Hunt and Hunted

Chapter 4: The Change

   Oh. My. Gosh.This took me by utter surprise. I didn't know what to say. I hated when things like this happened. Just hitting you in the gut. I'm surprised I didn't fall over. Did he feel that way about me? Or was he jsut being kind? He did caress my hair. And shared his blanket with me. Now I truely was thinking about all of this. I guess there's a small chance I do feel that way about him. But I needed more time to separate my feelings.

   But this was a time that I knew I should hide my emotions,"Well thank you. I was really tired," was all I said.

"Anyone could tell you that. You basically slept for 2 days straight."

"Yeah, well one I sleep in. And two I walked maybe 10-15 miles. Maybe more. And then I did climb 50 feet into a tree and back down."

"Why did you do that?"

"I was..... just taking a walk, trying to get away for a little bit. Climbed as high as I could to get away from everyone just for a little while."

"I understand what you mean." I sat and finished my meal in silence. When I was done I walked into the living room where Rose sat on the couch staring off into space.

"Hey Ro." I sat beside her on the couch and ruffled her hair. She turned around.

"Hey Av. Well I guess you got some rest."

"I did. You guys didn't have to let me sleep in. You could've woken me up."

"Well you couldn't have done anything. You couldn't have hunted. It was raining, and we knew you were tired."

"Yeah. Are you tired?"

"A little."

"Well go get some sleep. I'll watch Gage, plus mom's asleep, too. Guess everyone was a little tired."

"OK, wake me up if you need anything."

"I should be saying that to you!" She laughed and walked to our room. It was quiet and relaxing again. I should change Gage's bandages again. We haven't done that in a while. I got up and started walking around the house looking for him. Not that we had many places to look, "Found you."

"You did."

"OK, I need to change your bandages again, and put more medication on it."

"OK." He followed me back to the kitchen. I got the things we needed out of the medicine cabinet. We needed the bandages, the herbs to soak his bandages in, and the medicine to put on his arm before we put on the bandages.

  I got out a basin and filled it with the herbs and put the bandages in it to let them soke. So while they were soaking I rubbed the medicine on his wound. He winced.

"Sorry. I don't mean to hurt you. I'm not quite as gentle as my mom."

"It's OK." When I was done putting on the medication the kitchen filled up with the scent of it. Smelled kind of like outdoors since these medicines are from the woods. We had to let the medicine sit for about 5 minutes before I put on the bandages, "Is it supposed to sting?"

"Just a little. But it will feel better once we get the bandages on."

"OK. Well it looks a lot better than it did before."

"It does. Probably because we cleaned it, and put on the medicine and herbs." After about 5 minutes, I got up and got the bandages. They smelt strongly of medicinces that I don't know a name of. I brought the bandages to him and wrapped it slowly around his arm. He winced slightly then his face had a little more color in it.

"That feels really good."

"Yeah. I know. I once got a huge cut on my leg from tripping. Luckily Rose was there and we weren't to far from the house. They did the same thing for my leg that we're doing for your arm."