Safe and Helpful

Chapter Five: Accusations

Kit's POV

I finished cleaning and sewing up the boy's wounds quickly.

"This may hurt," I told him, taking out a bottle of whiskey.

"You think?" He muttered.

I opened the bottle and poured some of the contents over the sewn-up gashes. He gasped and tensed up. It seemed like he was about to scream.

"Just trying to make sure it's clean," I told him, wiping off the alcohol.

He turned around, and I handed him the whiskey bottle. "Drink, but not too much," I said.

He took a sip and immediately spat it out. "The hell is this?" He asked.

I laughed and took the bottle. "It's whiskey. Alcoholic beverage," I answered. "If you'd rather have something else, we have beer and champagne. We also have vodka, but in my personal opinion, it's stronger than whiskey."

"Do you have anything that doesn't have alcohol in it?" He asked, slipping a clean shirt on.

"Yeah, we've got a lot of fruit juice and tea, and there's spring water if you want some," I told him. "Most of it's over in the ice box, and Camel can show you where all the cups and stuff is."

The boy nodded and left to find Camel.

"How do you think he got those?" I asked Cassie once he had left.

"The monster, duh," she said. "That thing caused more destruction than a dragon. So the things attacked him and he got hurt. How else do you think he got them?"

I gripped the hem of my shirt, twisting the corner. "It brought down a range of destruction, Cass. It was like a nuke. If the boy was in that pit, the middle of the range, why is he alive?"

Cassie just stared off in space in silence.

"I saw bodies, Cass. Animals, maybe other creatures. They looked like they were dead. Hell, I saw a wolf leg without a body. Those gashes were nothing compared to fallen trees."

Cassie kept silent, and then just swam down to her little cove at the bottom of the pond. I was half tempted to go after her, but I decided against it.

Instead, I stood up to go find Camel. I had things to do, like find the boy a place to sleep. There was also the aftermath to clean up and deal with, as well as trying to find out what had caused it in the first place.

"So, what do you think?" Camel asked me as I stepped inside her tent. She was fixing it up, sweeping up coals from the stove and cleaning up every fallen thing.

"Of what?" I asked.

"The new boy," she said. "He's strange, he's got scars, and he's pompous."

I hesitated. "I think there's something he's hiding."
She scoffed. "Obviously. He hasn't said a word to me since he got here."

"Well... what if he did the damage?" I blurted. "He was in the middle of the crash zone and he got out hurt, but alive."

She stopped moving, staring at the floor. "Well, that may be good and true," she said calmly, "but we still need to help him."

I nodded and ran out of the tent, rushing off to find the boy.