Nanna stood up, very, very carefully. It was still slick underfoot, and he felt off balance because his shoulder wasn't working right. But he didn't think it was broken. “You didn't break me, Nergal. It's just... not in the right spot. I think.”
He wasn't sure how else to explain it, how his shoulder felt. It felt like the arm wasn't sitting quite right in the socket or something. So they just needed to figure out how to put it back in. And once they did that, then that would be one problem solved. Nanna liked having a plan.
Which caused him to glance around the kitchen. That was a problem that wasn't so easy to fix. Even if his shoulder was perfect, there was just too much here that was wrong. Their mother wasn't going to be so long that they'd have time to clean it all up, no matter how fast or hard they worked. So only one solution came to mind, and though Nanna didn't think it was necessarily honorable, it was the one that was going to keep Nergal out of trouble.
“Here's what we're going to do,” he told his younger brother. “We're going to figure out how to put my shoulder back in. Then we're going to go swim in the lake so we're clean. And when Mother asks about what happened here... we're going to say Nanshe did it.”
Because Nanshe wouldn't get punished like Nergal would. Nergal was always getting into something, or breaking something, or setting something on fire. Their parents loved them, all of them, Nanna didn't doubt that at all. But he also didn't doubt that there'd be a lot of punishment for Nergal if he took responsibility for this. But Nanshe? With her big eyes and pretty smile? She never got yelled at because she never got in trouble. So she'd get off easy. Right? Right.
That was Nanna's plan anyway.
“I think if you pull really hard on my arm, it should make the shoulder move back to where it's supposed to be.” At least he hoped so. Because it really hurt.