Desiderio, she said then, and he stiffened. It was nearly more surprising to hear the full name than it had been to hear her name for him, some days ago. She had never quite been able to manage it, even that last year; now, it flowed easily into the air between them, and all in that soft, familiar-unfamiliar voice he found so unnerving. Gooseflesh prickled again up his spine, and the back of his neck – to which a few locks of hair were plastered with sweat – itched.
Very few people called him Desiderio. With Mother and Uncle Vicente in Muffey, and work altogether too busy to visit, it was only Amelie who called him by that name. Ordinarily, if a stranger – especially a woman – had said it, he would have been scandalized.
He was not altogether certain he was not scandalized now. But there were rather more important things than scandal to think about.
“I am not uncomfortable,” he replied. “I merely have a duty, and I shall fulfill it.”
At her next assertion, he grunted again, shaking his head, but said nothing. Perhaps she knew better than him how to tend to it – he knew very little about Brunnhold’s servants and their duties – but what did she expect to do, cuffed and blinded?
He stiffened as she stated then, quite matter-of-factly, that she would help. He heard a rustling.
“You will not –!” Another redshift crackled through his field, but he broke off.
She rather broke him off with a sudden, Ticks! and a hiss.
He had already started to get back to his feet, to resume his insipid waddling and rustling around in the grass – by himself, without an injured young woman wandering around to bump into or potentially lose. But now –
By Her deadly terrors, he was grateful she could not see the look on his face. He was very silent, waiting, listening to her shuddering inhale. His mouth had opened; he could feel it shaping the first syllable of her name.
His lips twisted instead. “You should,” he snapped, “and you shall. You shall wait right there for me, and you shall let me see to your ankle.” No matter how useful she wished to feel, now was hardly the time. A more restless girl he had never met, even back then. Had she grown in the least, the last ten years in –
Another, worse pang. This was not, he reminded himself, not that girl. This was not, was not… that girl had not spent ten years in…
“And do not think of slipping away. Among other things, banderwolves are native to this region.”
He clamped his mouth shut firmly, feeling around in the grass. It was a little while before he found it; he nearly lost hope. But then he felt a tangled strap in the grass, and he closed his fist around it.
“A-ha!” It was more a snarl than anything, if a pleased one.
He turned back, wincing against another lance of pain through his eyes. Another tear rolled down his cheek, and he palmed it away. “Can you stretch out your leg? Is your ankle numb, or only painful?” he asked.
It would have to be compressed, regardless, before she could walk, even with his – assistance – the thought prickled up and down the back of his neck, and he tried to put it off. That much he knew, at least. But what of her head? What of his? Their eyes? “Later, if the magister does not find us soon, I should like to apply rudimentary diagnostics,” he said matter-of-factly.
He had forgotten himself, and had evidently remained a great deal closer to her than he had thought. He reached out, brushed what must have been a shoulder with his hand, and fumbled. He cleared his throat.