netherese: (66)
ɢᴀʟᴇ, ʀɪᴢᴢᴀʀᴅ ᴏғ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀᴅᴇᴇᴘ 🔮 ([personal profile] netherese) wrote2023-09-28 05:09 pm
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gwilym: (15)

[personal profile] gwilym 2024-05-03 03:19 am (UTC)(link)
[ It is a well-placed question. Godfrey's pale, sleeping complexion and still steel chest could just as easily be gone.

He might have been, were he allowed to doze much longer. Rushing feet and a drop at his side stir him, his head moving sluggishly against Gale's bundled bedroll. Sharp pain greets him and he grimaces, eyes cringing open, gauntleted hands opening and closing as the pain radiates toward them.

Gale is above him. Godfrey's throat works as Gale's hands do, peeling back layers to expose his wounds. Thick, throbbing blood glues the layers below his plate together - gambeson to leather, and to linen. The breath is stolen from his chest as an errant move jostles one of the shafts in his shoulders. Hot, numbing agony. Coldness in his fingers. Godfrey screws his wet eyes shut and waits out the pain.
]

The-- [ There is hardness in his voice - brittle and strained, his throat pulled tight around it. ] There is a knife. It is sheathed to one of my boots. Cut the padding away, if need be. Do not jostle the arrows.

[ His eyes open again, and he pins his gaze to the wretched sky - the lances of cold, diminished light struggling against the cloud-cover. ]

The arrows in my shoulders - they must be seen to. I fear the-- the one on the left. It is perilously near to an artery. [ One he'd been taught of, during his training; slide a blade behind the left collarbone, just above the heart, and a man could be exsanguinated in mere minutes. ] I've only so much healing left, but - enough, I think.

[ Enough to stem the tide of one wrong movement. Godfrey masters his throat long enough to swallow. ]

You must cut the shafts with a steady hand. As near to the skin as you can. Leave the rest in place. Pull the left arrowhead out only if you c-cut the artery. Pack and wrap them, and then-- [ His chest raises, shivering, with a long breath, ] my shoulders must be splinted, that I do not move the arrowheads within myself.

[ They could see to his leg once this is done. ]
Edited (dusting this off a lil (befuckered the html)) 2024-05-30 02:48 (UTC)
gwilym: (22)

is it finally my turn to do the same for real

[personal profile] gwilym 2024-08-13 09:15 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Godfrey imparts his instructions - the very essence of too many months of dogged soldiery training and drills - as he feels ice settle beneath his skin. Gale takes each word in attentive, studious silence, commits them to an internal list of priorities. Sorts the words effortlessly.

At least, that is how it feels.

There's little else to be done about it now. He had never known how he might feel, to use what he'd been taught; he'd never liked to indulge the thought very much, and foolishly, he had always imagined that it would be he administering aid whenever it pushed across his thoughts anyway. He'd thought that it would be him in Gale's position - kneeling over a mass of rapidly cooling muscle and blood made suddenly impossibly fragile, trying to school his hands still and regulate the press of his lungs. He thought that he would know how he would feel - rocketing between forcibly imposed calm and numbness, and some panic just below the surface, like a river rushing beneath a thin sheet of ice.

How does he feel now? Hollow.

A cold emptiness spreads beneath his skin. He's done all that he can for now. All he can do is lie there, helpless, and try to stamp out the pain and the panic. It wouldn't do to take in a drowning gasp and thrust his chest into the arrow while Gale held it still.

He's chosen a point to stare at, in the swirling morass of thick shadow. He focuses his every sense to it. Godfrey seeks out his Lord beyond it, but feels too buried in cold darkness to reach Him. He doesn't need to look to know that the arrow is in Gale's hands.

The arrow stills in his grasp, and Godfrey feels the wound come alive as its raw and bloody edges rub against the still object. His throat strains with sound repressed, sweat beading bright on his dirty skin. A slow writhe works through him, heels driving into the blighted dirt, that Godfrey tries to repress as the knife begins to work agonizingly through the shaft. The pain rumbles between his ears. His voice sounds low in his throat, a choking grunt, as a deep breath rushes from him.
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