Na'eve jolted awake, a gasp tearing from her throat as consciousness slammed into her like a battering ram. Every nerve ending screamed in agony, her flayed back a map of torment etched in blood and torn flesh. The stench of the stable assaulted her nostrils - a nauseating blend of manure, sweat, and the coppery tang of her own blood.

A feather-light touch ghosted across her ravaged skin, and she flinched violently, biting back a whimper. Cool wetness spread over the burning welts, drawing out some of the searing heat. Na'eve forced her swollen eyes open, blinking away the haze of pain.

Crouched beside her was a scrawny brooman child, all knobby knees and sharp elbows. His fingernails were rimmed with grime, his threadbare tunic hanging off bony shoulders. Wide, solemn eyes peered at her from beneath a mop of tangled hair, a dripping sponge clutched in trembling hands.

"What..." Na'eve croaked, her parched throat clicking. She swallowed hard, dredging up the foreign words. "What... you... do?"

The boy startled at her voice, toppling backwards over an upturned bucket. He scrambled away, ducking behind the crude latrine as if the urine-soaked wood could shield him. Na'eve almost laughed at the absurdity - a brooman child hiding behind a Sc'allan shitter. As if she cared so little for her life that she would dare attack a brooman child. 

"What... Doing... To... Me..." She muttered out once more.

"I'm sorry, Miss, I didn't... I just wanted..." The boy babbled, his rapid speech washing over Na'eve in an incomprehensible wave. She shook her head, immediately regretting it as pain lanced through her skull. The boy paused, seeming to sense her confusion. He held out the dripping sponge like a peace offering.

"I," he began, pointing to himself, then to the sponge in his hand. "Got this... From," he pointed at himself again, then pantomimed cradling a breastfeeding baby. "My Lady's... House." He finished by holding his arms above him in a triangular shape.

Na'eve nodded, following most of what he meant. She'd had no idea that male brooman children could bear even more children, especially not so early. Perhaps they were asexual. Either way, she was surprised that he would steal from his own hatchlings. But, it was not her place to judge. "Never take an Aeri on faith," her mother had often told her. "Ah," she thought to herself. "The cradled child. Mother, he meant his mother."

She eyed the child once more, who was still holding out the sponge and pointing at her back. "Help... You?" he asked her, pointing from the sponge to her back.

She stretched tentatively, feeling the scabs on her back and ribs crack as the rigid surfaces bent in ways they were not meant to. Her wounds itched, a good sign, it told her they were healing. Which was incredible, because this time, she feared she may have infuriated Ashtoth too far by not crying out. She had blacked out at the post, certain she would never regain consciousness.

She squinted one eye at the boy, and inhaled deeply, catching the pungent notes beneath the stink of the stable - alerian root, maudlin's moss, donari-scale leaves, grain alcohol. An amalgamation of rare herbs, some of them magical, and each one worth more than this boy's hide.

So, he had not stolen it from his hatchlings. Nor from his mother. "Laaady..." She said softly. "Lady. My lady?"

They boy nodded and pointed a finger out of the stables and up the hill, towards the Lord's domain, Ashtoth's even more vicious and cruel master.

She remembered that phrase. It had been a long time since she heard it, but as the words slipped between her teeth, she recalled the meaning. Understanding dawned, and her eyes flew wide. Stealing medicine, from his own mistress no less?

"No..." Na'eve growled, her words slurring together. "Return... Whipping..." She jerked her chin towards the bloodied post, the message clear. The boy would pay dearly for this mercy.

He would be beaten himself if it were found out that he had stolen from the Lady of the Manor! Her gaze swept over him; pupils dilated as she panicked on his behalf.

But the child set his jaw, something hardening in those haunted eyes that spoke of an old soul in a young body. "Help you," he insisted, wringing out the sponge. Viscous fluid splattered on the soiled straw. "Very old," he said. "Long time ago."

Na'eve squeezed her eyes shut, a shuddering sigh gusting from her cracked lips. Too weary to argue, too desperate to refuse such balm, she slumped forward in submission.

Gentle hands smoothed the poultice over her shredded skin, gently pushing aside the rags of her bodice. Broken scales shifted and cracked under the ministrations, oozing blood and pus. Despite needing to stand on his tiptoes to reach, he even applied the balm to the nubs of her circumcised wings, the raw flesh throbbing in time with her stuttering heartbeat.

Every swipe sent spasms of agony rippling through Na'eve's abused muscles, the searing heat of the wounds battling against the blessed coolness of the medicinal balm. She teetered on the precipice of consciousness, clinging to the sensation of the rough burlap beneath her cheek, the stench of her own blood and filth clogging her nostrils.

The rhythmic pulsing of her injuries and the distant sniffling of the brooman child wove a discordant metronome, marking the passage of time in that squalid stable. Minutes stretched into hours, or perhaps it was merely seconds drawn out into an eternity of suffering. Na'eve's mind floated adrift, tethered to her battered body by the thinnest thread of stubborn will.

At last, the sponge slipped from the boy's grasp, landing on the soiled straw with a muted splat. Na'eve hung limp and unresisting, barely registering the child's furtive retreat, his bare feet whispering across the packed earth. She was a husk, a shell of flayed skin and shattered bone, held together by nothing more than sinew and the unyielding shackles that bit into her wrists.

