abyssum_invocat | psl: Winter Court

In the icy waste that is endless winter, there is a small black smear against the snowy, blinding white. How it got there is anyone's guess. From a distance it looks like a scarf, or a discarded coat against the monochrome landscape, but come closer--

--and it's a girl. A human girl, dressed in black and seeping red into the snow that cushions her, lips and fingers beginning to turn blue from the cold. She doesn't move except to twitch when she gasps in a painful breath now and then when nudged by the white mass of fur at her side. He (a dog, massive and muscular and built for winters much like this) is attempting to keep her warm, whining when his owner doesn't respond.

He lifts his long, elegant head, and howls into the wind.

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From:

iminthebook

The howl attracts attention, and word passes. And harry, in the area on errands for Mab, goes to investigate. Seeing a girl, far off,He uses Winter to send him slingshotting across the fabric of Winter, appearing as if out of a portal, glimmering light dropping him before her and the dog.

"It's going to be okay." He speaks with authority, and warmth radiates from him as he raises his staff. "Fuegos gentlecus" The warmth spreads around them in a bubble as he approaches.

From:

abyssum_invocat

She doesn't move, bloodless lips barely parted to give room for breath, and the slow trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. It's so cold that her skin hurts and feels burned, but the icy temperature has numbed the pain from her midsection. The blood sluggishly welling from a gunshot wound to her belly is so dark it nearly camouflages the ragged edges of skin beneath her shirt.

Sinthia can hear the voice that, she assumes, causes the warmth, but her eyes are almost frozen shut from the reflex tears on her eyelashes. She can't see him.

Avalon, on the contrary, can. And he is no stranger to people wanting his owner hurt. As Sinthia shivers, he growls and raises his hackles, baring an impressive set of canine teeth to the newcomer. His sounds are a cue to Sinthia, rasping out what might be words, or the attempts at them as she curls weak and unresponsive fingers in his fur. "H...el...p," she barely manages to whisper, blood staining her teeth, and fear and pain her voice.

From:

iminthebook

"I'm here to help." He moves toward her, warily glancing at the dog. "I mean you no harm."

He keeps coming and nods to the dog."I need to get you mistress somewhere warmer and safer." A howl sounds in the waste, a dark and broken and unnatural thing.

"Now."

He raises his hand and speaks again and a rip in the air opens with a soft hum, and through it, a dark room shows, lit by moonlight and a nightlight. Harry eyes the dog.

"I need to pick her up." And he moves to do so, hoping he doesn't have to put the dog out. He will, though, without a moment's hesitation.

From:

abyssum_invocat

As soon as she's moved, Sinthia lets out a low, pained cry that would have been a shriek if she could have put that much force behind it. Avalon growls and barks, snapping his teeth: but when her arm hangs limp as her body is lifted, he doesn't attack, rather folding his ears back and whining as his teeth gently close around Sinthia's hand.

"Wolf...calls," she grinds out on the tail end of a gasping breath, nearly delirious with blood loss and pain and cold. The howl makes her think of Fenrir, and is there a more fitting end for her? She opens her mouth to elaborate, to try and communicate something clearly urgent, but there's simply no more strength left to keep her alive and awake at the same time.

Her eyes flutter closed, and do not open again this time.

From:

iminthebook

Harry leads the way into the portal, waiting until the dog is in with them, and closing it. A Way to his new place is a nice benefit of his job.

He carries the girl hurriedly to a bed, not caring at the mess and pats the bed next to her. "Come on. There's room." He nods to the dog as he hurries to the side to get his medical kit.

Carefully, he starts to cut away her ruined clothing and examine her, using an oblong block that has enchantments on it, made for him by a friend. It should tell him what, exactly, is wrong. Besides the obvious blood loss.

From:

abyssum_invocat

Avalon wastes no time in jumping up on the bed, licking Sinthia's face and getting as close as is possible to his owner.

As the clothes come away, it becomes more and more obvious that Sinthia has several injuries, the major being two gunshots to the abdomen: one through all the way and one somewhat more problematically not. She has tiny cuts and scrapes all along the palms of her hands and will need anti-inflammatories for her knees, but perhaps the biggest of her problems is invisible to the unaided eye. Behind the many dotlike scars hidden by her hair is a brain that's been toyed with like a rubik's cube.

The warmth is seeping in slowly, taking away the worst of the chill and restoring some of her color again. It's also likely to make her very combative when she awakes.

From:

iminthebook

Harry gently cleans her wounds, and strings up a drip for saline and universal donor blood. He is glad he stocked up from Father Forthill before that source dried up.

He gently bandages her wounds that are small, and then sewing carefully on the all the way through ones.

And he pulls out a single rose, golden in color, and smiles gently as he lays it on her skin next to the wound that is not all the way through."Siphrus."

