2402/Memory: Themysciran Healing IV

Memory: Themysciran Healing IV
Date of Scene:	10 July 2020
Location:	Doom Gates - Themyscira
Synopsis:	Caitlin STABS Donna. Stabbily. She's sooo violent like that. Mean, BLOODTHIRSTY Caitlin. Donna almost DIES! (note: this precis utterly belies the tone of this scene because after a scene like that you need a giggle).
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Caitlin Fairchild

---

Donna Troy has posed:
     "Twice, princess? Once and again, immediately?" Chara asks, looking amazed. "I have never done it once in the last..." she blinks in thought. "Hundreds of years!" she concludes, looking amazed again. Amazed is an expression she often bears, so this is little surprise.

    The last few weeks, Caitlin has got to see a lot more of the island. Though fairly small it has an impressive range of landscapes and it's easy to see why the natives often refer to it as Paradise island, for the beauty of the place alone. Much of this exploration has involved riding horses and wearing her new armor - at last she has really found herself immersed in the Themysciran way of life.

    There have been two almost constant companions for Caitlin - Donna, of course, and Chara. Chara is a pretty blonde who doesn't look much like the fighter she is, with the sweetest of demeanors and ready laugh. She's not exactly stupid, but there's an almost un-Amazonian simplicity about her, and she can be quite childish, which is likely the reason she has been assigned to accompany Caitlin and Donna wherever they go. Hippolyta no doubt thinks they'll have more in common.
    The days have been pleasant and the journeys around the island restful - the frequent breaks combat training not so much. Donna has been insisting on them a lot, much to Chara's disappointment. Though a very capable fighter, Chara thinks sitting around enjoying the sunshine is far preferable.

    Today's trip had been to see the Doom Gates. Not too close alas - Donna was very clear on this. She lead the pair to the edge of the ring-fence of spears, to look at the old temple from a distance. Not even the briefest formal greetings had been exchanged with the guards there.

    Visiting the gates themselves would no doubt be exciting, but Donna explains that it's quite impossible, at least without the express permission of the queen. The land beyond the ring fence is strictly out of bounds for anyone not on sacred guard duty. Donna had described in detail what lay beyond; the great chamber underground with strange machinery, the vast gates of bronze themselves, and even beyond them, to the deep stairs that lead down to Tartarus, to hell.

    Donna had also talked of her last duty tour there, which had ended just before Caitlin had arrived. She'd done a double duty, something very rarely asked of any Amazon. It was during that time, locked away from the world outside, that Doomsday had happened. Donna, it turns out, had been involved in a rather epic battle of her own, if not on the scale of the one Caitlin had been involved in. A few days into her second tour, the gates had been opened for a party of Amazons to descend some way down the stairs to deal with a creature Donna described as a giant, but which sounded rather more monstrous than the typical image of a very tall human. Chara had listened with open-mouthed astonishment to the tale. She wanted to hear more.

    Donna, on the other hand, has had enough of the gates for the day. With their horses pitched up in a clearing about half a mile from the ring fence, Chara busies herself with the horses while Donna insists it is time for more training.

    "Yes Chara. Twice in a row. And I've told you that four times in a row!" Donna teases as she readies her shield. "Now stop fussing with the horses and get your sword ready. Let's see how Caitlin's coming along with coping against two attackers at once, hmm?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
After a few weeks of prolonged rest and physical therapy, Caitlin would be a liar if she denied that the training was fun.

Richard and Donna were always intensely self-motivated trainers. Pushing themselves as hard as they could in their own training and them working with the others to develop their skills, later. But there's a world of difference between working out once or twice a week with a dozen other friends, and getting the sort of intensive one-on-one training that Caitlin's been afforded on Themyscira.

Caitlin's physique is changing, too. The last of the baby weight on her face is falling off and there's some definition to her shoulders and thighs that wasn't there before. Only on Themyscira could the redheaded powerhouse run full-out to the point of exhaustion, juggling boulders and ten-ton ingots of metal with someone watching her form.

"Oh don't mind me, your princessiest," Caitlin chimes in. Chara's hero worship of Donna is a little amusing, and a little sobering. The whimsical blonde definitely holds a mirror up to Caitlin's own life experiences. How much she's aged in the last few months, particularly.

