Broken Bonds

III. Pig legs

Warning:  descriptions of battle

"On the scale of one to ten, how much do you like eating pig legs?"

Rey expected the dumbfounded stare she got from the man sitting in front of her. But she still cracked up inside taking in his furrowed eyebrows and confused expression.

"What?" He asked.

"On the scale of one to ten, how much do you like eating pig legs?" She repeated, careful to say each word a bit slower than before.

"Oh, not very much," his answer came just as confused as before. "But thank you for asking. I guess?"

She nodded; her attention focused on the task before her. "What about chicken livers?"

"I am sorry," he said, "but aren't you supposed to ask me, how big of pain am I in right now? You know, something like, on the scale of one to ten, how much do you want to jump off the cliff right now?"

"You see...," Rey said, adjusting the final touches to prevent the bandage from falling, "I was hoping, I would distract you enough, you wouldn't feel any pain at all."

"Oh," he moved his injured arm a bit and his whole face lightened up. "That's better. That's much better."

"I am glad," Rey smiled at him. "But don't be fooled. Just because it doesn't hurt at the moment, it doesn't mean your injury magically disappeared. You should perform minimal tasks with that hand and do not let it anywhere near water any time soon."

From the looks of his injury when he first showed it to her, the guy was one hell of a lucky bastard to not catch an infection before they arrived. An angry red deep cut reached all the way from his elbow back to his hand. If Rey were to guess, it was caused by a good old-fashioned kitchen knife.

"Okay. No moving and no water. I got it. Thank you very much."

"And don't forget to come back tomorrow. I need to re-bandage it!" She had to yell after him because his newfound excitement caused him to jump out of the chair and ran away.

Rey hoped he was not too up high in the clouds to not remember what she yelled. She had no desire to run around the village looking for him.

"I prefer the belly."

A man in his eighties took the runaway's spot next. His movements were a bit slow, but he managed to sit down in his own time.

It was Rey's time to be confused: "What?"

"You asked him about the pig legs, so I assumed you were going to ask me the same thing."

"Oh," Rey giggled, "thanks for letting me know."

"Has to be nice being so young," the old man said, his eyes somewhere far away from here.

Rey almost blurted out that the man had to be at least forty, but for the man in front of her, forty was indeed young.

"Age is relative," she said instead, "you are only as old as you feel."

"That's very kind of you," the man gifted her with a warm smile of his own, "but if that's the case, right now I am at least two hundred."

"Oh!" Rey cursed as she remembered what brought him here in the first place. "Could you please tell me where you are injured?"

"My back."

She only noticed now, the safe distance he was keeping from the back of the chair. And she felt almost guilty as she asked him to turn around. But there was no other way."