[AW] Only Skin Deep

[Samaira]

She rarely walks the court anymore, not unless it is coming and going from her home, or to the markets. There is too much here, on these cobblestone streets, that remind her of days and those long gone. They are painful. She does not want to remember them.

So Samaira leaves before sunrise, when everything is awash in a dim haze, and the memories are still lingering in darkness and not in the light. She leaves before sunrise, with Alaunus gliding on silent wings above her, his shadow draping over her shoulders, giving her wings that she has not had the courage to use in months. And she comes home in the dark, after all her patients are asleep, when the only thing to keep her company is the lonely glow of lamplight.

The sun is high, though it barely bleeds through the thick branches that cradle the hospital and weave over its roofs. The hospital is, as always, a bustle of activity. Doctors and medics brush along the pathways strung between wings, some with the lemur-like helpers poised upon their backs. Samaira is making her way to the rehabilitation wing when an arousal of noise catches her attention from below.

Glancing down, she can see equines gathered about at the base of the hospital’s roots. She can sense more than hear their concern from her place, high above them in the trees. Someone shouts for a doctor. She takes a lift down to the swamp floor, her steps echoing on the wooden planks keeping them up and out of the wet and mud.

“Give them some space,” she says as she reaches the gathered equines, “you’ll do them no good suffocating them like that. Back up.” The pegasus gets her first look at the injured equine and is shocked to see them still alive, if barely. She glances up, toward the branches above. “Alaunus!” her moon-silver eyes search the dark canopy for the iridescent shine of her bonded’s feathers.

She feels him before she sees him, his concern zipping along that invisible line between them like a bolt of lightning. “I’m coming,” he responds, and a few moments later appears beside her with the beating sound of wings. “Hello?” she says, voice more gentle than it was a moment ago, “can you tell me what happened to you?” Her biggest concern right now is this equine losing consciousness before she has a chance to find out what needs to be done.

“Alaunus, can you alleviate some of his pain, I need him to stay awake,” Samaira glances sidelong at her bonded, but his blue eyes haven’t left her since he arrived. She knows what he’s thinking, but she doesn’t have time for his worry. “Please,” because here… here she does not have time to think about anything other than what is happening in front of her, even if her bonded thinks she should face it.

She cannot face it.

But the heron steps closer to the equine and carefully touches his beak to their skin, drawing away a small amount of his aching. Oh, there is so much of it he is nearly overcome; never has he experienced such a flood of agony before, in all the patients he has worked with alongside his bondmate. He draws as much as he can take, perhaps enough to make the man more coherent, less like they are about to lose him any minute, and then with a few flaps of his wings disappears into the canopy to dispose of the negative energy.

Samaira watches him go for a moment, before looking down again, waiting to see if it has helped.

"Speaking."

@Silasthein one doctor and her healing bird at your assistance

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