Again In Neverland

Chapter 24: Heat of the fire

"There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke."
-Vincent Van Gogh

LILITH'S POV:

Peter winces as I move the hair on the back of his head.

"OW!" He shrieks.

I roll my eyes, "Stop whining. I have to see if you're bleeding, otherwise we'll have to go back and find a second Neverleaf."

He huffs and crosses his arms, "Just do it quickly."

After the whole debacle with the Isilo (which I'm still having trouble grasping, by the way), Peter and I began our return to the tree house. Unfortunately night fell faster than we anticipated, and Peter insisted that we stop until morning. He cautioned that one could easily get turned around in a jungle this dense at night time. Grudgingly, I'd agreed to stop. I can't help but feel like there's a ticking clock in the back of my mind; counting down the minutes until it's too late for Jonathan.

I mean, the whole point of this journey had been to save Jonathan. And now that we have that life saving capability, we're just going to take a break and possibly allow him to become sicker?

We should keep going, in my opinion, but I didn't want Peter to throw a hissy-fit. I'd already almost killed him once today, I guess it's only fair to let him rest.

We'd walked for a good few miles until we found a workable place to build our camp for the evening. Peter had gone about finding sticks for a fire, whilst I was in charge of making a fire pit. I collected fist-sized rocks and arranged them in a semi-large circle. When Peter returned, he looked impressed. He dropped the firewood inside, bent down, rubbed two rocks together and bam. We had fire. As Peter stood up, I saw him struggle to stay upright. I knew something wasn't right so I insisted he let me check his head. He had, after all, been thrown at a tree like a rag doll.

As I parted his hair and examined his head, I breathed a quick sigh of relief. There was only a small scab of blood, which meant that he wasn't going to bleed out and die. I gently ran my finger over the surrounding area and Peter pulled away, putting his own hand over the area.

"Alright! You're done!" He announced as he scooted away from me.

I put my hands on my lap, "Well the good news is you're not bleeding. There's a tiny scab from where a cut must have already healed, which is good. But... that doesn't mean you're completely alright. There's a pretty big bruise around the cut, and you could have a concussion or something. Plus the scab might get infected so we should probably do something about that."

Peter stared at me, dumbfounded.

"How exactly do you know all this?"

I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, "Let's just say I watch a lot of TV, and it's beginning to pay off."

"You what?"

"Nevermind." I sighed as I stood up.

I walked over to a bush nearby and ran a finger over it's leaves. They were moist. Carefully I plucked a few that were soaked with water and I gently put them down, away from the fire.

I knelt on the ground next to Peter,

"Turn around, Peter. Let me help you."

He still had his hand pressed to the bump, "What if that'll just hurt me more than it'll help?"

I shrugged, "I'm only using the leaves because they have water on them. I figure at least it'll clean the scab of anything that could lead to an infection."