It felt strange being back. Very strange. Deja vu washing over the pale healer, she began to set up the field hospital. There was so much to do, and so little time to do it. While she could only hope that their warriors made quick work of the Raiders, she had to be prepared for the worst. Right, prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Something like that. The woman felt an ache in her chest as she thought about Mortis charging into them... he had to be safe. He knew what he was doing, he was capable, but Halo would always be a worrier. There were also thoughts of the pups who had decided to stay at home. This would mark the longest Halo had been away from some of her children, and she would worry for them too. Her field hospital set out, surrounding the den that she'd lived in when they first arrived here. Supplies laid out, and healers milling about. All of them on high alert, watching, waiting. It would only be a matter of time before the first of their wounded would come into camp, one way or another. Halo paced anxiously, her gaze fixed on the direction the raiding party had disappeared in. Soon. "Speech"

Where Halo was pacing Crux was rigid as a board, his gaze fixed on the direction the fighters had walked off in. He'd managed to keep up when they'd set out, somehow, something he was going to attribute to the adrenaline that his anxiety had provided. He'd helped manage a few wounds a few times now but he hadn't ever really been right there, and the sound of distant growls wasn't doing much to put him at ease. All of that plus the spectre of the rank he was seeking being dependant on his performance here was hanging over him, his own personal sword of Damocles. So yeah maybe he was in freeze mode right now, something he'd no doubt snap out of once the wounded started flowing in.

"Speech"

Art by TheStarvingRaven

To say he was excited was an understatement. He was young still, and didn't quite grasp the seriousness of what a raid entailed yet, but he knew his mother and quite a few others had gone off to take things from another pack. Who they were he didn't know, but he waited eagerly for his mother and grandfather and others to return. In the meantime, he did his best to wait patiently for them to return, looking to Halo who had readied everything they'd need, and Crux who seemed to be glued in place, Ansem's tail slowly wagged in anticipation as he suddenly heard the sounds of combat further away. He didn't know what to expect, but Armada had a lot of great warriors! Surely they'd come back with nothing but a scratch, but...just in case....he turned to Halo, a question on his lips. "So what do we do when they come back? They gonna be alright?"

It was strange being back in her former homeland but in some ways that made it a perfect spot for setting up the healers. The den locations were familiar as well as the layout. Gossamer focused on securing the border and chasing out some brash badgers that had taken up residence close to the healing base. Gossamer kept moving. It was frustrating to be a skilled healer and yet spend so much of her time recovering but finally she was feeling better. She supposed it was a good ego check. Healers weren't magical beings, there was only so much that could be done and then the rest was in the hands of fate.

A yip caught her attention and she turned to see Ásta strolling in with her makeshift travois loaded with wood. Gossamer shot her friend a smile and went to unloading the wood in a nearby fire ring, left over from the time when the Armada ruled this territory. She set to work getting a fire going just in case it was needed for wilting or boiling certain herbs.

Wylan was very keen to prove himself. His mother had even set him up with his own little station. Some bandages, and some basic herbs that he was familiar with and were safe if he managed to stuff it up. (Not that he knew that, of course). He sat by his station, tail wagging as he looked in excitement at the other healers around him. He’d added his own addition to the table. Some bright flowers he’d picked on the walk over here. Something to brighten the day of the wounded that might come to him. Everyone liked pretty flowers after all, right?

His tail wagged a little harder, and he strained his ears towards the sound of battle. Waiting, waiting. This must the hardest part, surely. That anticipation, that period of expectation.


