[Imladris]

Gorby

I notched an arrow to my cross bow and peeked carefully around. There were a few men fighting with the others but they were too far away to shoot. “Gorby,” came Anson’s, tense excited voice, “look at this.”

Turning, I saw that he was pointing to Lira’s wound. A scarlet river flowed in a deep gash from her jaw to her hairline staining the white hairs. It had almost taken out her eye. Dirt covered the wound and floated sluggishly along with blood that flowed profusely; her taught face was whiter than white, her eyes were closed and the mouth hung open. “Dear Eru…” I murmured. I glanced anxiously into Anson’s eyes.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said in an almost panicked voice.

I glanced at her and, prying the silver dagger that had fallen from her hand, I hacked a piece of her dress off and, handing it to Anson, said, “Stop the bleeding, Anson. Press down until it stops.”

While he did that, I kept a sharp lookout for enemies, but I’m afraid I was mostly in a daze. People could die here. Lira might die. I suddenly realized that I didn’t know any of the party very well. We had traveled together, grumbled together, and the only friend I had was Anson. “How is she?” I asked blankly. It was hard to sound concerned and look out for enemies. I gripped my crossbow harder. Glancing back, I saw that her eyes were still closed, that her breathing was slow and shallow. I remembered her as one of the gloomy ones, the kind that are wet blankets at parties. I looked at her again, and remembered the intuition of elves. Maybe she had felt the attack. Maybe she was troubled by other misfortunes. I shook my head.

“I can’t stop the bleeding,” Anson said.

I swallowed. “Just keep the pressure on it,” I muttered. What did they do when people couldn’t stop the bleeding. I didn’t know. I simply didn’t know. Out of all my readings, I had never studied medicine.

Eswen came to us, telling us to shoot the men with arrows. I heard her only numbly.

[ 1:20 PM December 05, 2003: Message edited by: Imladris ]