Borrowed, owed magic swirls, and golden light fills the room, and the bullet pulls out of her, the worst of the damage slowly repairing, even as his own energy flows into her.

Drained, he treds carefully to get her some sandwiches, and lays them next to her, before he settles into a chair, and closes his eyes. He can do no more until he rests.

From:

abyssum_invocat

Sinthia sleeps deeply for the longest of the healing processes, unaware of her surroundings or the lack of cold in all but the deepest part of her mind. But the magic takes hold, and her skin and organs begin to knit back together before she awakes.

That happens quickly, with a start as she jerks herself awake making the dog yap and whine as she sits up. "Where am I?" she asks, unconscious of her state of nudity, and only worried for where she is and what's happened.

From:

iminthebook

Harry, who was dozing after the latest time of checking her dressing, starts awake, and to his feet, before holding his hands up and to the sides and sitting back down. He slips on a pair of battered spectacles before meeting her eyes. The spell on them would keep either of them from a soulgaze, which would be too much for her right now, and really he did not need another.

"You're in my apartment, in Chicago, and you are safe. And don't move around and tear your wounds open again. That took a lot of work and I will be very annoyed with you if you ruin it."

he waved a hand at her, and down her front, not thinking of her clothed or unclothed state himself, too worried she will freak out and tear her wounds open. "Can you remember what happened last? How you ended up in the Winter Faelands?"

From:

abyssum_invocat

Disregarding the strange man's warning, Sinthia scoots herself as quickly as possible to the head of the bed, letting Avalon in front of her as a barrier.

"Don't come closer," she says, hands lifting and flaring at Harry as if to hold him back. "I don't know you."

Usually serene brown- and blue-flecked eyes dart around the apartment, searching for a way out or an apparent weapon if needed. It's clear she's more than a little panicked, but keeping herself in moderate control for now. Being in pain doesn't help. "I was shot," she murmurs, hands going protectively to where the wounds were. "I don't know what you mean. Winter."

From:

iminthebook

"I'm not going to harm you. I won't hurt you, or come closer." Harry settled again in his chair, hands still held out and to the side, and he sighed, eyeing her.

"You were shot, yes. I don't know by whom, but you were dumped in the Winter Desecretion, an area of devastation in the Fey Lands of the Nevernever. Whoever tried to kill you did not want you to ever be found."

He had started doing some research into who had tried to kill her, including examing the bullet which he had reclaimed from her body, by magic. He was nowhere near done, but he had started. Hew did not like someone trying to kill someone else. And he would find them.

In the meantime... he sighed as he looked at her again.

"I healed you. The Winter Feylands is where the Winter Fae, one half of that long-lived race, exist and hold power. I am the Winter Knight, which means I hold some power there, and I protect mortals, as much as I can, from the Fae, which is what alerted me to you being there. I rescued you, and healed you, and have been treating you and watching over you, ever since."

From:

abyssum_invocat

The dog, already blocking most of Sinthia's body with his furry bulk, leans on her possessively when Harry's words of explanation do not make her relax any. She has no idea how she ended up in some other world--the last thing she recalled was the muffled pop of suppressed gunfire, and a fiery pain in her belly, and the freezing, howling wind of teleportation.

She'd never known exactly where it was she went when she disappeared, only that the things she'd seen in that place were enough to make her keep her eyes closed most times.

Sinthia took a deep breath, finally looking away from Harry and breaking the disturbingly focused gaze on him, and seeming to shrink as she relaxed, burying her hands and chin in Avalon's fur. The dog seems to tolerate this well, and licks her ankle in encouragement. "Valery shot me. We were in Little Odessa. He saw my crown," she murmurs. "But he--" she shook her head, sending her dark hair swinging against her cheeks, "I don't know after that."

From:

iminthebook

Harry leaned forward a little, and nodded. "Valery. in Little Odessa." he spoke the words carefully, memorizing them.

"I didn't see a crown when I found you.I'm sorry." he frowned, and plotted a return trip in his mind, for himself, anyway.

"For now, concentrate on getting better. There is plenty of time to dig deeper when you have more strength."

He rubbed his chin. "Would you like some soup? And some pajamas" He had a cup of soup, a little magical item he had rigged up, waiting in the next room. And he still had some pajamas, reclaimed from a storage unit that Susan had used. He looked down as he thought about them. He hadn't meant to hang on to them, but somehow the box they had been in, with pictures of Susan and her friends, had not made it out with the rest of her stuff. They'd be a little big on this woman, but they would at least provide some security if she wanted it.

"I'm called Harry. What are you called?" he did not ask her name. Right now, that might not be wise. Especially if this Valery was still looking for her. His place was warded, heavily, but names sometimes got through wards.

and if you play, you play for keeps

psl: Winter Court

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