Fire and Water
Lee did not wait for any of the other children as he sprinted along those dusty paths, away from the poor village of stacked boxes and down the edge of the lake towards the flooded town which had drained the village of its wealth and resources.
He paid no heed to all the others who used the path, barrelling past them without nary of a thought or concern.
They were dead after all, and there was a little boy and his teenage mother who were still alive.
He could still save them.
He had the herbs, the knowledge and the skills to do so.
Lee's lungs felt like they burning as soon as he reached the village.
He splashed through the waters of the village, uncaring of whether his trousers and his outer robes were soaked. He needed to keep the child alive.
All these people were dead.
They didn't matter.
They didn't matter.
Just like his father, they didn't matter.
Lee barrelled into the coffin house where he had established himself, and had sequestered himself away to sleep the evening away, surprising the old woman to gave of a poignantly angry squawk, almost as if she was a river bird who had just been forced to give her prize caught fish away back to the waters she stood in.
She opened her mouth wide to berate him and if she were still alive, she would be steaming with smoke billowing out through her ears.
"Now listen here young man! Just because you used this place in the day, it doesn't mean-"
"Somebody's dying. I need my herbs and-" Lee choked out his words, breaking her speech off as he threw himself to the floor and skidded to a halt in front of his travel pack.
He rooted through it, messily disrupting the folds of his robes, throwing off to the side the bags of rice and peanuts, pulling out each and every single one of the water skins that he carried.
The lake water was supernatural phenomenon and so couldn't be particularly trusted to heal without any proper experimentation and testing.
Normal, regular water from the forest river was the best chance so far of providing any sorts of healing liquids and he needed it to mix up a paste from the herbs.
A general mix would work well enough for a child suffering from plague, considering that ridding the body of infection was the key, and that was all plague really was - an infection.
The mother didn't look as if she had eaten at all recently, a usual sight with caregivers being so stressed that they often forgot to look after and feed themselves while their charges were suffering in the greater throes of pain.
Lee scooped them all up and carried them all in his arms, securing them to his chest and barrelling open the door to make the run back to the mother and child.
Barging through the door by putting all his weight on his shoulder, Lee forced the fire in his legs to subside as he forced them to go on, further and further through the swirling rapids around him, running on fumes and as if he was being chased by the great flames of a forest fire, his feet almost so cold from the liquid that had seeped into his boots and had permeated through his skin, that they almost felt warm again.
He could still save somebody.
He could still do some good in the world.
He could finally prove that he was worth something to the world that had birthed him and raised him. He wouldn't be useless anymore and he would be worth something.
He could still do something good in this world.
He could still be worth something.
He could do this.
He needed to do this.
Lee almost cried in relief when the towering silhouette of the inn appeared to him, and with it, the soft glow of the only lit home in the village.
He did not knock on the door when he barged through, only stopping a few feet away from the mother when she screamed out to him" don't let us touch the water!"
Lee let himself fall backwards in lieu of properly stopping, before quickly sitting up and throwing over to her the meat buns and all but one of the water skins.
"They've not got lake water in them. The water is from a river a few towns away," he explained to her with his hands up defensively when she hesitated and flinched away from the water skins.
She looked back at the bags before turning to look at Lee again, and then back to the bags, poking them once first before picking them up and taking a small sip from the one closest to her.
As soon as she swallowed the slightly warmed liquid down, she immediately pulled aside one of the cloths that she had been using from the fresh pile and soaked it, bringing the cloth up to the mouth of her child, squeezing in a few droplets down his throat to try and feed him something.
Lee pushed aside his concerns of the nutritional state of the child and began rationing out the herbs that he needed to try and mix enough to cover all where he needed on the child and enough to feed him as well, only having prepared enough and carried enough to fix the occasional cut, happy to let bruises heal by themselves.
If Lee wanted to succeed, he needed to be quick and clever, probably also thinning out the herbs in each poultice to last over several days to keep the herbs lasting as long as possible to ensure the child would be brought back to health.
There was also the issue of a fever.
Lee wasn't sure whether it was best for him to advise the mother sweating out the condition, or whether to make a bath for the boy to cool down in.
Looking at the child, struggling to breathe, it probably was for the best that he was kept in warm conditions, and also because of the water of the lake being potentially harmful.
His mother had been righteously angry when Lee brought the water close, so a bath was impossible at the moment.