Page 22 of Witch's Exile
10
DEJA
My skin stung like thousands of tiny paper cuts. I laid flat on my back, my lungs aching from the force of my fall. From the forest floor however, Earth magic supported me like the most luxurious mattress.
I drew on my healing magic, still not knowing how bad my injuries were. If I had internal bleeding or organ damage, those needed to be taken care of right away.
Or...fuck! The baby!
My hand flew to my belly but I felt nothing unusual there. Nothing that felt like blood or an open wound but my fingers skimmed over what felt like holes in the front of my shirt.
Tentatively I pushed myself up on my elbows. I had a splitting headache and my muscles cried out with soreness but I definitely hadn't gotten shot. I looked down at my shirt riddled with holes and the puffy red welts covering my chest that were healing quickly. My breaths came out heavily and full of relief.
She shot at me so fast, I didn't know if I'd be fast enough. But I pulled all the power of Air I had in that fraction of a second and threw it up in front of me like a shield. The opposing force turned out to be enough to stop the shotgun pellets from filling me with holes. Just barely.
"What the fuck?" shrieked the red haired woman, eyeing me crazily from the front porch of her yurt. "You'renothuman! How the fuck are you sitting up right now?"
"If you’d have let me talk before shooting, you'd know," I snapped back. This headache, not to mention this woman's shoot first, ask questions later policy, erased all my desire for politeness.
She set the gun down on a small table just next to her front door. Without another word, she shifted into a beautiful but battle-scarred red vixen. About twice the size of her kit, her ears were torn from previous fights. Her red fur was streaked with grey, even though she didn't look much older than me in human form.
She approached me cautiously on small surefooted paws, her blue eyes still strikingly human. I remained still on the ground, still propped on my elbows as she began carefully sniffing me. Her delicate black nose drifted over my belly and she made a sound somewhere between a growl and a yip.
"I smell different, huh?" I said softly. "I'm a witch so that's probably my magic you're smelling. I don't shift but something tells me we're not too different."
Her eyes met mine and widened with surprise as she sat back on her haunches like a dog. I fought the urge to pet her like one, figuring she probably wouldn't appreciate that.
A bone-chilling feline roar was our only warning to what happened next.
A large tan blur darted out from the woods behind me and sent the vixen tumbling through the campground, yelping with surprise and pain.
"Sal!" I cried out as the massive mountain lion stood protectively over my legs.
What the fuck happened?he demanded, thoroughly pissed.I heard a gunshot!
"I'm okay!" I reached to grab his fur but he already pounced on the vixen.
He pinned the little fox down with his paws and took the scruff of her neck in his teeth. She screamed as he began shaking wildly and I knew he would not hesitate to kill her.
"Sal, stop it now!" I screamed at him with my aura and my mouth but he was silent, lost in the urge to kill.
The woman's kit darted out of their house and ran up to the mountain lion mauling his mother. He looked like a chihuahua confronting a great dane. He barked, bit and clawed at Sal's hind legs but my lion paid him no attention.
Blood began to flow as the vixen's screams echoed off the trees and I did the only thing I could think of. I jumped up, ran straight at the two fighting animals, and tackled Sal. The large cat weighed easily twice as much as me and just thumped over on his side from my tackle. He looked at me in surprise and growled a warning, but he let go of the vixen which was all that mattered.
"I can't let you kill her, lion," I said apologetically with a quick run of my hand through his fur, then quickly turned to check on the fox.
She laid breathing heavily, bleeding from a wound at the back of her neck but thankfully not her throat. When I reached for her wound, her son snapped at my fingers, making me draw them back. He stood over his mother protectively, growling and snapping at me.
"I'm going to heal your mother, little one," I told him. "I promise she'll be right as rain. Then maybe we can try talking like civilized people." I glanced at Sal behind me, who bared his canines and growled a warning but gave no indication he would attack again.
The kit backed away from my hand but stayed right next to his mom, sinking to his belly and gently licking her muzzle.
I pressed my hand against her wound and took a deep breath, drawing Earth up from the ground below my feet and sending its healing properties through my hand to the injured vixen.
An idea occurred to me and I called on Fire, seeing if I could pull it into the healing magic as well. To my delight, it did so seamlessly.
"This is going to hurt a little but please be still," I warned her as I sent the fire into her wound to sterilize it and prevent infection.
