Swab Me Down, Sam

Swab Me Down, Sam

Players

- Samara

- Magramba

- Castus

Note: Events occured 8/18/2015

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

St. Ninians: Priest's Chambers

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

The old priest's chambers are in shambles. The furniture is

charred, much like that which is elsewhere. The whole room is

coated in a layer of dust which stretches from room to room

throughout the whole structure. The room, which is drafty, also

has a leaky roof as evidenced by a dark puddle on the floor and

a soft dripping sound. A pile of charred and thread-bare

blankets in lying in a corner, the smell of vermin cleansed by

fire. Old pawprints can be seen in the dust.

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

The day had started much as the last two had ended: in rain and darkness, broken only by the brilliant flashes of lightening. But the summer storm was not a serious one, and the rain has slowed, over the past few hours, to a drizzle. Sam pads quietly through the church, shaking water droplets from her headfur and munching on an apple. "Mag?" She calls out around a mouthful "We should get back on the road soon." She pokes her head into the back room. "Mag?"

From his spot reclining on a charred altar, Magramba glances up between narrowed eyelids, lashes batting the air as he struggles awake. "Yeh, yeh, 'm comin'," he murmurs, pulling himself upright and scrubbing at his eyes, then instantly wincing and pulling his paws away from his face, which still looks a bit like a scratching post. The squirrel swings his legs over the edge of the altar and sits there, eyes closed and head bowed, looking a bit the worse for wear.

Seeing the battered and sleepy squirrel, Sam takes pause. "Er, are you alright...?" She frowns, knowing that he took a reaming in their earlier scuffle. "We'll get going after we check your cuts out." She amends her previous declaration and crosses to Magramba. Frowning, she reaches a paw out to examine his face. "May I?"

Magramba flinches back at first, groggily raising a paw to fend her off, but then relenting and sinking forward again. "Yes," he mutters, not antagonistically but wearily. The cuts are shallow, but blood is dried in patches all over his face, not just where the scratches have crusted over. "Feels bad," he advises her, waving vaguely at his entire head. "Weird," he adds.

The squirrel's concern deepens, and so does her frown. "Did you hit your head at all?" She certainly did, so it would come as no surprise if he did as well, especially since he got the worst of it. She cups his chin and gently tilts the face back and forth, clicking her tongue. "Alright, ugly, I'll be right back." She turns quickly and heads back towards the front of the ruins and her bag.

"No," Magramba replies, shaking his head back and forth and seeming to get a bit livelier as wakefulness purges the contributing factor of sleep from his mind. "But birds are... dirty. Especially those birds." Morally and physically. "I thought the rain might set me straight," he adds, scratching slowly at a spot of crusted scab.

Well, crap, if Mag has an infection, they could be stuck here for awhile. Sam curses under her breath as she rummages through her bag, pulling out a small sack of herbs and the like, as well as one of her water skins and a pot. She heads back towards the priest's room and sets the pot out, filling it with the water. "Okay, let's wash you up and then go from there..." She offers him an arm to steady himself if need be.

"Sounds good." The squirrel blithely ignores her offered arm, either not noticing or not caring. Mag sets his paws down on the edge of the altar instead, steadying himself as he leans forward to stick his head and face out towards her, the new scratches all friendly with the old. "Hope it didn't spoil my beautiful face."

"I think that you should have started worrying about that before this business with the birds." Sam offers, shaking out the clean cloth (which she totally remembered to grab back at her bag), and patting the older squirrel on the shoulder. "Pop a squat, let's get this over with." She kneels, dipping the rag in the water.

Sitting on the altar much like a doctor's examination table, Magramba stays where he is. "Why? Just... swab me down, or whatever." The squirrel has all the medical knowledge of a combat medic, but little else.

Samara rolls her eyes. "You're going to make this difficult, aren't you?" She grumbles, moving the pot closer to him but proceeding to dab at the crusted blood around the wounds. "So do you feel...sick?" She asks, trying to force some bedside manner in, but it is definitely something that she needs work on.

