sixthiterationlogs | AND THE STORY IT TOLD OF A RIVER THAT FLOWED MADE ME SAD TO THINK IT WAS DEAD

WHO: Raven Reyes.
WHERE: The Inn, the Bungalows, the Fountain.
WHEN: December 18 - 24.
OPEN TO: Everyone!
WARNINGS: Possible mentions of depression as well as previous violence.
STATUS: Open! Please keep in mind there's a few prompts below and I'd like to limit each one to a couple of people for a variety of different situations!
SUMMARY: Raven's being reunited with her bum leg for a week.

CLOSED TO JESS BRIGHTWELL, DEC 18, THE INN
In the beginning, Raven had wondered when the bliss of having her leg fully under her control would end. As the days passed and her leg remained intact, fully functional and moving as she commanded it to, she stopped looking for the worst in every morning. She began to look forward to it, the sensation in her leg, the lack of pain shooting up to burst in her hip like a bomb.

She shouldn't be surprised that it'd come to an end when she woke up on the morning of December 18.

At first, there's a spike of pain settling in her hip, but after a few minutes stretching and moving about, shaking off the sleep that's begun to settle on her very being, things had felt normal once again.

It wasn't until she sat down for breakfast and her daily dose of ribbing Jess that things started to feel like they did back home. It was the kind of normal she wasn't ready for, denying it constantly for three months straight.

Her leg hurt as she sat in her chair, but she ignored it. A pain shot up from her knee to her hip when she moved, so she stayed as still as possible without trying to draw anyone's attention to it.

When Raven moved to get off her seat, she found her left leg felt like a bag of bricks. That's how she always wrote it off, like she was lugging around a sack filled with the heaviest kind of metal anyone could find.

Non-discretely, Raven tapped her hand against her leg, and then she tried to dig her nails into the fabric of her grey scrubs. Below her knee, she could barely feel her sharper nails press into her skin.

With the plan to go and see if there were any bear shaped holes in the woods around the inn already set and planned (with her pushing for it to happen sooner rather than later), she entertained the idea of forgoing it. But Raven never liked to show weakness, and she knew that going out with Jess would put both their minds at ease when it came to the mystery bear that had landed on the back of the inn's porch a few weeks ago.

Still, she couldn't quite move as easily, and Jess had a sharp eye on him. Pretending as best she could, she remained where she was.

"Hang on a sec. The bear hole can wait while I get my jacket. You need something warmer, too."

DEC 19-20, THE INN
Although Raven acquires herself the pair of crutches she'd taken from the medical bungalow a few months back, she refuses to use them.

Trying to move her leg without the help of an extra arm is painful. She can barely take a step without needing to hold onto something to somehow support the weight that her left leg lacks, but her stubbornness will grow some strength and descend into her leg any time now.

Getting up and down those stairs to get to her room and workstation is difficult enough. When she climbs down them, she grabs hold of the railing and manoeuvres almost like a crab would, going sideways, flinching each time she tries to remove the weight off her left leg. The fact she has to go down and not walk along flat surface sends pangs of pain through her leg.

Raven wears it, though.

Going up the staircase is a little harder, but she grips onto one side of the staircase in a bid to use her upper body strength to pull her leg up just a little, as the bend of her knee isn't as strong as it once was.

DEC 21-22, OUTSIDE OF THE INN, HEADING TOWARD THE BUNGALOWS
Eventually, when Raven wants to make her way outside of the inn, she grabs the pair of crutches and uses them easily. She drags her left leg along the ground like it's not even a part of her. Flipped to the side, she focuses on getting from Point A to Point B.

With her mind on her mission of acquiring more scrap to keep her mind busy, she heads out toward one of the bungalows — and of course chooses the ones that are furthest from the town.

DEC 23-24, OUTSIDE A BUNGALOW, HEADING TO THE FOUNTAIN
Stubborn to a fault, it doesn't matter how much help Raven receives during the week. She still tries to fix her problem by not acknowledging it at all.

