“Will he be alright?” I asked the tribe lady as I trailed her steps and walked the short distance from where Dahr’s massive tent stood close to the one she and her mate were sharing.
I took a second to look around and take the day in. The entire camp was placed on a sandy area by the beach, with rocks and heavy terrain protruding through the region. There was never a town settlement here due to the heaviness of this terrain, which made it impossible to build on.
The town of Enderflagg was mostly famous for its hefty stone conglomerate, which had attracted many sculptors and artists throughout time, due to the quality of the rock and the ease with which it could be carved, so much swifter than marble.
Seeing these people here, struggling to make a living on a rejected land brought a layer of sadness into my chest. They had to work from dawn till dusk and struggle for every meal, sweat in the harsh sun and carry supplies for miles. I didn’t envy their lives, though, I supposed they wouldn’t want to be in my situation either.
“Don’t worry,” Karisha finally replied once we got to the comfortable shade of her tent. “The firelight helps him to recover completely,” the tribe lady said as she moved around the tent, fumbling to find this or the other.
“Is that some sort of magic potion? Is that why he is recovering so quickly?” I did not lose a breath to ask, needing to know what my eyes had witnessed.
Karisha stopped then, slowly turning to me with a tight smile. “There are many things I can’t tell you, unfortunately. I am already on thin ice from the other day.”
“Can you tell me about that? Can you tell me why?” I pushed, desperate for any sort of information that I could get my hands on.
The woman gathered all her necessary accessories on a small table and, once she was done, she started working on her completed look for the day.
“Dahr did not expect you to behave, as far as I’m told. He thought you would try to escape in the first few minutes and would have to get back into the tent. When he saw you at the edge of the camp…” she sighed while tilting her head to fix the second earring, “let’s just say he did not expect you to be there.”
I huffed, angered by the situation. Why even give me a bit of freedom if all he wanted to do was take it away? Though, mytrack record did show that I never followed orders, so he must have wanted to play the card of the benefactor and blame me for not taking advantage of the freedom he gave me.
“I will order a change of clothes to be brought for you and organise a bath. And then we have to look at that arm,” Karisha grimaced when her eyes dropped on my swollen wrist. I looked at it as well, noticing that the veins had become purple and long lines of scratches adorned most of my arm, covered by green hues.
“A bath?” I asked instead, unsure if I had heard her correctly. “A proper bath?”
Karisha chuckled at my enthusiasm. “You deserve one, you might have saved our camp leader’s life,” she dipped her chin to me slowly, in the only verbal thank you I knew I would get.
Her gratitude, however, was more than obvious.
After a plentiful breakfast that we shared together, Karisha had two tribe men carry a bronze tub into the tent and a few females filled it with hot water and soap, until a proper bubble bath was formed.
As soon as I received the go ahead, I launched myself into the tub and allowed my body to rest for the first time in a week. I let relaxation pour over me while Karisha pampered me further and shared some of her creams and oils with me and even washed my hair. We had a long chat about my curls and how I trained them to stay out of the way and we compared beauty secrets, chatted about skincare, fabrics and any other light conversation.
Once I got out of the bathtub and dried myself, we had lunch together and continued chatting, both of us deeply enjoying this bonding over girl-talk. Karisha was as sweet as I initially suspected and was not afraid to share all her secrets and opinions, desperate to have another woman to discuss what Iassumed she had to keep to herself in a camp surrounded by mostly men.
There were lots of women as well, but from what I had seen, they all had specific tasks and treated Karisha like a supervisor, a position which she put herself in every time she was outside, probably with the need to display herself as a strong tribe lady.
With me however, she let herself be. And I enjoyed that. I enjoyed the company, the normalcy of chatting away and eating with another woman, the insignificant secrets she let drop from time to time.
Once our bellies were full and we indulged a lot more than we should have in sweets, my new friend offered to treat and bind my wrist for me.
“Will that solution work on me too?” I dared ask, even though I already guessed the answer.
“It only works on Grannicus,” she said without admonishment and invited me to join her on the bed, where she had brought gauze, binding and an oil bottle.
Her gentle hands started massaging my wrist and, even though it hurt, I enjoyed the sensation and let myself be pampered once more. I didn’t know how long this gratitude would last, so I planned to take as much enjoyment from it as I possibly could.
“Don’t you have a camp medic?”
“We do,” Karisha replied without distracting her focus from where she treated my wrist. “Dahr however, cannot be healed with natural medicine.”
I kept silent, hoping that she would tell me more.
“Dahr is a gentle soul,” she sighed. “He punishes himself a lot, and he doesn’t realise how grateful we are to have him among us.”
“I tried to shout for help,” I felt the need to say as she moved to bind my wrist. I didn’t want her to think that I didn’t try.“No one seemed to hear me. No one came,” I explained. I wasn’t expecting Karisha to smile at my confession.
“Dahr told Markos that you like to sing at night. I assume he didn’t want the others to hear, so he sealed the sound.”
