He then looked over to me, he was saddened by my remark, I could tell… But instead of just saying it cowering, he showed me exactly what he meant, by pulling up his sleeve.
                It was filled with these burn-like scar, it was as if he was hit by a lightning several times… But it looked brand new, like he just got them, and it glowed bright gold. “When I was first training to control my abilities, my mentor pointed this out to me… he called it a mana leakage, basically my magic ley lines are damaged, and have been since I was born.”
                “If I use too much mana it manifests as these… That also means I’m inherently bad at using any other type of magic that isn’t natural to my body, so I can’t perform the basics as well, influence is all I got.”

                “Does it hurt?” It certainly looked like it.

                “It burns, sort of, kind of like if you had burned your finger on the fire like an hour ago and now it’s just throbbing… When I was a kid it was horrifying, I tried everything to make it stop, Ice, bandages, cutting them open to see if anything would come out.”
                “Now I got used to it… Like how I got used to everything else.” He grabbed one of the pills from his trashed bag and swallowed it in. “Seizures on the other hand, are a lot worse… Master never figured out why I have them, I just do.”

                “I see… So magic is not exactly a gift for you is it?” He shook his head and I nodded. “Yup, were both screwed, guess we won’t have a fire.”
                Huffing as response, he seemed to take that as challenge. He approached the pile of firewood, selected carefully two sticks then influenced them to stand up and start spinning on each other. “Vernon… Your arm!” I cried out, pointing at the scars that lit up in a bright yellow light, he waved me off like it was no big deal.

                The sticks spun at a blazing speed until a crackle was heard and the air filled with the smell of fresh fire… I was still worried, but he seemed fine, so I decided not to concern with it.
                The fireplace lit up and I could finally look at him clearly, and with the fiery light shining in his bright red fur, It felt less like a color I should hate and more like a beautiful spectacle. His fur was just gorgeous and I loved the tones in it… And with that I appreciated him a lot.
                He was a nice guy who got dealt a really bad hand, but still played it anyway, because he wanted to see how far he’d make it… Compared to him I was holding two kings in my hand and complaining they weren’t aces.

                I felt heavy after talking about that, I wanted to lighten him up… “You should take a dip.” I pointed at the creek with my thumb. “I’ll set these up, then we can eat.” And grabbed the fishes I caught, impaling them and sticking them next to the fire.

                “I don’t know …” He looked over the water and hesitated, shivering on the spot.

                As he seemed distracted, I knew it was easier to get next to him, I got close enough to his ear to whisper… “You reek…” He looked over to me in indignation and I smiled playfully.  “… Don’t make that face, you stink and you know it… If you don’t want to do it for yourself do it for me, I got sensitive nose and I can smell you from a mile away right now.” I teased, it’s been a long time since it felt so good to joke like this with someone.

                He suppressed a laugh causing his lip to curl into a stupid looking smirk that was equal parts loving and angry… It was a joy to see. “Alright… I’ll do it.” He started to get up again, this time managing to still himself, he still couldn’t stand up straight, but he didn’t have too, the creek was right by the camp.

                As I didn’t want to intrude too much, I decided to leave him to it and sat there spinning the fish to make sure it got an even cooking when I hear and… *ouch…* I looked over, and sure as the night, there he was stretching himself over to reach for his bag.
                He turned it inside out and left its contents neatly pilled on the side of camp, then he grabbed pack soaked it in water and started to rub himself… I thought he was fine until I heard it again. *Ouch!*
                He instinctively turned to camp, likely hoping I wasn’t looking… but I was… he flustered and turned away.

                “You know…” I opened up the conversation again. “It’s ok to ask for help.”

                “I’m… Fine…” He said still trying way too hard to reach around his body… The result was inevitable *Ouch!* Him contracting and wincing in pain once again

                “This is getting ridiculous…” I adjusted the fish, as I wouldn’t be able to keep messing with them for a while and stood up, taking my time to fold my pants over my knees essentially turning them into short.

                “I told you… I’m fine… It’s just a little pain.” He was selling it way too short.