Silence pressed in, broken only by the distant lowing of the mine's draft animals and the faint skittering of vermin in the walls. In that oppressive stillness, the tears came unbidden, carving scalding trails down Na'eve's bruised cheeks. They seeped into the cuts that marred her face, the salt a sharp counterpoint to the throbbing ache that consumed her.

The boy's act of kindness, so foreign in this nightmarish existence, pierced her like a blade - exquisite in its mercy, agonizing in its scarcity. That fleeting touch of compassion illuminated the unrelenting darkness that smothered her, a solitary flicker of kindness in a world that had abandoned such notions long ago.

"No cry," the boy whispered, his voice sudden and startling in the gloom. Na'eve flinched, her heart slamming against her ribcage. She'd thought him long gone, melted back into the shadows like a wraith, but he lingered still, watching her with those fathomless eyes.

"Ointment help," he murmured, his words a mangled approximation of the common tongue. "No hurt. So, no cry!" He smiled then, a ghastly sight, his teeth little more than rotting stumps in blackened gums. That glimpse of ruined innocence twisted like a knife in Na'eve's gut, the urge to weep anew rising up to choke her.

"I cry..." Na'eve started, struggling. "For... me..." She tapped the side of her head, indicating her mind. "Not for..." She lowered a clawed hand to rest over her heart and rubbed her sternum, hoping he would understand she meant her wounded body. "Me."

"Oh," said the boy softly, slipping into his normal rapid fire speech. "I know what that is like... To wish to be somewhere else... Among the mountains, and the trees, or the streams..."

"Stars," Na'eve rasped, the word little more than a sigh. She curled in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest, the iron cuffs scraping against her abraded skin. "Sky."

"Yes," the boy beamed. "To soar like a dragon!" He spread his arms wide, fingers splayed, shoulders shifting to and fro as if he could take flight and leave this wretched place behind.

A brittle smile tugged at the corners of Na'eve's split lips, the expression foreign and painful on her battered face. "What... name?" she asked, the question little more than a whisper.

The boy's arms dropped to his sides, his mouth turning down at the corners. "I on't have one," he mumbled, scuffing at the ground with a dirt-encrusted toe. "Everyone around here just calls me Boy, so, I'm just Boy."

Na'eve squinted, the child's words caroming through her skull, the odd syllables jumbled and nonsensical. He sighed, a sound far too weary for one so young, and plopped down beside her, heedless of the filth that smeared his threadbare breeches. She tried to gauge his age, but it was futile. She had seen very few human children, and they ranged from the size of her foot, to even larger than Ashtoth. She guessed that he was perhaps fifteen or so, only a few years younger than herself.

"No name," he repeated, tilting his head back to peer up at Na'eve. "Call me Boy." He jabbed a thumb at his own narrow chest, then pointed a questioning finger at her. "What your name?"

Na'eve's cracked lips parted, the bottom one adhering to the top for a moment before peeling away, migrating to its fellow's territory with an audible tearing sound. The metallic tang of blood bloomed across her tongue, fresh and coppery. She swallowed thickly, the simple action scraping like rusty nails down her throat.

Her name. It had been so long since she'd heard it spoken aloud, even from her own lips. For so long, the syllables had been twisted and perverted by her captors until they were little more than a cruel jeer. Ashtoth delighted in mangling it, warping the fluid Sc'allan sounds into something ugly and base, a sneering insult hurled like a stone. His word, and name for her, was "Naive." "Stupid," as she understood it in their tongue. But that was not her name. She was not "Stupid."

But in the depths of her memory, faint and gossamer, she could still hear her mother's voice, whispering that cherished name like a prayer.

"Na'eve," she said, finally. "Nah... Ev... Ay..."

"Nice to meet you, Na'eve," Boy echoed, his tongue curling around the foreign sounds with surprising dexterity. His brow furrowed, gaze flicking towards the bloodstained whipping post. "I don't understand... My father... Why's he so hard on you in particular..."

The words rushed past Na'eve in a jumble of unfamiliar syllables. Exhaustion crashed over her in a smothering wave and she slumped forward, her wounds sapping the last dregs of strength. The boy started, his eyes widening as he fumbled for the ointment jar. From a back pocket, he pulled out a small pouch woven from supple water rushes, and he scooped a generous dollop of the viscous ointment into it.

Tentative steps carried him to Na'eve's side once more. His hand hovered, trembling, over the tattered remains of her bandeau before he hooked a finger in the crusted fabric and tugged it aside with a gentleness that bordered on reverence. Na'eve tensed, a reflexive flinch, but held herself rigid as the boy nestled the medicinal pouch into the valley between her breasts. Deft movements resettled the meager covering, a final pat sealing the precious gift in its hiding place.

The boy sketched a swift bow, a gesture far too solemn for his scrawny frame, and then he was gone, scurrying into the shadows on soundless feet. Na'eve watched him disappear, a flicker of light extinguished by the oppressive gloom.

She waited for the tears to flow again, but this time, in the dank rot of her cell, they did not. Instead, something much warmer floated in her chest. "I think..." she thought to herself, "I have made a friend."