheered him on from the sidelines.  His coma was still so deep that I worried that my efforts would go to waste regardless of whether he was ever fully healed.
On the eighth day his intestines were fully functional again. By this point I had also closed many of the deeper cuts scattered all over his person. Just as a depressive is most likely to attempt suicide during the recovery, so my ward was at a very fragile point in his ordeal.  If the very last of his strength gave out, there would be little I could do to keep his heart pumping blood and his lungs working.  All of my bones complained and my fingers were so stiff I could barely bend them, but my tired mind battled on.

The ninth day came, and I spent it sealing the last of his injuries and pouring strength into him.  He was still extremely weak, and his great heart did not beat as strongly as it should, but I could finally rest. After wrapping him in a woolen blanket, I simply lay down beside him on the bloodstained ground and passed out.

Morning rousted me, and I checked to be sure that my patient had not taken any worrisome turns while I’d slept.  He had not, and I felt confident enough for the first time to wander down the hill for a time and rinse the blood, sweat, and grime from my aching body.  Washing my hair was a blessing in itself.  I longed to tarry in the cool stream, but I did not feel it wise to leave my charge unsupervised.  The great tree could not do much more than shelter him on its own, and so, wearily, I made my way back.

At his side once more, I ate a strip of dried venison and some cheese that I had wrapped in leaves and stowed under the roots in the cool earth.  I looked him over and felt pleased at my labors, though a shadow passed over me at the thought of what to do with him when he awoke, and I tried to ignore the part of me that insisted that he probably never would.

Late in the afternoon, as I sat with my back to him, combing out my hair, I felt the weight of eyes on me.  I turned carefully, and came into contact with the most forceful glare I have ever encountered.  He was too weak to do more than tilt his head in order to see me, but there was a furious strength behind those fierce eyes.  They were brilliant blue fire, and flickered with resentment; the pupils were thin slits, like a venomous snake.  He opened his mouth to speak, and a croak issued forth instead.  Coughing, his irises flared red-rimmed yellow, and he attempted a second time.

“Why have you done this?” he demanded, and, even weak as he was, his voice was so deep I felt it in my sternum.

“Whatever do you mean, my lord?” I ventured, careful to keep my own voice neutral.

“Your people know me. Why have you saved my life?” His words dripped scorn.  I felt briefly as though my skin should blister under the heat of that glare and remembered all of the injured animals I had worked with in the past. That route was best; gentle, calm, and absolutely firm.

“You were in need of assistance, were you not?”

“Why is it that you assist me, and not my nemesis?”

“She was beyond assistance, lord.”

He panted for a moment, considering.  To me it was obvious that talk was a tremendous strain on his reserves, and even more obvious that he hated me for knowing it.

“Be calm.  No harm will come to you in my care,” I assured him.  His eyes narrowed to slits, but he said nothing.  I could feel the rage flowing off of him in waves.  He was easy to read; strong as he normally was, he hated being helpless, hated being so vulnerable to me. “You need to rest.  Your body has not recovered from its ordeal, nor will it for some days.”

Moving to his side, I offered him water from a bowl.  I could see him thinking to refuse out of stubborn pride, but dehydration won out in the end.  Struggling to remain wakeful, sleep yet won out over his battered systems.  I sighed the sigh of the longsuffering; healers and mothers know it all too well.