Black Ice-Completed

Nyota groaned on first waking up, her aches and pains making an appearance instantaneously. The worst of the pain was her back and thighs, but as she thought that, Nyota couldn’t feel her legs and her head pounded while her left arm felt extremely heavy.

As she tried to get up, she was immediately pushed back down, “Not so fast Nyota!” Lily snarled behind her, “You’ve been out of it for two weeks!”

“Wh-what happened?” she rasped out and began coughing so hard her body began to spasm for several minutes. After it subsided, Lily brought over a glass of water to her lips and she sipped slowly. After she was done, Nyota fell back against her pillows and thought about passing out but instead looked at Lily expectantly.

“You don’t remember anything?” she asked in disbelief and Nyota scowled at her.

“I remember a lot. The one thing I definitely remember is that you and Avia were nowhere to be seen while I got chased by a pride of cats along with that saber. After racing from the house most of it is blank,” Nyota rumbled, her green eyes narrowed on the other woman.

Lily stared incredulously at Nyota, “We were right behind you and the pride! We were cutting some of the slower ones down. By Alta’s tit, we didn’t realize how many cat shifters there were for protection!”

Nyota raised an eyebrow at Lily’s use of the war Goddess’ name but ignored the blasphemy, “So tell me what happened! Did we lose the book?”

Lily made a disgruntled face but shook her head, “No we didn’t lose the book. Avia was able to get in front of everyone and you handed it off to her before she dove into the reeds so the cats wouldn’t see her. The last we saw of you, you had the whole pride chasing you through the swamp. We came back here to wait for you but after two days we started to get worried. It was easy at first to follow your trail of dead cats but then there was no more to follow. It took us another few days of trying to find you and when we did, we thought you were dead!” Lily said and smacked Nyota’s arm, “Don’t do that again!”

Nyota huffed as pain rippled through her body and rubbed her arm, only then did she notice the cast that was over her arm from wrist to elbow, “Is it broken?” she asked as she looked at it worryingly.

“No, its just fractured, but you should see the rest of your body. You’re going to have a lot of scars!” Lily said as she grinned. Scars were a thing of pride for the Amazons. The more scars you bared the more courage and respect were shown to the person.

“You have three big slashes from the Saber down from your shoulder blade to your buttocks on your back. There are several smaller ones across your ribs and one nasty one across your stomach. The bite on your thigh is healing nicely and won’t be bruised for much longer!” Lily said as she moved around, cleaning up bloody rags and dirty water. The Amazon was never a good housekeeper.

“I’m surprised that I’m not dead!” Nyota muttered as she looked at her stomach and saw a long scratch going horizontally across. While it was no longer seeping blood or puss, the edges were ragged and angry looking.

“When we finally caught up to you, you were still in your wolf. Nyota, you are one big ass wolf! We weren’t sure how to get you back home, but you shifted as we came near you. We can only assume that you heard us. You nearly did die on the trek home. Cats have a nasty scratch that can cause severe infections in the body. You were running a high fever and your wounds were beginning to fester. We had to flush them out many times with several different poultices. The Gods deemed you worthy to live!” Lily said as she offered Nyota more water to drink, her face showing pride that the wolf had lived and would be able to tell the tale.

Nyota was quiet for several minutes as she sipped the water, her mind going back to the book, “If we got the book, where is Avia? I thought she would be celebrating?”

Lily sighed and shook her head, “Avia is in Paraim getting drunk. It seems the book, that book, only documents the past five years. It’s book six of six so far. The book Avia is looking for is probably book three or four.”

She sat there staring into space at the thought of finding the other books and what it would entail. It had been luck to even find the location of the book that they had. Would Nyota almost die for the others?

“There’s more bad news or good news depending on how you look at it,” Lily said, making Nyota jump from being startled, “We looked for your aunt’s name and details, she wasn’t in the book either.”

Nyota closed her eyes as she leaned back against the pillows, grimacing at the pain in her back, she sighed, “So she hasn’t been sold yet in Marais or like I thought they took her up to Uscyte.”

Lily never said anything as Nyota thought things through. It was looking like it was time to leave Marais and to say goodbye to Lily and Avia. She was about to say something when Lily gently placed a hand on Nyota’s shoulder, “You don’t need to leave yet! Your aunt could still be in Marais. We haven’t checked Alabanona yet and you still need to heal! I never knew your kind healed so slowly!”

Nyota chuckled softly, “We are fast, big, relentless with not many weaknesses. The heat and healing slowly are our biggest challenges,” Nyota said as she thought about Veronica. Deep down, Nyota knew that her aunt was no longer in the swamp, but Lily was right, Nyota needed to heal before she tried to go anywhere.

“Well then you can just wait for winter to arrive. It's too hot in Uscyte to even travel at night!” Lily said as she looked at Nyota innocently with wide eyes.

She smirked at Lily and raised an eyebrow, “And it won’t be too hot to travel in a few months?”

“Not at night!” Lily huffed and walked way, “I’ll be right back with some soup!”

It was another two weeks before Lily would even let Nyota out of bed. She had been certain that she was strong enough after one week but the Amazon was relentless, so much so that Lily threatened to use the poison from the trisectus reptile.

It was a small little lizard but it’s venom, when applied topically, could numb ones body parts to the point of being painful when pressure was put on the limb.

By the end of it, Nyota was willing to chance the poison and bullied Lily out of the way as she made her way to getting out of bed. Her legs felt like jelly, there were bruises from her calves all the way up to her neck that were just starting to fade around the edges of the scars.

As Nyota made her way to the bathroom to start a bath, she caught her reflection in the mirror and gasped in surprise. When Lily had told her she had scars, the Amazon had left out a crucial wound. Along the right side of her face was a scar that ran down from her temple across her cheek and towards the bottom of her ear, a smaller scar ran parallel across her cheek. The marks were still quite angry and shouldn’t have been left exposed.

“I put a liquid bandage on those,” Lily said quietly as Nyota continued to examine her face, “the bandage will deteriorate with warm water or when the wound is healed. Right now it’ll still be too raw to take off.”

“Why didn’t you cover it?” Nyota asked and saw Lily shrug, “Its one of your traditions as an Amazon right?”

Lily gave a half smile and flipped her braid back over her shoulder as she turned away, “Better hurry and clean up. We’ve allowed Avia to mope long enough.”