Slip
Who: Helena and Alex What: A slip and fall Where: From the tree When: During the afternoon drizzle Rating: PG (minor injury)
By the time the rain reduces to dribbles and drizzles Helena had to admit that the situation had turned dire. She was going to have to climb down and see to personal business, no matter how impossible and dangerous that seemed. She mumbled as much through chattering teeth to Rowan before attempting to rub some feeling back into her fingers. She felt numb all over from so long spent wet and chilled, like she'd been pricked with novocaine all over her body. However, the screaming in her full bladder was not numb in the least so she had to brave a slog through the swamp.
Carefully she eased her way out of the hammock and on to the wide branch beneath it. Sighing, she shuffled along, in more of a hurry than she thought. She greeted others as she passed them in their own sodden hammocks, somewhat diminished in her usual cheerfulness. She didn't linger to chat or inquire though as she reached the trunk. Cautiously she felt her way down along the slick and almost slimy textured bark until - to her horror - her bare toes slipped off a foothold before her hands had firm purchase. Her gasped as her forehead bashed off of a knot in the vine-trunk and flailed for a trailing vine to catch herself with. Stunned, Helena realized she was falling, falling from more than twenty feet up, back first. She barely had a chance to do more than yelp.
Alex was on his way to climb back up the tree after his conversation with Angelica when he saw Helena slip. He'd hoped she would catch herself, but when she didn't, he reacted without thinking. Stepping away from the tree and catching her with an 'oof' as she landed awkwardly in his arms. He stumbled in the wet murkey water, bothering some unfish. A quick movement had her back in the air again, only a little this time, so he could readjust his hold on her. She really didn't weigh much at all. "Not too often that pretty girls fall into my arms," he commented with a slight smile, his mind moving from his encounter with Angelica to the situation at hand. "You alright?"
Helena gasped and she twisted in his arms to look into the face of the priest with wide and unbelieving eyes. "Father!" she practically gasped. "Are you alright?" She had fallen from well over his head. Twice his height, maybe. Though she knew she was a slight woman, she was still nearly one hundred pounds. Her forehead was beading with little ruby drops of blood where it had barked against the tree but it was a minor injury. She'd felt dazed but her miraculous rescue had cleared the haze out of her eyes. What would have happened to her if he hadn't caught her? The area directly under the tree was a tangled, knobby mess of thick, back breaking roots. Her skin leeched of a bit more colour as she realized the extent of her near miss.
"I'm fine," he reassured her, not setting her down quite yet. 100lbs wasn't that heavy, and the waters were cold and fairly disgusting as flood waters tended to be. At least here he knew the flood waters were most likely cleaner than they would be at home, "But really, you shouldn't throw yourself at me. I know I'm irresistible, but try. Please," he was joking of course, making light of what could have really been something serious. The cuts on her face seemed shallow. "Does your head hurt? Can you stand?" he asked, hoping she didn't have a concussion or something, he wasn't really equipped to handle these things right now. None of them were, "Do I need to get Dr. Thorne?"
And the shocks just kept on coming! "Alex," she said with a faint bit of humorous scolding in her voice. "You shouldn't joke like that." She laughed breathlessly, as though her lungs hadn't quite figured out how to breathe properly just yet. "It hurts but only because I knocked it. I think I can stand. Go ahead and set me down." Helena gripped his arm tightly as she wobbled. Her slender feet sank to the ankles in the silty muck that had flowed in from the west with all of the water. "Ugh, yuck. I wonder if this means there's a large body of water to the west though. We must not be too far in land if this is happening, right?" She gave Alex a curious look. Of course, she knew that he was from a northern state, not plagued with hurricanes, much as she was. "Or maybe I should be asking Ryan about the nature of bad storms."
Setting her down carefully, Alex made sure she was standing on her own before letting her go completely. Quickly, he rubbed her forehead with a thumb to wipe the blood off. Mostly he just smeared it, but there was some slight improvement. He wasn't about to try to use the water to wipe her face, not without boiling it first and he knew there would be no fire today. There wasn't anything dry to make the fire with. Or on. Their small fire pit had been washed away. "Made you laugh though," he pointed out, which had been his intention. "I...don't really know," he admitted easily. "Maybe ask the group that headed west? Or yeah, Ryan might know about storms. I'm more concerned with two things. One, the laughers weren't out last night and two, making some more-permanent shelter, either in the trees here or somewhere else."