The armor is less ornate than true battle-attire, but it's functional and durable. Pleated skirt, greaves, and a leather curaiss with a halfplate over Caitlin's left breast and shoulder. A sturdy, simple helmet without ornamentation is plonked onto Caitlin's skull. "Hey, did I tell you I had an idea for the gym?" She tightens up her bracers, matte steel backed by sturdy leather. They'd be too heavy for most, but Caitlin doesn't seem to notice the weight. "I was thinking about some magnetic locks and a squat rack," she explains. "We could actually strength train without just throwing boulders around."

The round shield goes on Caitlin's left arm and she draws her gladius in the right hand. Two against one-- Caitlin clangs her blade against the shield to signal readiness, then immediate starts circling to keep Chara and Donna in each other's way while she loosk for an opening.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna rolls her eyes at the 'princessiest' comment. In truth it's beginning to annoy her. Ever since Chara learned the word she's been using it with a regularity that surely indicates she knows Donna doesn't like it and thinks it's funny to tease her with it.

    She also thinks it's a funny word. She thinks that a lot of English words are funny - though for all that the other Amazons tend to treat her as if she was a bit simple, she's become impressively profficient in the language in a short space of time.

    "Concentrate, Cait!" Donna barks out, having no time for discussions of gym equipment when they're training. She was never that intense about it during her days at the Titans. Caitlin's been around enough now to see that, consciously or otherwise, Donna is trying to imitate Philippus.

    Chara finishes tying the horses, then unslings her shield and readies it with a slowness that seems to add to Donna's frustration. She draws her sword and steps in to join the engagement. Almost immediately Donna gestures towards Chara with her sword. "Further apart, Chara. Pay attention. Don't let her keep us both in direct line of sight."

    Before Chara has a chance to act on Donna's guidance, Donna moves out to the other side in a few easy, loping strides, shield forwards and sword arm held out and back; already Caitlin knows this is a stance suited for quick stabbing attacks. Donna widens the arc of her own circling, trying to keep Caitlin between herself and Chara.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin moves steadily across the terrain, head flicking back and forth from Donna to Chara. Donna's by far the faster, but Chara's no slouch either. Keeping up with Donna in close combat requires all of Caitlin's attention and focus, trying to read those micromuscular cues and strategize on the fly to counter whatever Donna throws her way.

Caitlin stumbles across a rock on the broken terrain underfoot. She catches the rock under her toe to flick it at Donna-- 'flick' being a softball-fast pitch of five pounds of rubble. She leaps laterally to cover the distance between herself and Chara, leading with a horizontal slash to catch Chara's shield. A very low probability hit, but it gets Caitlin past the blonde's defenses so Chara is once again in Donna's way.

Steel clangs and chimes violently as shield and swords clash, a blur of motion between the two. Donna would see it before Chara; Caitlin overly-aggressive still, using her superior height to chop downwards. Chara blocks, and slashes low at Caitlin's leg--

-- to which Caitlin responds with a rather pretty pirouette over the blade, going low *herself* and thrusting a violent kick at Chara's shield. Normally a blunt and efficient move to gain space, with a bit of a pushoff from the heavier girl.

Except for the advice Phillipus herself had given Caitlin: "You need to get better leverage."

Chara goes flying backwards at Donna. Physics isn't fair when one person doesn't have their feet on the ground.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna bashes the flying rock aside with her shield, making an impressive clang, and closes in fast. "Damn it Chara, pay /attention/!" she yells, followed by something in rapid Themysciran that's beyond the small amount of the language Caitlin has picked up so far to follow.

    She catches Chara with her shield arm and shoves her back onto her feet a little roughly. "Better Cait!" Donna calls out. "But don't forget your shield is a weapon too. The kick put you off balance, you could have followed your own momentum with a shield charge."

    The circling starts again, but this time Chara is moving a little more carefully and watching a little more closely. She grins at Caitlin with a mischievous challenge, daring her to attack again. "I bet for you that you can't do it again!" she calls out.