"Wylan Fatalis"

Trigger warning: bugs

Aris had finally had a fully successful raid, and despite the lacerations gauging across her hips she walked with a jaunty, purposeful stride as she set out for the plains the rest of the healers had set up on. The pirates - uh, raiders - had already set up some sort of party in their territory celebrating, apparently, their defeat, but she was more interested in getting her wounds seen to and making sure that the rest of the pack was taken care of than she was of checking out what they thought of as a good time. Others in the raiding party would be collecting the food that they'd gone there to raid, but her primary duty was as a healer so she left as soon as the pack was in the clear. Consequently she was there before any of the other fighters, her wounds stinging with the seawater that had washed them. Her eyes swept the assembled healers and saw Ansem there ready. She gave him a nod of approval - she'd made Zeejay stay at home rather than risk the tiny, sickly youth trying to keep up with the adults but Ansem had no such handicap so she was glad to see he had made it a point to go with the healers. Her gaze lingered momentarily on a pup that someone had thought it was a good idea to drag along, though. Clearly one of Mortis' pups from the wings and the... well, everything. All of what, three months old, and undoubtedly going to be underfoot while the rest of them were slipping in blood and mangled patients, great.

She grunted, and stomped over to the packs she'd left there before the raid. A little digging found a clay jar covered just with a cloth tied over it like a drumhead. She gave it a little shake. Skittering sounds inside heralded that whatever it held was alive and, now, angry. Good. The bag next produced a set of pincers that could go over two toes to open and close. Next came a couple of jars that didn't produce angry sounds, and a pad of wool, and lastly a length of cloth. Glancing back at the other healers, she picked out Ansem's much-taller form. "Ansem!" she called out for his attention, jerking her head to gesture for him to come over. She couldn't close the wounds by herself, not in such a bad spot, so he'd need an assistant. Her eyes fell on the pup, and she grinned wickedly. He could be useful after all. "Hey you, kid!" So she didn't know her brother's kids' names yet, sue her. It had taken her years to learn Azure's kids' names too. She just waited until they were useful to her and then figured it out. She gestured for the kid to come over too, and waited until both had joined her. "You two are going to learn how to close wounds, with these." She gave the jar another shake, and it began emitting even more angry noises.

“Me?” he asked, followed a second later by ”Me!” Because he was far too excited at the prospect of taking part in something. This was one of the warriors who had gone into the raid. Had she returned victorious? How badly injured was she? Did she have any guts hanging out? (what were guts, and which part of the body should he be looking at to find them?) He didn’t know, but he was excited to find out!

He grabbed a big flower from the bunch in front of him. It was yellow, and almost the size of his face. Perfect. Thus prepared he gleefully trotted over to the purple warrior. “I’m Wylan” He said helpfully as he jumped up and placed his paws against her side to give him leverage. He tucked the flower behind her ear. She was small for a warrior, and it was giant on her. He giggled.

“The jars is alive! What’s in the jar?” He said as he sprang down again and immediately moved over to the jar “Are there guts in your wound? Can I see?”

"Wylan Fatalis"

He waited impatiently for the warriors to return. Moreso his mother, but he'd take anyone to try and heal, honestly. Luckily for him, however, his mother was the first to come back and Ansem bounced excitedly to his feet as he watched her go to her supplies and called him over. He raced over as she called another pup, one much, much younger than he was, and as he approached, he could hear the angry rattling of something in the jar she had. "What is that!?" He questioned with wide eyes and brimming with curiosity. When he heard the winged boys question though, he scoffed. "My mom doesn't have any guts hangin' out! Dontcha know where guts are!?" He asked incredulously. He plopped his butt down on the ground, "They're somewhere right around here!" He said, pointing at his belly. He wore a smug look as he said that. Mama's dissection lessons were really paying off! "Didja win your fight ma? Give those dogs a mark to remember ya by?" He was curious! After all, he was hoping to go on the next raid, too!

