At some point, Lyall realized he was conscious. It was all he knew, and the realization was but a weak thought, but it was something. It took a few more moments after that for his mind to rev up fast enough to start processing anything else. He was awake, if only just. He was lying somewhere, and it wasn't very comfortable. His brain told his body to try moving, but he only felt the neural message shoot through a few muscles in his core before it fizzled out, vanishing somewhere in the general vicinity of where he thought his legs were supposed to be. He couldn't feel his limbs. Or could he? Come to think of it, he could, actually. Just barely. They did not respond when he tried to move again, instead responding to him with a weak but uncomfortable pins-and-needles sensation. Ugh. He ached, he ached everywhere. His shoulder was the worst.
Lyall's thoughts stalled on that as his brain attempted a gear shift. His shoulder. That had all really happened. Astrid had turned on him. And...he had survived. It couldn't be, yet it was. Somehow, through some miracle, that bite that he could have sworn was about to kill him on the spot had not killed him at all. His eyelids twitched with the fresh desire to determine where in the would he was, but they were not ready to obey him and open, not yet. He clenched his teeth in irritation. His body was fighting him, rendering him helpless. Lyall did not take kindly to feeling helpless.
His other senses had begun to function once more. He smelled herbs. He heard a kettle, and then footsteps. The footsteps came closer and ended with a pause and quiet creak off to his side. Someone was near him. A moment later he was startled by the sudden touch of someone's fingers at his mouth, but he was still too disoriented to protest. Something told him keeping his mouth clamped tightly shut to spite the stranger was a pointless idea. His mouth opened. Something wet, scratchy, and horrid on the tongue was poked inside; discomfort twisted across his face. But he was instructed to drink the fluid, and he'd just decided he had no reason to spite the stranger, so he complied. He closed his jaw and pressed with his tongue to squeeze out whatever fluid from the rough cloth that he could, though he shuddered from the taste as soon as he did, and forced himself to swallow. He relaxed his jaw and pushed the cloth out of his mouth with his tongue.
He tried to open his eyes again. This time they responded, at least partially. They creaked open about a third of the way, not yet willing to let much light in, and beheld Lyall's companion. A woman. A round-faced, sun-baked woman who immediately struck him as motherly. He took a careful inhale, trying to get the scent of her to fill his nose. Human, he was pretty sure. But he smelled many things on her that made him less than certain, and his nose in this form wasn't as good as his wolf's nose. What he was positive about was that she was certainly neither werewolf or vampire. He knew those scents well.
There was a splash somewhere, and the woman responded to it, but after a moment she settled back into her seat and looked closely into Lyall's face again. He blinked a couple of times. He shifted his shoulders in place a little. Hm, his body was starting to feel responsive, if only in a few places, but it was something. He tilted his head toward her, thinking about what he wanted to say and could afford to say before he attempted to say it. His voice came out quiet, though his faint Scottish accent was audible. "What sort of concoction have you given me, and can I buy some from you?" was what he came up with. It was dry humor, but that was how Lyall rolled. He had reason to believe this woman was the one responsible for the fact that he obviously was not dead, and if she had developed some cure for vamp venom, against all odds, he wanted to know about it. His thoughts flickered briefly to the notion that she might know what he was, but he shook those concerns away. There was nothing to be done now.