    Donna circles until she's in the periphery of Caitlin's vision where motion attracts the most attention, then darts forwards, sliding her sword against the rim of her shield to make an attention-getting rasping noise, but it's a feint; after a couple of steps forwards she steps to the side again rather than closing the distance further.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin lowers the edge of her shield enough to stick her tongue out at Chara's taunt; Donna, though, gets a cool nod of acknowledgement at the advice. The circling starts again. Caitlin flinches at the rasping noise and twists her head towards Donna. It's a perfect opening for Chara and the young Amazon rushes at Caitlin with a deceptively fast and silent approach. Caitlin catches the feint only in the last possible moment; she falls back, flailing wildly with her sword. Chara gets two solid *thumps* into Caitlin's armor, impacts that would be a significant wound against an opponent in the open battlefield. They go corps a corps, shields and blades clashing, and then Caitlin hooks Chara's shield with her pommel. It opens Chara up for a counterstrike, but Caitlin instead throws a straight cross with her sword hand.

It's not exactly a lovetap. It does buy Caitlin some space and she whirls towards Donna while backing away from her, shield held high in defense.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Caitlin turns to find Donna closer than she was expecting, and there's an immediate crash of shield-against-shield as Donna pushes forwards into Caitlin's turn, stopping her from completing the movement fully and getting her stance stable. Suddenly Caitlin finds herself just a little off balance.

    "NO!" Donna yells in frustration. "Your sword was /right there/! Down cut. Follow through, Cait! You keep doing that, not commiting!" She punches her sword forwards into the guard of Caitlins and pushes it wide, while pressing her shield - shoulder forwards and pushing up on her legs to bring the edge of her shield over the top of Caitlin's, and giving her fellow Titan a ringing knock on the side of her helmet.

    "The punch was STUPID. You swivel your hip for power like that, you lose ground when you have to turn!"

    Donna takes advantage of Caitlin being on the wrong foot, turning in and pressing down on her sword to push Caitlin's towards the ground. She buffets Caitlin again, aggressively and with a fair bit of power, pressing the advantage, and steps in again, inside Caitlin's guard, and sweeps her sword-arm up to crash the flat of the blade against her armored ribcage - hard enough to leave bruises. "You have a sword Cait. USE IT!"

    Donna's foot lashes out, catching the back of Caitlin's knee on the near leg, forcing her shield-arm shoulder to drop, and then she smashes forwards with the shield again, powering in to tip Caitlin onto the ground. She's being a bit vicious, really.

    Donna stands over Caitlin, sword lowered now, and stares down at her with a shake of the head. "How many times do I have to tell you, Cait? You've got to /commit/ to the action. You keep shying away from your sword, but you need to think of it as an extension of your arm, a part of you... USE it!"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin grunts in pain as she's battered down, flailing in blind and vain self-defense. Donna's slipping right past her guard without any effort and battering the redhead down. Her shield's strapped to her forearm but the sword blade goes flying at a smart rap to the pommel just above her weakened grip. The reflexive retention of a blade hasn't been burned into her memory yet.

She gets two more scrambling paces away before there's an abrupt reversal. Feet and hands switch place and Caitlin jams a foot hard into a broken rock that must weigh at least half a ton. Her eyes lock with Donna's, and fear and confusion are gone. Those green eyes are just narrowed in anger.

It's enough purchase; her legs coil under her and she launches like a bullet at Donna. With that much momentum, she could clear a five-story building, let alone the twenty-some feet between the two women.

She swings the shield with tremendous force, for once digging her hips and toes into the ground with a proper footing. Caitlin hammers Donna back and scoops up her lost sword with a smooth retrieval.

The sheer brutality of it forces Donna back on her heels. A tenth of a second is all Donna needs, to get her footing, break Caitlin's rhythm--

--but then a trecherous piece of marble gets revenge, and rolls under her foot. Caitlin's shield comes unbound from her arm and she whips it at Donna's scrambling legs, aiming to sweep her greaves out from under her.

Both hands grip the short pommel and with a shout of force, Caitlin swings the blade hard at Donna's midsection, power driving from the tip of her toe to her hips to her locked-out wrists.