"I make everything difficult," Magramba replies, managing a grin and at least leaning forward a bit more for her. "Not really," comes the answer to her question, his fingers clenching down on the altar's edge both from the pain and to resist the urge to scratch at his face. "Do you? This can't be much fun."

"I can tell." She gently works at a crusty patch of fur, dipping the rag into a bowl of water that is growing increasingly red. "Well, I do make it a point to avoid touching other beasts as much as possible..." She muses, concentrating on a blackened scab. "But, really, what else would I be doing right now? Carrying a book?"

"Isn't that, like, your one purpose in life or something?" She /has/ made it very clear that the book is a very big deal, and that it /must/ be carried, and at /this/ pace. Magramba cranks out another rueful smile.

"Doesn't mean that I /want/ to be doing that right now." Which isn't entirely untrue. "I'm kind of nervous to see my father, honestly." She admits, gently washing the area next to his eye and frowning. The cuts aren't deep but, as was mentioned previously, the ravens were pretty nasty. "We should probably just take it easy and rest here today - excuse me for a moment." She heads back towards the doorway. "Castus! Can you boil some water?"

"'Fraid the old man will have you all set up with one of your many suitors?" Magramba seems to be warming to the sound of his own voice, chuckling softly at the joke. "My head's fuzzy, but otherwise I think I'm okay. Just bad luck, that thing with the claws." That scratching thing. The warrior glances around the room while Sam is busy, spying his sword behind the altar. "There it is."

"Well just let me know when it's done." She hollers towards Cas's general direction before returning to her 'patient'. What is he staring at? Sam shrugs it off and returns to continue dabbing at his face. She's covered most of the dried blood and scabbing, but it still needs more work to keep infection from taking hold.

"Why do we have to stay here all day?" Magramba's eyes are beginning to rove around the room, occasionally returning to Samara's face. After a few moments of silence, he jumps back to his previous joke. "You /must/ have suitors somewhere."

Samara's frown, while it's been consistent thus far, manages to take further hold on her muzzle. "I don't have suitors anywhere, and Castus doesn't count because he's an idiot, now hush and follow my finger with your eyes." She moves her paw, finger raised, back and forth slowly in front of his face, watching his pupils. Cas makes an appearance with the pot of boiled water, but Sam shoos him away pretty quick and moves to her bag of herbs, setting to work on brewing some botanical concoction to ease the swelling and purge anything festering in the wounds.

Castus wanders into the priest chambers, having just got done with some morning foraging to supplement their trail rations. "If you wanted to find religion, I'm not sure this is the place to start," he quips upon seeing Magramba.

"Just wanted to see what your life was like as a boy," comes Magramba's quick reply, wincing as Samara continues to dab at his face. "It's been... enlightening."

Castus chuckles. "What, living in squalor and stealing from the holy men? Yeah, that pretty much nails it." He sits down near the two of them. "I'm sorry I wasn't there," he says after a moment. "It sounded like you could've used help."

Samara doesn't look up as Cas strolls in; she's too busy grinding a mystery blend of herbs into a paste, mixing in some of the hot water and then scooping a glob up on her fingertip. "This will sting a little." She warns, smearing the paste over the cuts. "Don't worry about it, Cas. I asked you to get firewood, no one could have foreseen what happened." She pauses to turn and, very seriously, inform him: "But next time, you get to be the bait." Blink. Deadpan. She returns to Mag, sighing. "Did they get your chest too or just the face?"

Magramba grimaces as the poultice is applied, but that's all. "I don't know, not too bad, maybe?" It's all very vague, and the squirrel peers down at his chest now, moving his clothes around to get a better look. Is it just rips and tears, or... "Okay, yeah, a little. He died pretty quick, though." Vindication.

"Anything I can do to help?" Castus asks, leaning forward eagerly.

