This content might touch on topics that are sensitive or triggering for some readers. Trigger Warning for mentions of blood, gore, trauma, ptsd, flashbacks, other potentially disturbing themes. Reader discretion is advised.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, green eyes fluttering and rolling, the babe does not realize she's being dragged. Out of the lagoon, and all the way down to the shore - her blood leaving a little trail to follow, the scent strong. The scent accompanying it? Badger. A black and white creature has her by one of her ankles, dragging her and shaking brutally every now and again.

Eventually, it drops her - right in time for the choppy waters of the sea to splash over her and set her wounds to screaming. She comes to with a howl of pain, sputtering and shaking her head. The badger takes off, snickering and enjoying the moment; Minna is left in a place she's never been before. Dread creeps up, tightening her shoulders, as she realizes she's not in the lagoon anymore.

Surely she wouldn't get in trouble when she'd been dragged away against her will? But now, she isn't sure how to get back. Follow the scent of her own blood, maybe? As she stands, though, she realizes that's a bad idea - she's still actively losing blood, and with a soft noise of panic, her body slumps back to the sand all at once. Too dizzy, in too much pain, she can only hope that someone finds her - and that whoever does isn't a threat.

It was on her way back from visiting Hakon that she found the trail. Immediately she is concerned, the scent of lion mingling with predator making her heart race with the anticipation of what she might find. Because of course she follows; she is a healer, and it is second nature for the peach toned druid.

Badger would normally not be a concern for a lion, which leads her to believe that the one that is bleeding is too small or too sick to fight off the scavenger. Vicious though they were she knew most badgers would not take on a healthy lion -- a cub, though? Fair game.

Her stomach plummets at the thought, and even more so when she hears the scream of pain. Calypso arrives in time to see the black and white creature skittering away, and to discover the bloodied child slumped on the sand. There is a vague flicker of recognition -- this is the child that Hakon had spoken of, the one in his charge! -- but she shoves it away and focuses only on the task at hand.

A mouthful of kelp is scooped from the sand and shook off as she loped near, skidding to a stop and dropping the pile as she studies the girl. "Shh little one, I be here to help." Her thick accent is clear even in the hushed words, as she lowers herself beside the girl. "I need to stop de bleeding, aye?" But really she was not about to wait for a response. The wounds on her leg were cleaned out by the sea, and she does not hesitate to maneuver the kelp to wrap around the cuts. A temporary fix, but already she planned to bring the child to where she knew she had more herbs stashed.

Art by Yumpy

This content might touch on topics that are sensitive or triggering for some readers. Trigger Warning for mentions of blood, gore, trauma, ptsd, flashbacks, other potentially disturbing themes. Reader discretion is advised.

It is not only her leg that is damaged - as she lifts her little head to peer at @Calypso's familiar form, the damage to her face becomes evident. There are bites scattered across the rest of her as well, but her cheeks and over her left eye had seemed to get the worst of it aside from her ankle. You, she mumbles, struggling to get her eyes to focus. You... know Há...ton... her head drops back to the sand, relief making her dizzy and weak. Safe, Minna mumbles, almost to herself. Safe.

One pudgy paw moves, clinging softly to Calypso's leg.

the rainforest den is too far, but calypso had spent the first weeks in amaryllis in the nearby tunnels. there is one particular cavern tucked off of one of the tunnels that still has her storage of herbs, hidden away in a dry nook that she checked on from time to time. mentally she thanks whatever gods look after the world that she had thought to look in on her way to the lagoon. there are painkillers, there, and herbs she can crush to stave off infection.

"aye wee one," she murmurs, "safe." her heart thudded hard in her chest, clenching almost painfully with the need to protect and coddle the small girl. growing fast but still little, still preciously young, and calypso remembers hakon's words and mentally prays for the right words to say to the child.

in time.

"i need to bring ye to de tunnels, just d'ere," a vague gesture she knows will be lost on the half-conscious girl, hoping the urgency in her voice makes the intention clear. "i will help ye," firm and with no room for argument; no matter what she was now responsible for the child. she bandages the worst of the wounds to stop the blood and then does not hesitate to scoop up the girl. she shifts her so that minna lay draped across her back, hoping against all hope that the child co-operates so that she can get her to tunnels.