Helena's eyes widened. "Oh, Rowan and I saw the laughers leave just before dawn. They had their babies with them and everything." She wobbled on her feet and so she looped one of her skinny arms through his. "It was pretty eerie. The pesks and the glasswings went as well. Seems like all of the animals in this forest have more sense than the humans. No surprise there." She peered up at the battered, dripping canopy. "You're right though, Alex. If this is how the storms are here, we won't be able to weather too many like this one. We'll all get pneumonia or something worse." She gazed down at her prune-like toes in the water. Already her skin was turning that alarming sponge-like consistency that happens when you spend too long submerged. "Or we're going to start to lose our valuable digits." She heaved a sigh, all desperate thoughts about her bladder put aside for the moment. "We're going to have to seriously look at the shelter or camp issue as soon as possible. I was wondering if any of the pairs of shoes you found in the north might fit me? Size five for ladies?"
"There were only a few pairs. Wouldn't hurt to go back up there and bring what we found down. Bury the people too. Might be more caves, you never know," he had no idea if there were shoes small enough to fit her or not. His were currently slung over his shoulder by the laces and his pajama pants rolled up. "Is that what that was?" he asked, referring to the laughers leaving, "I thought I heard something, but then I realized it was the lack of noise that was so loud. Was very strange," he looked to the east for a moment before turning to Helena, "Anything else we should know about here? Terrible storms, creatures that want to eat us, a pregnant woman...what's next?" it was a rhetorical question, he knew she didn't know. It was a question only God could answer...and he was, as always, silently inscrutable.
Helena gave him a mild smile. "Always an adventure on our little patch of an alien planet, hmm?" She sighed, her eyes straying north. "I think we will have to send more scouting parties further afield. The cave you found would make a good base camp for northern scouts. We'll make sure that when they go north, they bury those poor people. Will you want to go with them, Father?" She took a respectful step back now that she was steady on her feet again. She tipped her face up to look up at him. He'd been handling what he had seen fairly well but Helena supposed a scholarly, impractical part of the priest could understand the eating to flesh. It was the deliberate murder of those four people she wondered about. She herself had wondered. The bodies had lain for quite some time but did that mean the murderer was gone?
"I might," he allowed, "We didn't see any water there...it might be underground or perhaps dried up now. Or a food source. If we establish a camp there...we'll need both," with Arlo, Kenneth and Jasper, it seemed they were well on their way to having a fighting chance at survival. "If nothing else, I'd like to bury the dead there. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I do believe that everyone should have words spoken at their death. It should not go unmourned," it was sort of ironic really. For a priest, he was actually very liberal. It was a source of contention sometimes in his church. Here though, he was easily one of the most conservative and found himself biting his tongue instead of accidentally offending someone. As Angelica had found, they had to work together or they would not survive. "I do have a confession to make though," he grinned crookedly, "I miss my bible. I wish I had one here."
"I wish you did too." She heaved a sigh. "You know, we're worse off than the human race has been for a very long time. All of us can read and write but we don't have the tools to pass those skills on easily to Rowan's child, if we end up stuck here forever." Less and less frequently people were speaking up about when they got to go home. "If you ever need someone to tell your bible stories, lessons and sermons to, I will always listen." She offered the priest a kind smile. "I want you to keep them fresh in your mind."
Alex nodded, touched by the suggestion, "Thank you, Helena. I appreciate that. Right now, I'm reminded of Noah and the flood. What I wouldn't give for an ark right now though. Even with animals or perhaps especially with," he grinned lopsidedly, "Thus endeth the bible stories for today. Are you sure you're alright? That bump on your head feeling better?" he wasn't going to just leave her there if she was hurting. He'd round up Thorne and see what could be done...if anything. They were extremely limited with medicines and what they could do for people, even if they had the herbs.
She waves a dismissive hand. "I'm fine but I do need to go see to my personal business though." She gave him a sheepish smile. "I think I've held it as long as I'm willing to. I'll be fine," she assured him once more. "I'm going to go that way." She pointed south and started to carefully pick her way through the murky water, feeling for rocks and roots and moreespecially bigblue fish with teeth. "I'll yell if I run in to any trouble," she promised.
Ah, yes. Personal needs. That was why he had come down from the tree as well. Granted, men had it a little easier, they could simply go from the tree if needed, but just because Alex could did not mean Alex would. Unlike the others, he only bathed alone, he slept alone and he did not take care of his needs where others might see him. Granted, not everyone slept together or shared their personal needs and such, but Alex very deliberately did not. In a communal setting like this, the boundaries were important, as were his observing others. That was part of why he had a problem with Angelica making comments about his ass. She didn't observe his personal boundaries, but then expected him to observe hers. And he would too, because she knew he was a man of principle and ethics. He was a priest. He wasn't oblivious, he saw that the doctor and the librarian boy were more than simply friends and he didn't say anything. He respected their privacy and he expected the same in return. Usually, he receieved it as well, "Alright," he agreed. "Be careful!"