Vivalius was tending to his griffins in the stables when Daphne arrived. She came through the window in a woodsy tangle of fragrant roots and branches, forming a jumble that blocked out the light outside the window. The jumble split and drew back, and a green-skinned, willowy woman stepped out, cradling a limp form, both of them stinking of blood. Reeking red mortal blood.
"Daphne," Vivalius said. "Why have you brought me an injured mortal?"
"Half-mortal," Daphne corrected, putting the girl down on a bale of sweet-smelling hay to reveal snow-white hair and a gruesome, empty eye socket. Vivalius grimaced at the sight of it, then paused and sniffed the air.
"Daphne," he repeated. "Why is this dying child here?"
"Because you would heal it and not hurt it. You know why, Viv. You smell it, don't you? And just look at it."
Vivalius nodded with a sigh and crouched next to the girl, placing a broad palm onto her eye socket, her red blood staining his skin. A pulse of warmth flared out of his hand into the girl's body. "Blood loss," he said. "I can heal her wounds but I cannot replace the blood she has lost. She will take time to recover."
"It-she- came out of the city like this," Daphne said. "It was muttering, but nothing was chasing it. Still, eyes don't fall out on their own. Perhaps we can... return it, once it is healed."
"Thank you," Vivalius said in a low voice.
Daphne nodded. She stepped back into her tangle of stems and branches and was whisked out of the window.
Vivalius turned back to the shallowly breathing girl.
YOU ARE READING
On Mount Alyppia
FantasyArista is a beggar-girl, living on the streets of Kalterra. The streets are kind to no one, especially to half-nymphs like her, and she has been unloved and unwanted all her life. But things in the city are not as they seem, and soon Arista's life w...
