Denial

JP with Lorem and Omni

The lingering pain of the dog bite was not easy to put out of her mind. It certainly needed attention.

She unwrapped the blood-caked cloth from her left arm and revealed a wound that looked nearly fresh to her eyes. Where she normally might have been completely healed, there remained red gauges and tears in her arm. The good news was that the bleeding had stopped.

Gonyaul couldn’t help but wince in empathy when he saw the uncovered wound. It looked painful. How he wished he could take it upon himself so she wouldn’t have to bare it.

He began carefully rinsing out the wound. Whenever he ran out of water, he would pull more and continue being her nurse maid. He tried to be as gentle as possible; however, due to the length of time between acquiring the wound till now, it did require some deeper probing to get fully rinsed out. He was mindful to take his time and pay attention to her reactions to any pain he inflicted.

“It is not healing like it used to?” He finally broke the silence by addressing the elephant in the room. He made eye contact trying to gauge just how much that observation was upsetting, or shocking, his beloved.

The water felt both painful and relieving at the same time, but mostly painful. Each rinse would have swelled tears in her eyes, if she had the extra water to spare. As it happened, very little were produced. She grunted and bit down on her other fist.

After the arm was rinsed thoroughly, Gonyaul asked the question that had long been weighing on her own mind and she averted her eyes from his gaze.

“It’s fine.” she said.

But inside… there was inner turmoil.

Gonyaul was getting near the end of cleaning the wound and would soon be transitioning to wrapping it in the freshest bandage they had; strips cut from his Ikeburer.

He was no fool and could easily tell it was bothering her. It was not good she kept this to herself he thought.

“My Love, you know if it was not fine you could tell me, right?”

Knowing her well enough by this point, Gonyaul felt the same essence that he had experienced leading up to the time she abandoned him on the plains.

There was a stir of emotions going on behind her eyes that she willingly held back, perhaps fearing to unleash.

“This desert is disagreeable on our bodies. Nothing grows here… and I don’t expect it heals either. Only fights to endure… wither and die. It’s as if we have wandered to the boundary of Zin’s Garden.”

It was a poor excuse. A lie… but she wanted to believe it.