Dark Fangs: Forbidden Fugitives

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Drake jolted awake with a gnawing tenderness pulsing throughout his body. A salty mucus glued his eyes and mouth shut, irritating his dry, chafed skin. He groaned in burning pain, wanting to go back to sleep so badly, but he knew he needed to get up and drink something and at least try to find food of some sort.

I just want this burning pain to go away! he whimpered inwardly. The dried blood, saltwater, and sand had produced the greatest horrific excruciation that Drake had ever experienced in his life. Every part of his outward body felt tight and raw, and his insides felt inflamed and almost rotten. The bites from the Compies last night stung as well--not to mention the headache that throbbed in his skull like the footfalls of the I-Rex, and the nagging misery in his spine.

I wonder if I actually broke it. Drake wondered, prodding delicately at his eyes to abrade the crust. He recalled with fear and agony the night he'd injured his spine. He'd been running from the Indominus Rex and he'd staggered down a steep, moist slope in the jungle as he ran. In his blind panic, he'd slipped and spun only to slam himself into a large, mossy boulder, spine-first. Since he'd had a whole lot of adrenaline rushing through his system then, he hadn't stopped to try and look at it, or feel for anything broken, and the adrenal stress hadn't let him. He'd continued to run swiftly away from the Indominus, likely wounding himself further as he provoked the heavily bruised bone column.

I can't deal with a broken spine right now. I just can't. He thought, clenching his teeth, and wincing with the pain that brought to his jaw.

"Ahhhhrrr!" Drake yawped, his eyelids ripping free of the yellowy crust they'd been agglutinated together with seconds before. He closed them instantly again, both in pain and blindness as new light flooded his vision. He'd barely gotten a look into the white-stoned tunnel he had slept in to see Swifty and Coco gone--to Drake's horrible, abrupt dismay--and wonderful, bright morning sunlight streaming into the cave.

"Swifty? Coco?" murmured Drake, blinking slowly to open his glassy cobalt hues again.

Sunlight filtered in through the higher tunnel entrance, behind him, golden and soft, yet very bright. It didn't feel particularly warm, but Drake wasn't paying attention to that now. As his eyes scanned over the stone passage, he realized all of the discarded Compy bodies were gone. This rattled his bones and constricted his throat.

Either they weren't really dead, he began to realize, or they were dragged away by Timmy...with Swifty and Coco.

Drake's stomach began to churn, agonizing and flaring. His breathing, as painfully raw and shallow as it was, began to intensify and rasp against his rib cage. The roof of his mouth felt suddenly pressurized, and his eyes grew wide, still glazed with an ill film.

"Swifty!?" Drake rasped, the grading of harsh sandpaper scraping against his throat. "Coco!" Drake pulled himself up on the cleft at his back and coughed horribly. "Swifty--"

His vision swam, and a pounding blast of pain exploded in the back of his head. Drake shut his eyes and gripped his cranium with his bruised hands, pain battering him everywhere. A soft whimper passed through his clenched teeth and cracked lips, sizzling with torment. He so desperately needed to get out there and find Swifty and Coco, he knew it--but he'd never had such abominable agony shooting through every fiber of his anatomy. It was a different kind of pain, and one he couldn't handle.

In silent, agonizingly briny tears, Drake sagged back down, his sore spine pressed against the two-foot eminence at his back, and he wept. His crying was both in pain, and grief, and part of it was exhaustion.

I just want to go home! I want to leave Sanctuary Island! he thought, sniveling and choking on his sob. I'm done with this stress and pain and stupid misery! I want to leave and go back home! I want to see my family again....I want to disappear right now!

Why can't this all just be a nightmare!?

Drake curled into himself against the crag in the cave and mourned painfully for a long while, and as he did so, the pressure in his head grew until he was crying more in pain than lament.

But he was stopped when a soft limb reached out to brush his wrist.

Drake sniffed deeply, peeking his glassy eyes open in question. To his confused, but delighted surprise, Coco was perched right in front of his face, and his beak was stuffed with an array of herbs he hadn't a clue anent.

"Coco?" The word exited Drake's mouth in the form of a wet, rasping cough. He wiped his face and immediately regretted the action, proceeding to receive a stinging pain.

Coco dropped the plants, which unbeknownst to Drake, were mint leaves, marigolds, some specie of the valerian root, and chamomile flowers. The Cockatiel chirped gently and shoved the herbs Drake's way, then flew off in a burst of wings.

Drake pushed himself up and sniffed again, pressure building in his sinuses and skull. He winced weakly, and looked down at the beautiful vegetation, studying it all sharply.

Marigold I know...and I think that's chamomile, but I don't recognize the roots of that stringy plant...aaaand...mint? Is that mint? Maybe....Drake shakily cupped his hands around a sprig of the emerald-green, textured leaves and lifted them to his salt-dried nostrils. It took a moment of sniffing the broad green leave, but Drake noted quickly that the thick green leaves were indeed mint, and after a moment, Drake realized his sinuses had released some of their sharp pressure.

Weird....At the sound of someone or something approaching, Drake's eyes darted up to see none other than Swifty herself padding lightly into the tunnel for Drake, her muzzle, like Coco's beak, filled with an assortment of herbs.

Drake's eyes lit up, and he almost greeted Swifty verbally, but his throat made sure he did not. He smiled instead at her and gratefully watched as the Collie sighthound crossbreed dropped thick stalks of aloe vera, many ginger roots, and a bouquet of lavender.

Drake's eyes began to water again. "Thank you," he wheezed, clasping a hand softly to his throat. He didn't really know what all of this was, but he knew it was to help him. The psychological half of it had already taken his mind off his headache.

A moment later, Coco fluttered laboriously back in with a pitcher plant of water, and a load of dry grass and twigs. He leaned the water against the passage wall and arranged the grass and twigs to resemble a fire pit.

Coco did this many times, bringing back better fire fuel and more water, and Swifty joined in once she'd finally gotten Drake to break open a broad stem of aloe vera and rub the thick juices inside onto his dry skin, to mend the chafing and burns. Drake soon got exactly what they were trying to do, and realized two things: One, the lack of washing the salt and sand out of his wounds and clothes, and off of his skin, had created raw wounds, similar to erosion, and had dehydrated him basically overnight.

And two: He needed to rehydrate and use the herbs to his immediate advantage, and to clean the salt and sand off of him, before the abrasions became untreatable.