Taboo, Taboo, Taboo

[upscalerat]

"Werewolves. Again. Damned beasts." The soldier spit.

The scene was gruesome. It had been an encampment, and a small one all things considered, but now it was just a graveyard. Several pairs of men- of soldiers- walked around and, for the most part, picked up corpses and tossed them in the wagon. It only smelled like blood now. In a few hours, when the sun was high and baking the earth, it would smell like decay and death. The soldiers moved fast to avoid that.

With them walked a few people in robes, or mundane clothing. Occasionally, a soldier would cry something to the effect of, "Come here! This one's still alive!" and the nearest non-soldier would run over and do what they could. It usually was just to ease the passing, but some were saved. Some were moved to one of a few other wagons, for patients, to be carried back to the settlement a few miles away. Other healers would work on them.

Kagura had, like the others, volunteered for this. She had agreed to look for survivors. But this? She could see why there was such a stigma against werewolves. Is this retribution for how awful we are to them? But, it couldn't be; they were feral beasts, and these were innocent people. These were soldiers, unprovocative, and defensive at worst. These were no marked targets. These were unfortunate victims.

"There's one over here," a soldier called, Kagura turned and walked to the pair and the body. She knelt down beside the victim: a woman, bloodied and in a bad state, with raspy breath and ill-fitting armor.

"Let me at her for a few minutes," the brown haired girl said, quietly. There was so much blood that she could feel her brown dress seeping in the blood. She was white, but her feet were brown with dirt, and her knees would soon be red with blood. The soldiers cautiously stood, and moved on to the next body. The young woman cast her brown eyes over the body: blood, mostly. She pursed her lips, and reached for her leather belt. Between it and the dress she had stuck a cloth, and took it out now. She pressed it between her hands, and it was damp when she took it away. Kagura began to wipe away the blood to find the wounds, then healed what she could.

It was tiring, and incomplete. Field medicine wasn't exactly protocol, but the woman needed some work before she could be moved. After the worst of the wounds had been stitched together enough to stop bleeding, Kagura called the soldiers back over, and had them carry the woman to one of the wagons headed for the settlement. Kagura hopped on in, and rode back with the patients.

A cabin had been set up as a hospital. It was filled with rows and rows of beds, and some stools. The patients were emptied into the building, and Kagura sat by the woman she'd been working on, and waited for her to wake up. She was tired, and needed rest before she could heal her any more.

 

[OntosChalmer]

Charon groaned in his bed. He wriggled left and right. The events of the past days played in his head, then replayed again and again. Days worth of memories, rerun continuously, were covered in the few hours he was dragged off from the camp and into civilisation.

The small patrol was dispatched to the Wavaste Weald to handle a minor brigand group terrorising the locals. It was Charon's first mission beyond guard duty in the capital city, and he had initially relished the opportunity to test his blade against other men. Lieutenant Marimow, his commanding officer, had decided to spend the night in the woods. Charon spent the first watch, bored out of his mind and wondering how to write his name in the snow. He was eventually relieved from watch, and returned to his tent to sleep. As soon as his head hit the pillow, Charon heard a scream, and a savage howl.

"Werewolves!" he yelled out, grabbing his shortsword and darting out of his tent. In the next moment, a terrible silhouette pounced upon him. The next few moments were hazy, but anyone could guess what had happened to him.

And thus the memory ended.

The young man groaned, even more so. Where he was lying felt comfortable. Not the dirty, grassy forest floor. His eyes opened slowly, and he saw wood. A wooden ceiling. Relatively clean white sheets upon him. None of the sounds of crickets chirping.

"Where... am I?" mumbled Charon. "Where's my sword? Where's Lieutenant Marimow?"

He tried to crane his neck rightwards, but the dull ache discouraged further movement from him. Groaning at the pain, he returned his head back to his original position.