"Alright, take off the shirt." Sam sighs, stepping back to admire her handiwork on his face and wring the rag out to start anew on his chest. "What's a little nudity among friends, eh? Carefully, though. And, er, yeah, Cas. Can you dump out that nasty water and fill up a new one? It doesn't need to be boiled, but we'll need that again soon too. My waterskin is over there -" she motions vaguely over her shoulder at a jumble of her things. "There should be enough in there."

"Fine," Magramba grumps, undoing his cloak, then shirking off his duster, untying his jerkin, pulling it off, undoing the yoke of his shirt, and pulling that off. By the time he's done, the pile of clothes on the floor is almost as big as he is. These scratches are not the first, but they are the newest. Obviously.

Castus hops up and gets the said 'nasty water.' He takes it over to a nearby window and dumps it. "Eww," he offers by way of opinion. "Don't sound so uncomfortable," he remarks at Mag, refilling the basin with the waterskin. "Me and Sam have seen each other naked. Might as well round off the trio."

It's a surprise that anything got through his layers at all, and while Magramba is undressing, she rolls her eyes at Castus "/Not/ -" Sam feels the need to sternly clarify "- in the way that he is implying." She shakes the rag out once more before pushing it into the hot water (not the water that Castus just refilled), soaking the rag for a moment before wringing it out and tackling, what Sam assumes will one day be, Magramba's newest scars. "This one is deeper than the others, we should put something over it when this is done." She notes aloud, dabbing at it.

He did say it was only a little, after all. But maybe he was wrong, as she's now announcing that one is particularly bad. "It's none of my business what you crazy kids get up to," Magramba notes, in as parental a tone as he can manage without laughing.

"I wasn't implying anything," Castus retorts, digging around for the bandages Sam will inevitably ask for. "Just, you know, you, me, without clothes, same general vicinity... simple statement of fact." He holds up a roll of bandages. "You're really good at this," he says to Sam. "I didn't think botanists got into so much trouble."

Grumbling at Castus, Sam rubs at the wounds with a surprising amount of tenderness for somebeast who stabbed a bird in the eye the day before. "What can I say, I get a lot of practice." She replies, a note of bitterness biting at the edge of her tone. "Pass me the herbs, will you?" She nods towards the little green glob on its small pallet.

"Alright, thanks," Magramba says gratefully, looking around while she's distracted and grabbing his duster up off the floor. The squirrel scoots down the altar and hops off, slipping around Samara and sliding the long coat on as he makes for the door. "I'll be back," he calls over his shoulder, snatching up his quiver and bow as he passes them. "Going to look for water," comes his voice from the sanctuary.

Castus watches Magramba slide away in his typical gruff manner. He leans back against the altar and watches him go. "I think that guy'd try to walk off *dying*, some days," he says.

"I - wha- Get /back/ here!" She calls, uselessly, after the retreating squirrel. "You half-brained, cross-eyed, little /skunk/ you!" She drops the rag, throwing her paws up in the air. "No, just wander off into the wilderness, I wasn't in the middle of anything!" Grumbling and huffing, she bends to scoop up the medical supplies scattered around the room. "Finish that up yourself!" She harrumphs, still grumbling to herself.

Castus bends over to help pick up the scattered herbs and spices and whatnot. "Don't feel too bad, he does that with everyone," he explains. "I've seen him get up and wander around after getting stabbed enough times to know that he's just a party pooper about getting injured."

"An idiot, you mean?" The squirrelmaid replies, huffily, followed by further, unintelligible grumbles. Her things cleared, she doesn't bother putting them away. The old grump can tend to his own wounds when he gets back from his pout session. "We've been delayed so he can rest...It would make me feel better if he were /actually/ resting..." But the fight is slowly leaving her as she resigns to a day (or what's left of it, at least) of forced leisure at the ruins.

Castus wraps a paw around Samara and pats her on the shoulder. "Well, St. Ninian's not exactly a luxury suite, but I think we can afford one day's stop. I don't think your father would want us showing up like blown horses with our legs about to fall off. This place actually *does* remind me of home... a little bit. Less charred and not as much of a history of death, though."

