Put That Kid Down

Chapter Eleven

"How did you get so deep?" She had been something like ten feet in and David was a little awestruck. Nerris shrugged above him.

"I cast an enchantment of speed on my shoes and I think I might have got a natural twenty," she lisped in an explanation that meant nothing to David.

"I see," he said sagely instead of asking her to try again in English, setting her down when they got to the safety of the clearing, "Try not to do it again. I'll text Gwen to get the first aid kit -"

"Yeah, I already did that," Max said, waving a phone at him.

David patted his empty pocket belatedly, and yes, the phone in Max's hand was his. Now that he thought back, David did remember leaving it on the table. He beamed and held out a hand for the mobile, "Good thinking, Max."

Nose wrinkling at the response, Max put the phone in David's hand, "You're supposed to be mad when someone steals your stuff, David."

"How can I be mad at you for thinking ahead on how to best help your fellow campers?" David shot back with a grin, ruffling Max's hair to the boy's half-hearted grumbles before turning back to Nerris and smoothing her ruffled cape on her shoulders, "How bad does it hurt?"

"Not much," Nerris shrugged, "I missed most of the Dark Bramble on the way in; I guess I had advantage on that dex roll with my speed boost."

Another camper David didn't understand. He tried his best not to break out in a cold sweat at the idea that soon, every kid who visited Camp Campbell would be like this.

"It's because I levitated you before you could hit directly," Harrison broke in, sounding agitated, "If you weren't so irresponsible with your magic use, I wouldn't have had to."

"Uh, I think I'd know if any foreign magic was used on me, Harrison," Nerris replied with a snort and a roll of her eyes, "You're just sore you were too weak to hold the line against my enchantment."

They fell to bickering as David fussed and straightened Nerris's appearance, looking for any deep cuts. Gwen arrived on the scene just as David pushed Nerris' curly hair back behind her elf ears and pronounced her mostly unharmed.

"She just needs a little antibiotic spray on her arms, and maybe right here," he informed Gwen as she approached, not knowing what Max had told her and brushing just under the reddening line at her temple to point it out, "After her tumble, she's lucky to just have a few shallow scratches."

"Well, that's good," Gwen murmured absently, already digging through the kit and supplying what David had asked for. He sprayed the scratches on Nerris' arms, dutifully repeating the chant she demanded of him, then cupped a hand over the eye below the scratch on her face so he could spray that, too, without getting any of the antibiotics into her eye.

This break in the argument had Harrison shuffling his feet.

"You're okay, though?" He said, trying for a statement and ending in a question.

"Yeah," she replied flippantly, "I'm fine."

Bluster abruptly recovered, Harrison crossed his arms over his chest pointedly, "Thanks to...?"

"My metaphysical roll to dodge."

The argument resumed and they wandered off to the other children to rejoin the game.

"Yeah, which little shit's bright idea was Red Rover in front of a patch of raspberry?" Gwen asked, watching said doomed game but making no move to fix it.

"It was like a mob mentality made them do it," David informed her dutifully, "I had little to no choice but to supervise it or let it happen without me. Plus, the first half an hour went well enough."