Donna Troy has posed:
    It was all the fault of that little piece of marble, really.

    As soon as Caitlin's attack begins, Donna is smiling. When it ends a few seconds later, with Donna seated on her rump in the dirt, she's still smiling. "Yes! That's what I was talking about Cait. Real commitment. At last!"

    Caitlin's the first to know something wasn't right - she felt it in the sword. The scrape of metal-on-metal as the tip scored a line in Donna's armor was as expected, but then the tip caught on something for a moment, and then it felt... odd. Unfamiliar. It may take her a few moments to figure out why.

    "Princess?" Chara says with an odd timbre to her voice, as she rushes forwards, her face oddly pale.

    "Remember that, Cait." Donna's still smiling. "Remember how that felt, because that intensity, that determination and commitment - that's what you've been missing. Good!" She puts her hand on the guilty lump of marble to help lever herself to her feet, but her hand slips off it. Her smile fades a little as she stares at her hand, seeing it slick with blood. "Huh," she says, turning her hand over and over to look for a cut, but seeing none. Her eyes go lower, following the blood, and she reaches to the side of her armor, where a leather strap holding front and back plates has been cut loose. "Damn. Tip must have caught between the plates," she says.

    Donna pushes herself up again and scrambles to her feet. Chara gasps loudly, her eyes going to Donna's leg. Blood streams down in fine rivulets, blooming into the fine beading of sweat on her skin to stain the skin with a scarlet sheen. Donna follows Chara's gaze to her leg. She carefully peels the front plate of her armor forwards a little, looking underneath it, and then sits down again, rather suddenly.

    "Ouch," Donna says. It's almost comical.

    Chara turns to Caitlin with wide eyes, the expression on her face pure 'we're going to get in so much trouble.' She turns and runs to the horses. "I'll got back to the gates and get help!" she calls back. "Look after her!"

    "Chara, no." Donna winces and shakes her head, pressing her hand down on her side. "They are on duty. Go to the city - no, Magala's house. That's nearer." Chara hesitates and looks like she's about to argue, but Donna follows it up with a firm "GO!" and Chara leaps astride her horse and races off.

    Donna shuffles her back to the rock to lean against it and looks up at Caitlin with a pained grin. "Yeah, that was good. Maybe too good," she jokes. "Don't worry, just my side. Nothing vital. Looks worse than it feels."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Oh shit!"

It's perhaps the second time-- ever-- that Caitlin's cursed. Certainly the first time in Donna's presence. Rigid fury turns to ashen, waxy fear on Caitlin's face at the sight of flowing blood. The sword clatters to the ground, forgotten, and Caitlin dives towards Donna to try and soften the landing. She's a hair late and a dollar short, but she lands hard on her knees next to her friend.

"Oh God, oh God, Donna, you're bleedin'," Caitlin frets. "Mother Mary," she whispers, and it sounds more like an abbreviated and hasty set of prayers than blasphemy. It's a credit to the Titans though that Caitlin doesn't just sit there fretting at the sky for divine intercession. Her hands are moving automatically to undo Donna's armor and peel it away from the injury site. The leather and metal clatters as it's cast aside. Caitlin probes the wound with her fingers, and reaches under her armor to rip away the light cloth skirt under the pleating. It's bundled up tight and pressed hard into the wound. "Pressure, Donna, here, I am *so* sorry," she repeats, again. Cait puts Donna's hands over the bandage. "There, hold hard. I think I packed a wound kit in the saddlebag."

Up she goes, moving fast towards the horses and ripping through the saddlebag with blood on her fingers. The horses nicker and protest at the scent of blood but they're well-trained enough not to loose their lines and run off.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Nothing to say sorry about Cait, I'll be fine." She shifts uncomfortably, getting herself a little more upright against the rock, then adjusts the wad of cloth to the open wound, pressing it down hard. "My saddle, Cait. The wine skin. It'll help clean the wound if we pour some on the... the... uh bandage. Best to just hold it in place, don't want to lose too much blood. Help will be here in twenty or so, it'll be fine."