Trigger warning: bug stuff

If Aris hadn't been too tired, she'd have jerked away from the kid to avoid getting poked in the eye by whatever he was shoving at her face, but as it was all she had time to do between her brain registering it and him tucking it behind her ear was twitch. Luckily no eye-poking occurred, just a big flower blocking her peripheral vision. She shoved it out of the way but left it there. After all, the kid had to grow up in the same soul-crushing world as everyone else, he'd get all his hopes and dreams shattered at some point anyway, there was no point in crushing him sooner than that. "No guts today, but you'll see plenty of muscles and blood," she told the pair of them, evading the question about the angry-sounding jar. Instead she grasped a different jar between her paws and used her teeth to pull the cork. "Here, pour this over the wounds to rinse them out, you'll see muscles then. It's important you always clean a wound thoroughly with disinfectant, even if you have to scrub it or cut out parts of the wound that have gone bad. This was a clean cut and it got washed pretty well on the swim over but we need to disinfect it." She shoved the jar, full of antimicrobial and clotting herbs in a tincture, at the younger boy. She'd make sure he poured it out well enough to really clean the wounds, let them oooo and aaaaa over the wounds, then took the tongs and fitted them over Ansem's toes, showing them both how it went on. "You'll be taking turns with that part," she told them, "So I want you to be able to switch quickly so your patient - that's me - isn't laying here in pain while you're fumbling around trying to get them on and off."

Now for the fun part.

She opened the cloth top of the angry jar - carefully - and showed it to them. It was full of angry ants with big, wicked looking pincers, scrambling around. "Ansem, you're going to use those grabbers to take on of those ants behind its head. Kid, you're going to hold the edges of one of my wounds together so they touch, so that Ansem can put the ant's pincers on either side of it. When it bites down, you twist the body off. The head will stay on and hold that part closed. Do it again something like a quarter inch or so past the first one, and keep going until you close that whole wound. Kid, you'll do the second one while Ansem holds it shut." It would use up quite a lot of her store of the vicious ants, but those wounds would pull a lot when she moved, so she'd need a lot of them to keep from popping open, even with the wrap she was going to have the boys put on it after. There'd still be plenty to use on other wolves from the raid as they returned.

As the yearling wolf came over, he also happened to have knowledge that Wylan didn’t. The winged pup looked up at Ansem with excitement and amazement as he told Wylan exactly where guts were. (But not what guts were). His eyes immediately moved over Aris to look at her belly. Sadly, she didn’t have any injuries there, so he couldn’t learn anything more about guts today. “I don’t know what guts are! But dad says I have them” he said proudly, his tail wagging. The smug expression Ansem wore didn’t put a dent in his enthusiasm at all. If anything, he liked Ansem already. He knew about guts. As Aris began the lesson, he obediently turned his attention to her words. Putting aside the topic of guts with some reluctance. As she shoved the jar in his paws and told him to pour it over the wounds, his expression became very businesslike. His brows furrowed, and his tongue poked out at the corner of his muzzle. He raised himself up, leaning against Aris and spreading his wings behind him for balance. He started to pour the jar over the wound, careful to cover every bit of it. A pair of tongs was handed to Ansem and he watched excitedly to see what ‘this part’ entailed. His excitement growing as she grabbed the angry jar. As Aris addressed him as ‘kid’, he smiled at her “I’m Wylan!” He said (again. He was a persistent child). He grabbed for her wound, tugging at the edges with clawed paws. His clumsy paws were likely not nearly as gentle as they could have been, but he tried. His eyes were on the jar and Ansem instead of his paws and the wound he held. His eyes grew bigger as Ansem started to grab a bug out of the jar. His wiggling tail told the world it wasn’t fear that had his attention so thoroughly caught. "Speech"

Mortis trotted off the battlefield and made his way towards the healers. He was hoping for a chance to check in with Mortis, and to see how the younglings that had gone with her were doing. He arrived, and saw more healers than warriors. He smiled at Halo and waved a wing lightly at her. He saw Wylan deep in decision with Aris, and there were bugs involved. He knew he had already lost any competition for the boy's attention. Chuckling, and happy to see him invest, he took a spot near the entrance.

His injuries were minor, and if any of the healers wanted a wolf to practise on, he knew he was a great bet to use. So he made himself available

Injuries: laceration to the left side of his head from horns, bruising on his chest


"Speech"