25 Vhalar 716
It had been a few days since Wendell had been here fixing up her dilapidated house, and she had cut work to help him. Her windowpane had been sanded and painted to look nearly new. Only the wear on the glass gave away the fact that it wasn’t brand new. Old and broken bricks had been chiseled out and new ones laid down. He had mentioned that broken bricks were a fire hazard, something Rei had never really considered but made sense once it was explained. The air was getting chillier and soon it would be time to stock up on chopped wood and light the fireplace most nights.The infirmary had slowed down quite a bit, those that had been victims of severe run ins with shadow monsters were the only ones left staying there. Everyone else had recovered well enough to return to their homes. With things so slow, the infirmary had started a certain outreach program, using their own supplies and their own coin to go out to the Dust Quarter and help tend to the sick that ordinarily wouldn’t be able to visit the infirmary and get taken care of.
Rei packed up everything that could be useful- bandages, salves, several herbal powders for common things like pain, sterilization liquid, needle and thread… anything that she could do mobile. It was all in a brown leather sack that she threw over her shoulders. A flowing pleated wine colored cotton skirt fell to her calves and tucked in was a very pale yellow blouse. Her sandy hair was strewn with colorful beads, braids, leather straps, and feathers. Her hide shoes were dusty from walking the streets. The Earth Quarter and Dust Quarter weren’t exactly all cobblestone streets, most of them being streets of packed dirt.
She set out and walked a ways before passing out the city gates and into what some people might refer to as the slums. Dust clouds bounced around, the housing was hardly housing at all, and everyone was in tattered rag clothes. Some were coughing and she thought she heard someone wretch somewhere. Rei heard crying at the first house she approached. She stood there for a moment before knocking. A sniffling woman answered the door, a deep cut on her forehead, a shiner on her life eye, and a busted lip. Behind her was a broken vase, possibly the only ornamental thing there, and what she assumed was a family portrait thrown aside.
“Afternoon, I’m from the infirmary and was wondering if I could patch you up? It won’t take long and won’t cost you a thing.” The woman seemed hesitant, as if she really wanted to just shut the door and not say anything. “Please, miss. That cut really needs to be stitched and I don’t want you to get infected.” With that little bit of persuasion, the woman let her in. Rei had the woman sit in a wooden chair and first worked on sterilizing her bloody wounds. As she worked, she noticed red marks around the woman’s throat and what would come to be bruises on her arm. It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened here.
Once the wounds were sterile, she took a needle and thread and began stitching up the deep cut on her forehead. The woman handled it better than most men she had seen, only wincing and gritting her teeth. When that was done she covered the wounds with salve, got the woman to take a bit of herbal powder for pain, and left some of both with her to take care of herself. The door suddenly burst open and a very drunk, slob of a man came roaring in. He was large, both tall and rotund. His face was purpled with anger as he screamed at timid woman. “What the hell is the meaning o’ this? You got some uptown whore in here tending to poor pitiful Martha?” The woman tried to reason with him, tried to say that Rei was just leaving. Though Rei didn’t want to leave the woman with the abusive man, she thought she might and send a knight to take care of things. But the man wouldn’t let her leave. Unexpectedly he grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the wall. There was too much space between them for her to hit his groin or reach his eyes. The woman just stood there and screamed as Rei’s vision began to get spotty, her fingers and nails clawing at his arms. He reared back and socked onto straight into her mouth, the taste of blood coming to her. Just when she thought her vision was going to go dark, he moved closer to her, pressing harder, and she was able to grasp his shoulders and drive her knee into his groin. He doubled over and she ran out onto the street.
She had gotten a knight to attend to the situation and left for Wendell's house. Blood had run from her mouth down to the top of her blouse, her lower lip was busted, and there was a coloring around her cheekbone where his fist has impacted her face. She knew she was late and knocked on the door, her hands were trembling. When he opened the door she immediately lied, "I'm fine! It's not as bad as it looks..."
