Of Green and Butterflies

I was so shocked by both the speed and violence of what had just happened that it took me a minute to decide what to do after they took Nanahan away. One of the other child-minders, a male whose name I don’t yet know, took charge of Ghee. Not that she really needed minding at this point. Her eyes were fixed in the direction they’d taken Nanahan. She looked miserable.

I followed her gaze and fidgeted with my bag. My hands were shaking, and it took me a couple tries to get the zipper to work. I was terrified Nanahan would die. Without really thinking, I grabbed my first aid box and jogged after where they’d taken her.

I’m not really sure what I was thinking I could accomplish, but I couldn’t stand to sit and wait to hear that the worst had happened.

There was a small circle of clan members around her when I got there. The Kan and another, younger Azu were crouched on either size of her. One was carefully peeling a thick, black, leaf-looking thing and squeezing liquid from it along Nanahan’s wound. It fizzled and produced tiny white bubbling liquid where it landed. Some areas were positively foaming. The Kan was following the other’s progress with a thick length of woven cord. He would lay a pale, soft, woven mat-like object across the wound, and was wrapping the area tightly with the cord after. The wound continued to bleed. The odd gauze-mat was green and sopping in seconds. Nanahan had her head covered with one hand and was making horrible wheezing moans. The crude binding didn’t seem to be helping her at all.

Kohric was suddenly beside me. He was actually leaning against my hip. He was shaking his head and making little keening sounds in the back of his throat. Even to my alien eyes, he looked upset. I crouched down to put myself even with him.

“Not good,” he murmured to me. “Blood comes strongly, still. I have much sadness.”

I opened my first aid kit and… stared. I didn’t know what to do. Surely something in it should be of use. But what would help and what would do more harm? The biofoam was the first thing on my mind. Surely that could seal the wound before Nahanan bled out. It should work with her skin well enough, but then again it wasn’t just sealant. It was also loaded with coagulants and antibiotics. It’s well known that taking antibiotics kills beneficial bacteria in the human body along with the bad. I was terrified I’d destroy some vital symbiote, or I’d poison her, or perhaps she’d react differently to the coagulants and I’d end up giving her the Azu-nah equivalent of a stroke.

I eyed the thick packet of butterfly clips taped to the top. They’re included mostly as an alternative for those poor shmucks who are unfortunate enough to be allergic to the biofoam, or whose wounds aren’t deep enough for the biofoam to really work.

It was worth a shot.

I shredded the wrapper and held the instructions up to Kohric. Thank the listening gods Earth has so many damn languages that instructions like this are pictures. “These will close the wound. May stop the blood,” I was speaking English, but he seemed to get enough between me and the pictures to understand. He stood up on his hind legs and began speaking rapidly to the Kan. He grabbed my shirt sleeve and pulled me into the circle with Nanahan. The Kan began nodding and started carefully taking off the binding he’d been placing. Blood welled up. I didn’t know if the fact that it wasn’t spurting was a good sign or not. Do Azu-nah have arteries the same way we do? The green blood was somehow terrifying to me. I’ve never been squeamish with human wounds. But green is the color of growing things, of life. Seeing it pouring out like that, it looked like Nanahan’s very life-force was spilling out of her.

The younger Azu was still squeezing the bubbling liquid on her. I started clipping, and clipping, and clipping. The Kan watched and then began clipping from the bottom up. I felt like her wound was ten meters long. Her blood was everywhere. My hands were soaked in it, it was under my fingernails, and it was starting to crust along my wrists by the time we finished. I ran back and grabbed one of the fat rolls of gauze from the kit and, at the Kan’s direction, carefully wrapped the worst parts of the wound. Pressure on the wound. Have to keep pressure on it, I was thinking. Of course, I was out of my mind, since pressure on an Azu-nah injury may have been a death sentence.

But the bleeding seemed to be slowing, and after it had begun staining the top layers of gauze, it finally, finally stopped.

Nahanan was still breathing (shallowly and raggedly), but she wasn’t moving. “She sleeps from pain,” Kohric explained. I’m surprised she hadn’t passed out when she’d first gotten here, honestly.

It was clear we couldn’t continue today. The clan all seemed to understand this at once, and the atmosphere shifted from waiting to action. Everyone immediately turned to the task of setting up a safe place to camp right around Nanahan.

I used precious water from my canteen to rinse the worst of the blood off my hands. And I’ve been scrubbing at them with damp grasses. Nanahan’s life is still all over my hands, though. I hope we’ve managed to keep enough of it inside her that she’ll be okay.