Ripped at the Seams

The night of the hunt, the scene laid out before Shalia was a passing blur that would only be focused on later. Bodies moving rapidly as she swam in her heavy breaths and slowing tears, staring out at nothing in particular. She even saw someone rushing to her aid to protect her from a killing-blow at the hands of the man who had attacked her first.

She snapped back to attention when Amalu crouched down briefly in order to grab one of her hands. “We must get you back!” He pulled her to her feet and for a moment she was like a puppy following commands with glassy eyes, but as she looked to the burning building behind her one last time, she jerked her hand away suddenly.

“I-I left them…” She weakly clambered to a nearby window and peaked in to assure she was in the right place. Otherwise her thoughts were scrambled and she didn’t grasp the severity and danger of her situation. It was clear to Amalu that she had suffered some kind of head injury and was not thinking clearly alongside everything else. But she remembered.
The fire in this building had moved enough away from a wall that she climbed into the window and shimmied past the barrier’s side. She approached the rubble pile and dug out the bags Voah had left, untouched by the flames still. One by one she hauled them across her body and over her shoulders for security upon leaning out the window to set them down, crawling out.

Amalu waited impatiently and wasted no time at all pulling her back into their escape, though in the process of moving, eyes scanning the ground absently for anything of interest to her, she briefly stopped to pick up something green in color and shaped like a comb. It reminded her of an item that brought comfort, but she couldn’t place it exactly right then.
They then continued to move into the alleys as guards made their way toward the abandoned area in the city.

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When she was near enough to the Temple to navigate herself, Amalu said nothing. He must have been irritated too by the turn of events. If she had been more coherent, the feeling was palpable. He vanished into shadow once more and Shalia sluggishly moved to where her quarters were located, saying next to nothing the rest of the evening.

Processing anything now was impossible. The impacts of her body feeling violated and her identity being stripped away in a few seconds would stay with her forever. Being reduced to nothing. A death sentence had she not made powerful connections. None of it was making sense.
Her skull thrummed painfully and she was lucky to have made it to the right place in her disoriented movement.

The packs were placed gently at the foot of her bed when she entered her quarters. Her alarmed guard summoned aid as soon as he saw her fragile condition. Sitting at the table, she watched the healer trace their finger along the cuts and abrasions she suffered, a gentle stroke across the chin that seemed to put her busted lips back together like seamless patchwork. The intense ache behind her eyes faded slowly.

“Can you leave some of the bruises?” She asked hoarsely, zoned out still.
The healer didn’t seem to understand why she would ask such a thing, but complied and healed only the open wounds, deep pains, and unsettled structures of her jaw and nose. Once they left, her two servant girls rushed over to run a bath and question the witch with genuine concern. But she did not respond, staring blankly at the floor as the lukewarm water was prepared. The girls helped her undress and ease into the tub, assisting her with bathing and getting into bed as the night went on.

Shalia wanted to keep her bruises this time for her own complex reasoning that she did not recall immediately that evening. When she woke groggily--unable to sleep most of the night and frantically fighting off terrors in her poisoned dreams-- she wanted to know that it hadn’t all been some freak nightmare after all as much as she wished it had. That it was very real and she would live with what came as a result of the choices she and others made that fateful night.