    Donna draws a sharp breath and winces, then laughs. "Just a bit of bad luck. Even with armor on, sometimes someone gets hurt in sword practise. I've been cut up before plenty, honestly Cait, there's nothing to worry about. If it means you finally... finally know what it means to actually commit to an attack, it's totally worth it. Don't worry."

    Donna leans her head back and closes her eyes. "Hot day, Come to think of it, I could do with a mouthful of that wine too. Kinda thirsty. It's thirsty work getting stabbed I guess."

    "I'd kill for a Coke right now. You know, I thought the thing I'd miss most coming back to Themyscira was the Internet, but I really miss a nice cold Coke from time to time. Whatever mom says, the World of Men does have a few things to offer us."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin returns with the medical kit in hand. It's one of those from the Titan's storage unit, not a Themysciran one. "Remind me to ask Epione about how you do medicine here," Caitlin mutters. She glances up at Donna while laying the kit out, kneeling next to her friend with a scrape of greaves on stone. The wineskin's handed to Donna. "You're still in shock," Caitlin tells her. "Take a drink to help with the pain."

Caitlin pulls Donna's hand aside for just a moment to examine the cut. "Slow and dark, that's..." She looks sideways, eyes screwing shut in thought. "Venal bleed. Right?"

"Right, it'd be spurting if it was an artery." Caitlin shakes her head, looking at the kit and gloving up. "Wow, when we get back to the real world, first thing-- cold Coke," she agrees. "Second thing, we're all taking some refresher courses on trauma care," she tells Donna.

There's a pick-*hiss* of painkillers being administered into Donna's thigh, and Caitlin tosses the injector aside, and she pulls out a roll of sanitary gauze. "I'm gonna pack the wound and seal it off. I don't know how important those veins in the ribs are. Hopefully pressure does enough."

She frets her lip at Donna. "This is gonna hurt," she apologizes. "Tell me about-- um, tell me about something. Anything. Take your mind off of it."

With that, Caitlin's surprisingly nimble fingers start trying to staunch the heavy flow of dark blood.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Fussing too much Cait. I'm not in shock." Donna takes the wineskin and pops to top off with her thumb before taking a good but not excessive gulp. Putting the top back on one-handed is a fiddlier task.

    "Cait. Look... look at the marble. For that plant. I don't remember what it's called in English. /Brios/. Kinda... short, spongy. Grows on rocks. If there's some, pull it up , use that to pack the cut." An insight into how they do medicine - or at least emergency care - on Themyscira. It's unnecessary though, there's enough gauze.

    Donna winces a little as she moves her hand away to let Caitlin at the wound. She watches her friend's handiwork in silence for a while, breathing fairly steady. She's obviously pretty good at pain, or at least pretty good at putting a brave face on it.

    "Surprising how much blood one person has, huh?" Donna says after a few moments, when enough of the bandaging is in place to slow the bleeding down again. She falls silent again for a short time, then changes the subject. "Cait. I think I might be in love with Raven."

    Caitlin had said she should tell her about something, but that's going to come as a surprise.

    "The last... last few... months. maybe a year, I dunno. Sometimes when it was just her and me in the tower... I guess I got to see another side of her. Like she opened up more when... Ow. I mean I kind of provoked her a bit. You know, teasing. Kind of... playful flirting. To get a reaction. So she started doing it back, and... you know." Caitlin probably doesn't. "That's what... that's why. The thing with Marv. I... he... he seemed to know... everything. And he was kind. That's why I... you all told me. I mean... not right. He wasn't... he didn't try to take advantage of his position or anything. He wanted to wait. That was... I trusted him because of that. But I didn't... I guess I kind of fell in love with the idea of falling in love with him. Ow. Owww!"

    Donna hisses a breath in through her teeth and pauses for a few moments, steadying herself. "While I was... while we... while I was waiting, I guess Raerae and I just got... closer. There wasn't... we didn't mean it to happen, it just... did. A few weeks... months ago, we... we were alone at the tower and we were talking and... you know. I guess it just happened. Spent the night... night together... and. And. Shit this is starting to hurt. That's why I left, Cait. I don't know... not sure if what I felt about Rae was... was real. But it was more real than what I felt about Marv. Couldn't... couldn't face it. Telling him. Telling all of you. When you'd been right all along, and... and I felt so stupid. So I... that's why I left. Ran away."

