Tylorie

Chapter 31.

Rushing toward the unmoving heap, Tylorie turned him over onto his back. Her sight took in the many bruises and small cuts scattered over his uncovered skin, she knew there would be even more underneath his clothes....

Shaking herself out of her stupor, she returned to the task at hand. Feeling his neck to try and find a pulse.

The beat was faint, but it was there. Letting out a sigh of relief, she then turned to making him more comfortable. Though comfort was was another thing lacking in the cell, among many. This irked her, but she refused to spend her time dispairing.

Just as Tylorie was inventing a way to clean Dallen's wounds an emotionless guard entered the hallway-like room outside their cell.
He carried first aid supplies, but did not take any action to interact on a deeper level than setting them outside the bars where she could easily reach the supplies, and then leaving.

As suspicous as it was, she didn't take more than a moment pondering before Dallen's condition came to her again foremost in her mind. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, at least that's what they say.

Grabbing the supplies, she took to cleaning and bandaging his wounds, the strange guard almost completely forgotten.
After doing all she could for Dallen she remembered him slightly just before falling asleep, the strangeness of it following her to her dreams.

------------

The girl woke to find Dallen sleeping peacefully, his deep rhythmic breathing calming her worries of him having too critical of internal injuries.

The unyeilding silent guard returned that morning to drop off more medicine and the like. He again refused to say a word, leaving Tylorie in hesitant gratefulness and confusion.

A substantial amount of time had passed since she had woken up for - what we will refer to as 'the day' even though there was no way of telling time in the windowless cell. - Dallen had slept through the silent guard's return and her changing some of his bandages. Though it seemed that most of his cuts were just surface wounds and would heal quickly. He started to stir, groaning as he felt the pain throughout his body.

The noise brought Tylorie out of her bored stupor of having nothing to do in a confined area. "Took you long enough." she grudged, returning to her tough facade, repeating her first words spoken to him in the cell.

Turning his head to the side following the sound, his eyes took in Tylorie. Sitting with her back against the wall, her knees up with her elbows resting on them in an almost relaxed dejected proud way. She gave the impression of someone with the world against her, but whith a taunting smirk it wasn't quite

"Sorry to have kept you waiting." He commented ruefully, but it sounded more harsh with his parched throat.

There was only a small dingy sink with a faucet in the cell that had some water continually dripping out due to shabby and old plumbing, making it a lovely home for the mold that lived there.

Tylorie lacked a container of any sort to put water in but her hands. And although how unsanitary the water was went without question, there weren't other options at the moment.
Tylorie had been drinking the water for the few days that she had been left down there without getting sick, so she felt slightly better about giving it to Dallen.

Though her hands were the only vessel, she wasn't the best at keeping all the water in her hands and not leaking through the miniscule cracks between her fingers.

As weird as it was to drink out of Tylorie's cupped hands, an odd sense of warm comfort settled on Dallen from her closeness and the tenderness of her actions, contradicting her gruff tone.
"Thank you." He said, his voice clearer now.

Tylorie shrugged noncommitally.
"How are you feeling?" She changed direction.

"If I said like a car ran over me, it might be the truth. But I don't know because I've never been run over by a car." Dallen admitted wryly.

Tylorie snorted in derision that he could still be so analytically sarcastic even though he could hardly sit up on his own. "You look it." Taking in his band-aid ridden state. As hurt as he had been, she still had had fun sticking the childish sticker like band aids all over him on his small cuts, and some bruises for extra measure. The amusing task had helped her keep her hands and mind busy and and off of her worry.

"I'm sure that's supposed to boost my self esteem," He stated sarcastically, "but for some reason, I don't feel that way."

His words brought a smile to her face, achieving their purpose.
"It was taken as it was meant to be." She prodded, a smirk making it's way across her lips.

"Of course." He said graciously, conceding the hidden battle in the most elegant way possible.