Games at the border

His subdued nature hadn’t gone unnoticed, and Malalia chewed over what to say to him to make things right. What she could say, if anything. Maybe it would be worse to bring it up again, but she didn’t want Mortis feeling like any of this was on him.

His response elicited a faint snort from the gal.  There was a sadness in the sound, but genuine humor, too. “We’re going by formalities now?” A brow raised high. “I think we know each other better a little than that,” she murmured. She wiped away a few more specks of blood from his cheek. Mal put down the doeskin, and raised her foreleg to softly, softly poke him in the head, as she’d done many times before.

“I don’t have anything here that can help with the bruises,” she revealed, after a moment. “You can take a quick dip in the stream to keep the swelling down, though, and willow bark for the pain.” She gently nosed his sprained wing. “I don’t know how to deal with your wing, either,” she sighed, her ears leveling out. Silently, she wished she’d taken more lessons from Iolaire. She was sorely lacking in the ways she could help him. “I don’t want to make it worse, so you should probably see Io about that.”

Finally, Malalia stood. Ideally, they should’ve checked to see if there were any more dogs lurking the moment they'd subdued the first two… but they were well past that point. “Let’s find someone to relieve us, yeah?”