    Donna draws a shuddering breath, and suddenly here eyes are filled with tears. "I'm so sorry Cait. I was a coward. I couldn't... couldn't face telling you. Telling him. Telling her. So I ran away. I... that's why I wasn't there."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's face is tense, focused. There's gauze aplenty, certainly, but the redhead sure isn't going to pass up Donna's advice. A fistful of the herb is torn up into shreds. Just to be safe, though, she wraps it in gauze first before packing it into the wound. "Eponia's gonna kill me, hack work like this." But her hands don't waver in their work.

Her ears are turning very pink at Donna's ramblings, and she can't help but smile bashfully up at Donna. Clearly she's happy for her friend.

Then Donna starts talking about getting intimate, and Caitlin's eyes go very wide before focusing on her work. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her ears are almost red as her hair. Then Donna's apologizing, and tears come to Caitlin's eyes, too. She looks up and smiles-- a wan but reassuring expression. Meeting Donna's eyes so she can see that Caitlin recognizes her pain. "Hey. It's okay," she whispers. "It's okay. You needed space. You couldn't have known."

A quick shake of her head dashes tears aside and she wipes her eyes on her forearm. The redhead coughs to clear the lump in her throat. "The bleeding's slowing, but it's not stopped," she says. "I need you to hang in here. Keep your breathing calm and shallow. Heart rate down. I-I need something to clamp it, or some really fine silk or thread, something that won't break."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "It's not okay Cait. It's not. I... I let you all down." Donna shakes her head and sniffs miserably. "I'm not scared of any... I'd face any... fight.... But I couldn't... couldn't be honest about. About. It. Couldn't tell... didn't even say goodbye to her properly. Left a note and I... I owed her... all of you. Supposed to be my family and I left you because I couldn't. Couldn't admit my feel... I'm so sorry Cait. If I... If I'd been there..."

    She lapses into silence, her hand clamped to the dressing. She exhales a shuddering breath, then nods her head. "Calm. Shallow. Okay." Donna shuts her eyes, a look of concentration on her face, and slowly her breathing becomes more regular, and then shallower. She remains silent for a while, only the occasional opening of her eyelids to glance up at Cait showing she's still conscious.

    Several minutes pass before Donna's eyes flutter open with alarm. "Cait... Cait. We've got..." she starts to try to slide her legs underneath herself to stand up. "Get back to... to the tower. The others will... Dick... Rae... Wally... be worrying... get to medical..."

    Donna stops herself, suddenly looking scared for the first time as she realizes that her mind is wandering. Her gaze drop to the ground, looking around for something. "Cait." Her hand goes to her back and feels around. "Another... Exit wound. Still bleeding." She brings her hand around to show Caitlin, and it's thick with blood that had been trapped between her back and the rock she was leaning on, the flow there barely stemmed by the pressure.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Donna," Caitlin whispers. Donna's delerious, slipping from shock into incoherence at the blood loss. Caitlin looks griefstricken for just a moment-- but only a moment. Determination sets on her face and she grabs the last of the moss, jamming it into the wound tract entirely. Anything that can serve as a dressing is pressed into service, and then she grabs up the only convenient banding material: Donna's lasso. It's wound tight around Donna's ribs, as tight as Caitlin dares before Donna's breathing is compromised.

"You're gonna be okay, Donna," she promises. "Losing... a hundred millilitres per minute, and two litres is f... is too much. You've lost about a thousand. Ten minutes on horseback to the Palace. Eponia should be on her way..."

Caitlin's abruptly bundling Donna into her arms in a fireman's carry. "Hooooly smokes we're cutting it close, but I don't see a better way to do it. Hang on, Donna," she tells her friend, and hugs Donna close. A prayer is murmured, almost too quietly even for Donna to make out-- and then Caitlin's off running. Sprinting, really. In New York, there's really nowhere she can run. Not flat out. Not like this. She runs so fast that the ground churns up in a rooster tail behind her, a spray of dust and sand and soil. The footprints she leaves are an inch deep at least and she sticks to rocky terrain as much as possible for the most possible speed.