Art by Yumpy

This content might touch on topics that are sensitive or triggering for some readers. Trigger Warning for mentions of blood, gore, trauma, ptsd, flashbacks, other potentially disturbing themes. Reader discretion is advised.

As @Calypso lifts her, Minna does her best to cooperate, wiggling until she's draped across the older woman's back. Perhaps, if she were not so wounded, she might be vicious - might be cruel, as is her usual attitude. But... for once, she doesn't want to spit vitriol at anyone. She wants... comfort, and this lady seems like the type to offer that.

She reminds the girl of her mother.

Not in looks, or accent, or anything so obvious as that - but in the warmth she gives off, in the way she so quickly and firmly comes to Minna's aid. For the first time since that day, the flashback Minna gets is not of the rhino and its aftermath; it is of her mother's face from Before. She'd been beautiful once, her mama. Before. After, she'd been...

Minna does her best to repress the memory, but it comes anyways, eliciting a quiet moan of horror. It feels like she's back there all over again, trapped in a body too small to help, left hiding and watching, becoming candy-coated as her parents died. Her paws feel slick and sticky, and her breath starts coming in soft, distressed pants.

Fear clings to her like oil, slick and slimy and refusing to let go. Trapped in her own personal hell, it takes her several minutes to remember she is not that tiny babe anymore. When she finally returns to herself, it is with a strangled noise as she catches sight of the blood on her paws.

They are larger paws than the ones in her memories, but still; the similarity nearly throws her back into her mind. Harsh breaths escape, and she instead turns her gaze to the scenery to avoid getting stuck in the memories of that little lost child. She's not that girl anymore, refuses to be. That girl died with her parents. But if that were true, you wouldn't dream her memories.

Would you, Minna?

Minna, thankfully, does not protest. In a flash she is off, moving as quickly as she can, faltering only when the sickly sweet scent of fear and anguish fills the air.

Calypso almost stumbles, almost stops, but instead she presses forward faster. There is a rushed urgency to her stride, a need to be somewhere safe so that she can help -- and already she knows it is not only healing that the girl needs. There is so much that needs to be done and she feels a lump in her throat that is foreign to the normally composed woman.

They are there quickly, the tunnels are not far, but it has felt a lifetime to the sea-marked druid. Calypso lowers her ever so gently to the floor of the cavern, thankful that the soft grasses and scraps of fur are still here. Others have come and gone, she can smell them, but the cavern is empty and the herbs are still tucked away in the nook. There are a dozen memories tied to this place (some with the man they both knew and loved) but she does not think of them now.

Instead she curls up against the girl, keen to start healing but needing instinctively to offer some comfort first. Quiet murmurings spill from her lips, guided by some unspoken need, hums and snippets of song that her own mother used to give. The blood has mostly stopped and while there is some urgency to fix the wound she is certain they can wait a minute or two. The cry the child had given from her back spoke straight to Calypso's heart, and she hoped she was not out of line to give a different kind of healing.

"Tut tut," she murmured, a bare whisper in the cavern, "I've got ye."

Art by Yumpy

This content might touch on topics that are sensitive or triggering for some readers. Trigger Warning for mentions of blood, gore, trauma, ptsd, flashbacks, other potentially disturbing themes. Reader discretion is advised.

Bloodied child curls up against @Calypso, sage eyes drawn again to sticky paws. The blood, she murmurs, her voice soft and broken. It's like... it's like watching them die all over again. Hákon and Calypso had spoken, briefly, about Minna - about what she'd lost - but there aren't quite words to adequately describe what she'd seen that day. It's different, too, hearing it from the source; hearing the details, and listening to the haunted tone.

I was covered in it, she whispers, eyes wide and glassy. The rhino... tore them apart. Her gaze lifts to Calypso's face, but Minna isn't really seeing her - she's seeing the past. I don't know why it was so angry. It came after us. Mama... put me in an abandoned den. She told me to hide. And to her everlasting guilt and shame, she had. It doesn't matter to her that she'd been a baby; she shouldn't have sat there in that den, shaking as violently as she's shaking now.

She should've charged out and done something - anything but just stand there shaking and watching. I remember... the blood hit my paws first. When the rhino left, I tried to wake them. They were in pieces. Her voice is a bare thread of sound, body shuddering with stress and pain. They wouldn't wake up. And then Hákon was there. Her grasp of English has improved vastly since her and Calypso's first meeting; still heavily accented, but quote understandable. He spoke, and I...

