Vessels of the Stain

You Can't Push Us Away

Another night before the woodstove.  Another night spent mimicking a family that each of them had lost or left behind.  Another night, and now Lee was drawn into the group.  Now she had her own set of bandages.  Now Lilah sat outside the small circle of firelight, leaving Tristan alone in the circle with the rest of them.  Lee didn't think the others noticed her stealing little glances toward her.  She sat on a bed and stared out a window, her expression unreadable.  

Lee had told no one about the encounter in the street, about the plump woman Lilah had met.  There was no one she could tell.  

And now here she was in the circle of bandages and antiseptics.  Here was Adelind offering to wash the wound on her chest and Emory pinching her with his toes.  Lee raised her arms above her head to let Adelind and Emory unwrap her bandages.  They moved slowly, passing the growing roll of gauze back and forth to one another.  Pain crackled across the wound as they exposed it to the air. Raw nerves bristled against the cold.  The edges tried to contract. Lee had seen it in a mirror.  Her chest blossomed.  A bloom carved in to it to make a luscious sort of wound.  Now her fingers drifted toward the wetness of it, and were slapped away.

"You want an infection?" Adelind said.

Lee dropped her eyes away and Adelind knelt over her, poured water over her wound.  It was warm from the stove, and they were careful with her.  They all remembered their first wounds.  Lee gasped at the touch of the water anyway.  Without thought, she shoved the other girl away, pushed her back, made her drop the pitcher of water.  Silence fell as it hit the floorboards.  Water puddled around them, at the center of their circle.  Lee's face crumpled.  She felt it fold, but she didn't let herself cry.  Her wound stung in the air.

Without meeting their eyes, she found a hand towel in the basket of supplies, began automatically to mop up the spilled water.

"I'm sorry," she said when she had finished.  

Her legs were shaking when she rose to leave the circle.  She tried to make her steps silent as she walked away past Lilah to sit in the stink of the kerosene heater.  Wound still naked, she sat with her chin to her chest to stare at it.  Conversation resumed before the woodstove.  Her hands would not stop shaking.  Lee knew she was being stupid, she had known this would happen when she came here.  Now, with the pain impossible to ignore, she did not feel transcendent and serene as she was meant to.  There was no promised surge of euphoria.  She was merely cold and hurting and she didn't think she could go back to the circle to bandage her wound again.  She wasn't even sure she could do it by herself.  Moments stretched by and with each one she felt more trapped, there by the kerosene heater.  Probably, she was unwelcome in their circle now.  Perhaps she would even be asked to leave Exemena altogether.

"Hey," said Tristan then, and she looked up. He held a fresh roll of bandages in one hand, antiseptic salve in the other.  His hair brushed the base of his spine, and his skin was covered in spiraling whorls of scars.  Not so different from what she w0uld have.  

"You can't go to bed with that uncovered."

"I know." She forced herself to speak.

Tristan knelt before her, much as Adelind had done.  He didn't bother to be as gentle.  Lee flinched as he brushed the salve over her skin, ducked her head and did not meet his eyes as he all but embraced her to wrap her wound again.

"I know it hurts, " he said before he left her.  "That's why you're here.  You can't push us away when we try to help you."