Forget horses-- Caitlin could get a reckless speeding ticket on an open highway with as fast as she's going.

Two minutes later, Caitlin detours up a rise, and her heart fills with elation at the sight of horses being whipped towards her.

"EPONIA!" Caitlin yells, and her voice rings like a cannon shot. The redhead slides down the hill in a scattering of debris and cuts a beeline towards the healer and her medics.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna is unresisting when she's picked up, and silent through the run. With the constant jostling of Caitlin's stride the dressing isn't really up to keeping the blood from flowing, and for all Caitlin can tell, her friend could already be dead.

    Eponia's attendants leap from their horses and take Donna from Caitlin's arms without a word being spoken. A blanket is thrown on the ground, and Donna is lowered gently onto it. Eponia kneels beside her, quickly examining the wounds, and raising Donna's eyelids.

    From the back of the group of riders, Chara leaps down from her horse and comes rushing to Caitlin's side, and slips an arm into the crook of hers, hugging it tightly. Caitlin can feel the woman shaking.

    Eponia opens a small bottle and pours some liquid onto Donna's wounds, front and back. A faint hissing, sizzling sound can be heard in the silence of the onlookers, and Donna gasps, then coughs. Eponia calls out a name: "Magala!"

    A woman steps forwards from the group of medics, lowering her hood. For the first time since arriving on Themyscira, Caitlin sees someone who is not by any stretch of the imagination beautiful. She may even be the ugliest woman Caitlin has ever seen - her jaw is extraordinarily broad, and her brows crest over her small, beady eyes, almost ape-like.

    Magala kneels down besides Donna, studying her for a few moments. She touches a finger delicately to each eyelid and then Donna's forehead, and mutters a few words. Donna's eyelids flutter open.

    Donna looks at Magala, then past her. She raises her head a little, ignoring the woman as Magala reaches into the folds of her cloak and extracts a pair of slender sticks, a length of twine, and a pot containing some herbs. Her eyes find Caitlin, then Chara, then seem to focus on the air beside Eponia.

    With almost infuriating slowness and calmness, Magala takes several pinches of the herbs, pinches them between the sticks, and starts wrapping the bundle with twine. Donna's dry lips part with some difficulty, and she says a single word, her cracking voice giving a barely audible questioning rise to the sound. "Phoebe...?" Her lips move to shape a few more words, but she's silent and what those words are cannot be read.

    Magala and Eponia glance at each other, Epione's expression at least visibly startled. Caitlin hears the soft sound of words on the wind, barely a whisper, rippling as if the wind through the leaves were talking - /Ochi akoma, thygatera./

    Magala holds the bundle of twigs, twine and herbs over Donna's head, and it bursts into smoky fire. She moves it in swirling patterns, chanting softly in a language that doesn't sound like Greek, something full of clicks and throaty rumbles, something that sounds as old as the stones. Donna's eyes flutter shut again, and she settles back into the blanket, her breathing slowing to the steady pattern of sleep.

     Eponia walks over to where Caitlin and Chara stand, and nods her head slightly. "Troia is strong. Not worry. All better soon."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's spellbound by the encounter. All of it-- the calm certitude of the healers, Magala's mystical intonations. She twitches minutely at Chara's touch and glances down at the Amazon. Despite the insurmountable gulf in their ages, Caitlin finds herself nodding reassuringly at Chara. Projecting an attitude of reassurance. It's when she goes to hug Chara that she realizes she still has surgical gloves on, and strips them away. Too conscientous to litter, Caitlin rolls them into a ball and stuffs them into her armor.

"E-efcharisto," Caitlin tells Eponia. "Uh... she lost a lot of blood. I don't know if infections are common here; I used moss to staunch the bleeding. /Brios/. It wasn't clean."

Donna's breathing steadily and the flow of blood has stopped. The healers look calm and confident. Caitlin nods gratefully, and then points over her shoulder. "I'll meet you back at the palace. Excuse me," she whispers, and steps over to a nearby brush and collapses onto her knees. The stress and sight of that blood seems to have turned her stomach; it takes the redhead a few minutes to get her gorge under control again.