Tears glimmer in her eyes, and she finishes in a broken whisper, I thought he was my father. I thought... I thought he'd woken up somehow. But then I turned, and he was still in pieces. It had been such a raw moment, her heart squeezing with such vicious pain that her only recourse, her only option to survive, had been to convert that pain into anger. She is still turning her pain into anger, still running from feeling it; running, because she cannot bear to hurt that badly from a wound that cannot be stitched.

She cannot bear to mourn them, because mourning them means accepting that they're gone.

oh.

she is quiet, listening, drawing the child more snug against her as minna bears her heart and soul. it is only them in the tucked away cavern, with the child and her trauma. it is only them, and calypso feels suddenly unequipped to handle something so... heavy.

her heart tears in to a thousand pieces at the revelation; hakon had only given her the surface, but minna bears the horrors of that day on a deeper level. and how could she not? it had been the day that three lives had ended - her parents, and the child they had loved so intensely. no matter how minna may try the child of before was not the child of now -- no wonder she was so angry.

"oh wee one," she murmured in the wake of the words, a soft crooning noise that rises from a place in calypso's past. the comforting sounds of a mother to a child, a role she aches to fill. "yer mot'er's last act was to save yer life," as any mother would do, a testament to how much she had loved the girl, "she must have loved ye very much."

carefully she curled her neck around the girl and licked at the blood on her fur, wishing to wash away the bits that had clung and stayed behind. wishing it was so easy to wash the trauma from her mind. "my mot'er told me d'at d'ose before us watch from de sea and de skies," if only the stars were up she would have tried to show her, though she cannot imagine there is anything she could say to help.

"i am sure yer parents watch over ye and i know d'ey would be happy to see you live." her life was precious to those that loved her, and calypso made a mental note to remind the skagos that he needed to show the child a little more of that.

Art by Yumpy

I didn't live, Minna tells her, tears slipping down her fuzzy little face. I'm not... I'm not who I was then. Her body had survived, but the child that had been saved is not the child that lays shaking in @Calypso's arms. My parents are with Vellen in the sea now,

Minna says quietly, sniffling softly as Calypso grooms her. I should have done something, she whispers, seeking to bury her face in Caly's fur. Little paws cling to the healer, tremors rocking the girl as she weeps her pain into warm fur.

A piece of her broken heart seems to mend with her tears.

After a while, she quiets, exhaustion pulling at her. Between her fight with the badger, her subsequent wounds, her memories, and her tears, she is absolutely exhausted. Too tired to turn to anger, so instead she simply stiffens and averts her face, ashamed to have wept all over what is practically a stranger.

Still... Thank you, she says, her voice soft and aching. I haven't been held in a while. It had been... comforting, the way her mother's embrace had always felt. It's the closest she's been to feeling normal in a long time, and she's... grateful, even as her heart aches with the knowledge that she probably won't get this again.

She didn't realize how much she missed being held.

"ye did," she assures, her voice soft but leaving no room for question. "ye have air in yer lungs, d'at is enough." for now, at least. determination gives birth to a new goal, though, for the druid wants nothing more than to help minna find her way back to herself. her true self. free of the anger that fills her little body, masking the grief and the trauma she is too young to comprehend.

she sobs again, and the woman pulls her closer, tucked tight against her side, uncaring of the tears or blood that stain her fur. the mud and salt that live permanently there will only have company, anyway.

there are still wounds to tend but they can wait however long they must. overnight, even if the girl was not ready. the cuts are not deep enough to be life threatening, and those that were are covered and bound and that will last for now. "if ye had tried ye would have died, too," finally she responds to the protest, trying to imagine a tiny babe facing off against the viciousness of a rhino. calypso knew well the force of the horned animal.

"anytime ye need it, minna, ye tell hakon to bring ye to me. i'll make sure de oaf listens, aye?" a lighter tone, almost teasing, but there is a vein of truth to her words. she would speak to hakon, she would work to ensure that the child had what she needed most.

tenderly, gently, she sets back to grooming the girl, cleaning the smaller cuts and taking note of those that would need something more than her tongue.

Art by Yumpy