With a mutter of what might have been gratitude, the boy snatched up the extra wrappings Aiga offered him and sped away towards the village. Understand? And no more jumping out of tall tress just because Andrey told you to.” “Now, try not to jostle that splint too much, and you must not stress the arm for half a season.
“Thank you,” Aiga said, tucking it away amongst her other supplies. Looking down, Meldruin slowly managed to unclench his fist from the wooden dowel and drop it into Aiga’s palm. “Haven’t you finished counting to ten yet? I need my rod back now.” “That was a dirty trick,” Meldruin accused, perhaps to hide the slight tremble in his voice. Almost as quickly as she had set the bone, Aiga laid the splints, and tied them off securely, before backing away and giving the boy a moment to compose himself. A choked cry half-escaped Meldruin before he could cut it off, and he was panting heavily, several tears linked from his scrunched shut eyes. Meldruin began counting, and Aiga took a deep breath, braced herself, and set the bone back into place. Her splints and wraps were already laid out for her. “I want you to hold onto this for me, and count to ten when I say so,” Aiga instructed, while moving quietly to the side with the broken arm. “I’m sure a brave man like you can do that, right?”Īll the answer she received was a nod, but she smiled anyway, and handed Meldruin a freshly whittled wooden rod. “Well, Meldruin, I’m going to need your help to set this arm to rights, yes, yes, yes,” Aiga told him. The act of answering was almost more than the boy’s composure could handle, but he managed to force out a single word in reply. More and more often, Aiga found herself ignoring what her mother might have done. Her mother would probably have scoffed, berating the child for being a brainless waste of her talents even as she expertly set and wrapped the fractured arm. Something about the intensity of the boy’s expression, with his teeth grinding together to keep his composure against the pain he was in, struck Aiga as particularly brave, no matter how foolish she might think the genesis of his injury.