(no subject)

[eggos]

The cat is tense and still in El's arms, wrapped in her light jacket. It growls steadily, but doesn't struggle, and doesn't bite. She isn't sure if it's because it knows she's trying to help it, or if it's because all the fight has left it. She wouldn't be surprised to find it's the second, though.

She'd come across it while the children were still trying to kick at it. Their commotion had caught her attention and she'd gone to see what they were doing.

El has hurt animals, before. She'd lifted a squirrel and thrown it against a tree, hard enough to kill it. But she'd eaten that squirrel; she hadn't done it out of cruelty, or to see what would happen. She'd done it to survive. That isn't what these children were doing. Two of them had sticks, and they were blocking the cat's escape as it tried to hide under and behind a dumpster. Two more children were kicking rocks and dirt and other things at it. And when the cat had made a mad dash away, one of the children had kicked the cat, so hard it hit the dumpster and sagged to the ground, dazed.

Eleven shouted — maybe a word, maybe not. She swung her arm and sent three of the kids flying into a heap a few feet away. The other cowered, staring at her in fear as she glared at him. The cat had laid there, unmoving but panting fast. The kid had reached for it, and Eleven had broken his wrist without moving. He screamed and ran, hugging his arm to himself. The others, still stumbling from being thrown, chase after him.

Then she'd run forward and gently touched the cat.

It's a shabby thing, with a ragged ear and a crooked tail. Its fur is messy, dirty, and patchy. One of its legs lays at a wrong angle, and it's as she begins wrapping her jacket around it that it begins to growl.

She doesn't know where to take it. She knows who to take it to, but she doesn't know where she is. She can find out, though. She sits, cradling the cat in her lap, and pulls her phone out to start up the white noise. She places it on her shoulder, then squeezes her eyes shut. It isn't as perfect as wearing a blindfold, but it works well enough. Slowly, haltingly, Daine appears in the Void. The room she's in comes next, flickering into perception around the flashes of color dancing across her eyelids. Slower than she'd like, she finds out where Daine is. She snaps her eyes open and pockets her phone, then carefully stands, still holding the cat.

It struggles now, just a little, and she gently shushes it before going towards Daine. She can help. She helped Cranberry. She can help this cat.

Comments

[wildmage_daine]

It's pure coincidence that Daine is at the clinic, midway through an afternoon shift. There hasn't been much in the way of magic required yet today, not beyond the usual, smaller tasks of talking to creatures and soothing their anxieties.

She's glad of that when she feels the injured cat drawing near. She's in the middle of feeding a few of their boarders when a sympathetic flare of pain almost makes her leg buckle, and she has to steady herself on the wall with a wince. Mithros, it's a bad one, and she makes her way out to the front desk to wait.

Megan's covering reception, and takes in Daine's drawn expression before sucking in a sympathetic breath. "Clear your schedule?" she asks wryly, bending over her computer.

"Mmhm," Daine replies, frowning at the door until a surprisingly familiar person steps through it.

"El?" Daine crosses the lobby to look at the bundle the girl's holding, reaching out with her magic to give the poor cat a warm wave of reassurance. "What happened?"

[eggos]

"Mouthbreathers," she says, eyebrows creased into a worried furrow. The cat struggles feebly, but stills as Daine draws closer. Her own nose is bloody, a steadily-darkening dribble visible below one nostril. "They were hurting it. I made them stop."

She thinks if Daine can remember her name, then she must remember the things they talked about — like her powers. She never told Daine exactly what she can do — just that she could move things, or find people. But there's so much to just that vague explanation, and even she knows that breaking someone's body with her mind is more complex than 'moving things.'

She carefully lifts the cat-bundle and looks at Daine hopefully.

"You can heal it? Like Cranberry?"

[wildmage_daine]

Daine glances up at El's face, a little surprised by the pointed insult towards the folk that hurt the cat, but not about to object to it. It's then that she notes the blood, and searches the girl's face a little more closely for other signs of damage. It doesn't look as if she's been struck, though — there's no redness or swelling, no scuff marks. There's just that sluggish trickle of blood, and while she can't guess how El wound up with a nosebleed, it at least doesn't look like a bad one.

She shifts her focus back to the cat, shaking her head more to clear it than in response. "I think so," she says, carefully accepting the bundle. "It'll take longer, though. Do you want to wait here?" She doesn't want to just plop down in the middle of the lobby to work; there are too many distractions. Someone else might just leave, considering their duty done, but she's not sure El will want that. And she has enough sway here that she could take El with her into the back without anyone fussing.

[eggos]

"Yes," she says, and even steps closer, like Daine might try to tell her to leave if she doesn't answer quickly enough. "Yes, I want to stay." She casts around for a place to sit, but before she gets very far, she looks at Daine. "Can I help?"

She doesn't know how she could, or if it would be like before, with Cranberry. But this place is different than a street. Does she even need El's help?

[wildmage_daine]

El steps forward eagerly, asking if she can help, and while Daine can't think of anything specific that El might do, she recognizes that desperation to be involved too well to make her wait out here. Besides, El's already shown that she can sit quietly and let Daine work, so it's not as if her company would make things harder.

"Here, come with me," Daine says, starting down the little side hallway and nodding at one of the examination room doors. "Can you get that for me, please? And then lock it once we're through." It'll save the poor cat some needless jostling, and prevent any of the other vet techs from accidentally walking in on them while she's trying to focus.

[eggos]

Eleven doesn't rush ahead to get the door. Instead, when Daine asks, the door swings open ahead of them, and Eleven holds it open until they pass through the threshold, when she closes it and flips the lock without so much as a backwards glance.

Later, she might think back and wonder how she could have done it differently, but not right now. She's so worried about the cat, about making sure that Daine can help it the way she'd helped the bird, that she doesn't think about trying to hide this part of herself right now.

There's a bench against the same wall as the door, and Eleven looks at it before deciding not to use it. She wants to stay standing, in case Daine needs her help with anything else.