"Liam!!"

Camphor sat bolt-upright, unaware he'd even been sleeping, let alone dreaming. He felt sweat plastered to his face, his breathing ragged. He heard her voice still screaming in his ears, but it was really two, maybe even three voices, all curdling the blood that still ran through his veins.

He could feel her pain, vaguely, in his leg, and groped at his pant leg just to be certain he wasn't actually bleeding.

Faline and Quetz were asleep by the embers of the fire, and Camphor knew that he needed wood. What he needed it for, how much he needed, he didn't know. He just felt, deep in his gut, that he needed wood.

He grabbed his axe and wandered into the darkness, letting his feet guide him in ways that he often fought. But tonight was somehow different. Tonight he was preoccupied, worried even.

Something crawled in his skin, skittering viciously under his flesh, eating away at the core of him. He could hear her voice, still, sobbing and panting and demanding... Demanding what?

Who was she? What was this?

The axe found its way hefted into his hands. He snapped it into the trunk of his chosen tree, and the crack resounded through the air, through his arms, through his thoughts, focusing and centering them at last.

He breathed a sigh of relief, and when she still returned to his thoughts, he snapped the axe into the trunk of the tree with a resounding and very reassuring CRACK!!

Every time he stopped, she returned to his thoughts, and jet black waves of hair swam bouyantly above the surface of a river somewhere while the rest of her struggled and fought against the fire in her leg, the fire in his leg...

CRACK!!

He worked the tree until his axe head dulled too much to be of use to him. By then, she was gone from his brain, and her sobs no longer wracked his conscience.

"I'm glad you met with me, Marley," General Farrows said and led her down the lane, taking her elbow in his hands with a bit too much affection for her tastes. She had never been attracted to the man, and she was only going along with what Agnes and Lina had suggested.

The way this worked was that they were trying to lure the General into making a misstep, in order to lure out Agnes' elder sister. She was still fuzzy on all the details because Lina had asked her while she was well on her way towards being hungover in the morning, but here she was, doing it anyway.

She batted her eyelashes at the general and smiled fawningly up at him. "Of course, General," she said with as much over-the-top sickeningly sweet intonation as she could muster.

"Please," he said warmly, "call me Liam."

Feivel had felt the tug slam into his gut as he packed up the camp from the night before. He didn't mind leaving a trail so much as he minded accidentally leaving something important behind.

When the tug came, he whistled for Janice's pinto, since it was the closer of their horses, and drove it onward, mounting as it ran, fingers tangling into its wild mane, and plunging head-long down the hill.

She was very near to drowning, and he splashed into the water to fish her out. As he dragged her clear of the water, she stopped screaming and started whispering words, either from fever or from memories of the earth and sand, quick as her dark red lips could move.

He felt a quick stab of desire seize him as he stared down at her naked form, smooth and perfect, far more so than he would have imagined under all those layers of clothing. The sun danced on the water on her heaving form, and his hands shook as he yanked his heavy gloves off his hands and risked to touch her trembling hands.

"Janice," he called to her. "Janice. Janice, come back! Janice!"

~It's her leg,~ Kendra called from her perch up in a tree. ~She hurt her leg.~

"Why would her leg--" He stopped himself and hauled up one leg, then the other, inspecting them thoroughly as he dared. His brain struggled to keep in mind that this was the pull, this was the gut-wrenching insistance of his Lady, dark and deaf and silent, that he do this.

He prayed she would survive, whole and intact, his hands shaking more than he wished them to as he noticed the set of six nasty holes in the back of her right calf. He didn't know what caused them, but he did know that they were bleeding, swelling, and changing from shades of warm olive to bright scarlet.

"Janice!" he called again, tapping her cheeks lightly.

Her eyes fluttered, and she turned her head to the right, her back arching wildly as the eyes of her twin opened and registered what looked to be fear and horror and pain.

~Fix her!~ Kendra cried out.

Feivel grabbed a short knife from his belt, cut a shaky circle around the wound, hoping that, as in Tribe tradition, this would keep the poison - because this was no normal bite - in check long enough to seek help.

He wrapped her in her outter robes and hauled her onto the back of her horse. Kendra stared down at them from the tree. ~Where are you taking her?~ she squeaked.

"Let's go, rat," he answered, mounting behind Janice to keep her somewhat upright in the saddle. He grabbed the horse's mane by wrapping her tightly in his arms, and he hated himself for thinking how right she felt there while she was possibly dying. There would be other times for this. When she was healed and recovered.

He put his whistle to his teeth, and he let it echo shrilly across the hills, the paint charging forwards beneath him.