 

[upscalerat]

A shuffling in the sheets beside her and a voice- "Where... am I? Where's my sword? Where's Lieutenant Marimow?"- alerted Kagura that her patient had woken up. She had been dozing, but opened her eyes and stood swiftly. The woman groaned in pain, and Kagura saw that she had tried to move her head. There was a scratch along her neck, and the healing was far from complete.

"Don't move," she cautioned, though the woman had probably already figured that out. Kagura spoke as soothingly as she could. "You were attacked, but you're going to be okay. There was a werewolf attack. You're in a hospital now. I'm going to be spending time healing you. You're going to be okay." It always seemed to help patients to hear the same thing again and again; it was something steady in a time of change.

Since their arrival, the woman had been given some bandages. Now that she was awake, Kagura started to peel the worst looking off, carefully, to heal. "We've bandaged you up. I'm going to take one off and continue healing you," she explained, in the same, soothing voice. "Can you tell me your name, miss?"

 

[OntosChalmer]

The woman spoke a few words, all of them quite comprehensible. Still, Charon's hazy mind listened to Kagura, even as none of the words stuck to his mind.

The healer lifted up the blanket covering him, exposing his semi-naked body for her strange rummagings. He grimaced as some bandages were plucked off his skin, even as she was gentle about the ones around his breasts.

However, the mere mention of 'miss' sent a lightning jolt to Charon's mind. He jerked a moment, pushing aside Kagura's hands. He managed to sit up to face her, bare-chested with a renewed sense of adrenaline. Granted, even with his bindings and clothes, Charon's face made him look more like a boy than a man. Still, getting called a woman triggered something in his mind he never managed to suppress.

"I'm. Not. A. Miss. I'm. A. Man— owow—" The renewed pain from sitting upright knocked him down, but he managed to keep his eyes on Kagura as he lay on his side. Exhaling amidst the wincing, he manoeuvred the arm he wasn't resting upon, fortunately free of pain, in front of his breasts. He pressed his arm, hard, into his chest, as if his arm could make his anatomy disappear.

It was then Charon realised he was doing it in front of a woman. With a red face, he continued anyway. Glaring at her, he said, "My name's Charon. I don't like being called 'miss', or 'lady'."

 

[upscalerat]

Not a miss? The chest would suggest otherwise, but Kagura had traveled through cities where those born of one sex claimed to be the other. So the girl just nodded.

"I'm sorry. It won't happen again. Sir. Now- please- sit down, Charon, you're in no state to be about and moving-" indeed, he was already laying down again, pressing his arm against his breasts for modesty.

Kagura gently pushed at his shoulder until he laid flat again. "I'm sorry about that... Misunderstanding," she offered, and looked at the bandage she'd just removed. The wound was bleeding again. Well, damn. Kagura sat back in her stool and hovered her hands just above the wound. Her palms emitted a soft glow as she began to heal the scratch mark. "How are you feeling, Charon? Are you hungry? Or thirsty?"

Even if he wasn't hungry, Kagura could feel a gnaw in her stomach. She hadn't eaten that morning, afraid the gore might make her toss it up, and she'd been healing for some time. Her energy was reaching its limit. And perhaps Charon would enjoy some time naturally resting, rather than being sped back into battle. She would certainly want that, if she were in his situation... Wouldn't she?

Perhaps she would never know the mind of a soldier. And perhaps she would never know the mind of someone who wished to be another sex. But it was unlikely that she could ever know Charon's situation truly- so who was she to say what she'd like in his position?

 

[OntosChalmer]

Charon still rested an arm over his chest, even as Kaguya worked her healing arts on him. His throat was dry, his stomach growled somewhere below the threshold of audibility, but terrible injuries had a tendency to mess with one's soundness of mind. And one's list of priorities.

And to Charon's mind, floundering on the fantasy equivalent of a morphine high, was most concerned about his feminine chest.

"I want linens. Bandages. Now," he demanded weakly. His eyes glared at Kaguya, as if they could enforce his will upon his saviour. He tried to get up again, but a sharper pain sent him down with a loud yelp.