Aru Shah and the Land of Lost Hopes and Dreams

Healing what's broken.

Here is a longer chapter, probably not what you were expecting but I thought it was necessary.

Enjoy!

Aru's POV

No.

No, no, no no.

Please not now, not after that.

When I looked behind Brynne, I wished I didn't. Aiden sat there, laying against a tree, clutching his stomach. He was pale and sweating. I got up and rushed over. "Aiden, are you ok? What happened?"

He tried to sit up. "To answer your questions, no I'm not ok." I lightly slapped him. "Come on, I'm trying to be serious." He tried to smile, but it ended up looking more like a grimace instead. "Ok.. I um,... I was trying to land a hit and she hit me with one of her legs. I crashed into a very sharp rock and it cut my skin."

He pulled up his shirt and I gasped. There was a deep cut going from right between his ribcage down to his right hip. That rock had cut through almost to his organs. Thankfully it didn't go any deeper. But that didn't make the cut much better. I reached out to touch it, but once I did, Aiden flinched. "Sorry." Aiden shook his head. "It's ok. If you know what to do, just get it over with."

I ran over to where Mini had thankfully dropped her bag before she was... taken. The memories washed over me and I stumbled. I shook my head, trying to clear the memories out of my head. Not now, Aiden needs me.

I ran over to where Aiden was and rummaged through Mini's backpack, looking for a cloth and some sort of antibacterial cleaner. I put the cleaner on the cloth and looked up at Aiden. "Are you ready?" He looked pale and sweaty, but he looked determined. He nodded. I moved closer and started cleaning the cut. His whole body tensed and he held back screams. Brynne ran over and held him steady, whispering softly in his ear, saying that it was going to be ok. Once I was done cleaning I started to stitch him back together, for once in my life I was grateful for my mom forcing me to go to those sewing lessons. Something I'd rather forget. But I sent a little prayer of thanks as I finished that up. I started wrapping his torso in bandages.

And that's when my brain started to become really helpful and noticed the fact that Aiden's abbs look... good. I tried to block my face as best I could to stop Brynne and Aiden from seeing me blush. Thankfully I was done. I leaned back and swept the hair out of my eyes. "How is that?"

Aiden looked down at the bandages. "It feels better." He looked up. "Thank you." I blushed again, mentally facepalming, wondering if I would ever not blush. "Your welcome."

I turned to Brynne. "Are you ok too?" She nodded. "Yeah, I'm goon all I have are scratches." I handed her a new cloth with the cleaner on it. She took it and started to clean the cuts.

Aiden got to his feet and looked around, leaning heavily against the stone wall. There were slash marks from the battle all around us. "So what do we do now?" Brynne asked.

I looked at Aiden and then at Brynne. "I think it's time we had a chat with the Gods."

541 words.

My longest chapter yet.

Merry Christmas!