The crutches sit beside her on the front steps of the abandoned bungalow, one situated closer to the inn than further away. It's usually her M.O. to pick one furthest away, as she often liked the walk, the feeling of her leg being hers once again, and the sense of adventure that she felt. But with the pain settling in her hip and not budging for almost five days straight, she's given up on trying to be the defiant woman she's been for the last few months in this town.

She sits on the steps outside of a bungalow with her feet resting on the step below her. Looking out at the town, she simply watches as the people buzz about. It's the same as she'd been when in Arkadia, always sitting on her ass, watching everyone else mill about like there's nothing in the world that could possibly stop them.

There's times that she'll start to hit her leg, aggravated by how she can't feel it at all. "Come on," she hits it. "Work again."

It's when she finds that her attempts of begging it and commanding it comes back that she heads out to the fountain, crutches under her arms and foot dragging along the ground, in an attempt to try and climb the fountain and dump her leg inside of it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She's an idiot.

Cougar has his Bible tucked in his back pocket and he's trying to head upstairs to the Inn to see her, but instead finds her struggling on the stairs, looking all the world like someone who shouldn't be attempting stairs. "El burro sabe mas que tu," he mutters with a growl as he hurries to step closer and place his shoulder under one of hers, acting like a crutch as he shoots her a look from beneath his hat that says how much he thinks of her little martyr act.

"Little birds sometimes cannot fly," he says. "And when their wings are broken, they're supposed to be smart enough not to fall and die. Hmm?"

"I'm not dying," she says. Raven almost fights him, but she ultimately lets Cougar win, supporting her when she would prefer to pretend she can support herself. Sometimes little birds need to rest on big cats, even though said little birds will continue to flap their wings until the feathers are in complete and utter disarray.

Getting comfortable quickly, she slides her arm over his shoulders, keeping her other hand wrapped around the banister. What she doesn't try to do is acknowledge her wing's a little broken. She's tough; Raven Reyes doesn't break, even though she sure knows better than anyone she does.

Pain shoots up her leg, but she does what she has been so good at doing for three months and ignores it. "I can fly. I just can't seem to do it right at this moment."

"Not yet," is his retort when she talks about not dying and he doesn't let her stumble down the stairs a little the way he might have let Jake or Pooch do (definitely Clay), but only because he likes her a little better than that. Still, he's definitely mad and he keeps moving at her pace.

"What happened?" he asks. "When did you start feeling this? Did you do something?" He's not the best field medic you can find, but he's good enough that if he can help, he's going to do something to make Raven feel better. Watching her suffer like this breaks his heart and he doesn't know what he can do. Feeling useless? It's never sat well with him.

"Nothing," she says a little forcefully.

It's a little difficult to deny anything happened, given she can barely pick her leg up and run a mile. But it's what she wants to be her reality. She wants nothing to be wrong. She wants to return back to how she was when she'd woken up a week ago, whole and not at all broken.

She sighs, but doesn't let that tension within her go. Raven Reyes is a fighter to the very end. The Mountain Man whose ear she bit can attest to that. But she has to give a little. Though her arm slung around him is her leaning on him for support, she knows it's not enough. It never has been. It's why she avoided Abby Griffin in the hallways of Arkadia whenever she had the chance.

"Over three months ago. I was in the right place at the wrong time. It didn't happen here, so you don't have to worry your pretty head off that it'll happen to you."

Cougar gives her a sharp look and when he takes her up the next step, it's only that he cares for her that he doesn't 'accidentally' knock her against the wall as if to prove a point that she can't just expect that this will suddenly go away on its own, without help. "I'm worried because you're in pain, not because I might get hurt," is his sharp retort, glaring at her. It would be easier if he could just pick her up, but he fears what those fists of her might do if he tried.

"What happened?" he asks again, because it's not that he wants to know for research. He wants to know, because he cares about her.

AND THE STORY IT TOLD OF A RIVER THAT FLOWED MADE ME SAD TO THINK IT WAS DEAD

December 19

sorry for this late reply! burnout's a bitch.

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