"I could find some good plants for the collection, at least..." Sam mutters, relenting. She barely slept the night before, if she slept at all, so a day of stillness is actually the best thing that could happen. "Where /are/ you from, anyway?" She asks. "And don't touch me, unless you're planning on losing the arm."

"Out east," Castus explains, removing his arm. He goes to the front of the church and sits down again, looking out into the forest. "Bout as far as Collinsel. My earliest memories are of the orphanage. Blackbriar, that's what it was. It was a renovated church, like this one. Terrible place." He shudders. "Weren't for my friends there, I'd never have made it through sane. Pretty sure our caretaker... he was this big, fat otter named Shanka... did it purely for the welfare. He got his own little building all to himself and an army of minions to do his bidding. *If* he could catch us first."

Samara frowns. Another beast would feel a twinge of guilt for threatening violence upon one with such a tragic past, but, then again, Sam borders on the edge of heartless. She clears her throat. "I'm sorry that you had a rough past. How did you get out?" She settles in next to him, sitting cross legged.

"Ran away," Castus says with a shrug. "It's your only option besides 'sit around and hope that some day someone will really really *really* want you as their kid.' Hint from a pro: it doesn't happen outside of Redwall." He leans back against the wall of the church. "It's not like I'm *suffering* about it or anything. Just how my life was. Least I wasn't born into a vermin horde or something. Anyway, Shanka was *lots* of fun to mess with. We were always coming up with short-sighted plans to get rid of him, like the time we tried to trap him in a box and ship him across the sea. But we forgot we didn't have a hammer and nails to keep him inside, since we weren't allowed anything sharp except silverware. He got out and put *us* into a box for the rest of the night instead."

She could have guessed as much, she hadn't met many adoptive families in her travels (though she makes it a point of avoiding dibbuns in general). "He sounds terrible. Do you know what happened to him after you ran off? An ironic demise, I hope?"

Castus shakes his head. Only now does he seem a little affected by his story, pursing his lips and looking down. "Nah," he says. "I never went back. Never bothered to check in again. I always promised myself I would. Sort things out, you know, bring whatever kids are left to Redwall, be a hero... been... five years already?" He shrugs. "Can't do it myself, though. And thinking of it makes me nervous."

Samara is taken aback, this seems like too important a deed to be left undone because of nerves. "It's not too late, you know. If it's as horrible as you say, then this is something that needs to be stopped. Fear is not an excuse." She pulls her tail into her lap, absentmindedly braiding clumps of tailfur. "If you would like, we can go after we leave Southsward. You are helping me, and I can return the favor."

Castus shakes his head, continuing to look dead ahead and down at some little grassy patch of ground. "It wasn't just fear. At first it was. But then it became relief. And then it became guilt. I was selfish. I was so... *relieved* to be away. It felt like going back would've been taking a step backwards instead of forward, you know? I couldn't stand the idea of going back, even when I thought about what good I would do if I did." He shakes his head, plucking at some grass. "I dunno if it'd still *do* any good."

"Of course it would do good. If there's a corrupt orphanage happily operating out there, and you have the knowledge and means to do something about it, then you should." She shrugs. "I can't tell you how to live your life, but it seems like doing nothing would be the shameful thing to do." She pushes herself upright and dusts at her pants. "Or live with it for the rest of your days. It's really up to you." She tells him, her callous attitude making an appearance.

Castus seems mildly prickled by that, a little narrowing of his eyes and a twitch of his ears, but otherwise he remains mostly motionless. "... You make it sound so easy," he mutters.

"I go off of what you've told me." She shrugs and then stretches. "I'm going to go find plants and make sure Mag isn't dead in a hole." She pauses, looking awkward. "I'm, er, sorry if I offended you, earlier." And with that, she drops off the hunk of stone and disappears into the forest.