                “You got shot two times…” He started to counter-argument but I was close enough to shush him with my fingers. “… Then you dragged yourself up a wagon, released me and then performed first aid on the spot with no medication.” His face went from ‘but actually’ to ‘I shouldn’t be alive’ rather quickly.
                And that was all the persuasion I needed. “Hand me the bag.” I ordered.

                “What?!” His expression got flustered and he shrunk on the spot. “You can’t be serious!”

                “I can knock you out and clean you while you’re asleep.” He had this scared and indignant expression that screamed ‘you wouldn’t’… To which I replied. “I dare you… Be stubborn with me and flinch one me time… You’ll see exactly how far I’m willing to go.”
                He dodged my eyes for a bit and gave the bag to me in silence as a protest.
                “Great… Now just let me do this…” I sunk my arms beneath his legs and around his back, lifting him up… I loved every second of his appalled expression trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
                I took a large broken log from camp and carried it around with my tail putting it in the middle of the water and sitting him on top of it… he was at about his knees in the water so that was good enough.

                “How is this?” I asked, maybe a little too proud as I showed off my strength.

                “uh… Fine… I guess.” He was still adorably confused by all this.

                I then took the bag and began the arduous process of cleaning him up, using the bag as sort of a sponge.
                One thing I notice immediately that I never thought about, was how hard it was to clean fur. See… I’m almost all scales, just a bit of water running down and I’m nice and lustrous, but his fur just wouldn’t absorb the water,  I kept pushing the bag and twisting it and yet I made very little progress like that.
                I tried rubbing it really hard, but he looked at me like I was doing something painfully wrong and blushed even harder… I needed a way to make it easier, and I had an idea… But first I needed to get some inhibitions of him out of the way.

                “Vernon… Get those clothes off.” He blushed even harder, like I was asking for something profane and dirty… But it was far from that. “Come on… You can’t get properly cleaned like this.”   
                I tried to grab his coat, not realizing I might have been intruding a bit too much. He shivered and contracted pulling the coat harder and hiding inside it, his eyes denounced I went farther than I should.  “Ah… Sorry… I just wanted to help.” His breathing got heavier and scared, so I backed off.
                I stood there in silence, that particular instinct of his made me grit my teeth in anger… I wasn’t mad at him, I just tried to think of what might have happened to him to be like that and it just made me so angry… Still, that was not the time for anger… “I’m not going to hurt you Vernon… I promise.”

                It took him a while to snap out of it too, he sounded guilty… Like he is the one who did something wrong here.  “I’m sorry… I know you’re trying to help… I... I don’t know what came over me.”

                “Take your time…” I said sitting in the rocks by his side.

                He looked at me and sighed, I could tell he had a lot on his mind so I made a point not to bring up anything worse. He looked away from me and started undressing, first he removed his coat, with a bit of difficulty… I grabbed it and set it aside.
                Then he removed his shirt… And that sight sent a much worse shiver down my spine…

                There were just so many scars… Some looked deep, some looked shallow, some looked recent, and some looked very old. When he finally felt the courage to turn around the front was just as harsh if not worse… He was bruised, beaten and broken so many times before.
                This wasn’t some battle-hardened veteran sporting his scars to show how gritty he is, this was a small frail guy who took every minor deformation as motive to feel shame.
                Right now this was the first time I noticed the little details in him… like the cuts around his arms, the breaches in the fur in his face, missing patches of fur on his neck, the scar in his ears… These tiny things were hard to notice before but now they were somehow clear as day.
                When I thought about it that gunshot would barely be noticeable once it was healed… It would just be one of a thousand scars in that grim mosaic.
                I was furious on the inside, I wanted to twist someone’s neck, or punch them really hard just to make this feeling stop… I wanted to destroy something, pulverize it to dust!

                But not now, this was not the time for me to be selfish, I looked at him and spoke in the softest tone I could muster. “You’ve certainly gotten used to a lot of bad things didn’t you Vernon?”

                He crossed his arms as if trying to cover himself, hiding as much as he could. “It’s fine… You can ask, if you want… Most people do.”

                I approached him and gently patted him on the head reassuringly. “I don’t care much about that right now… It’s Relaxing time, you know?”

                “Yeah…” He turned his face and smiled a bittersweet smile again. “…Relaxing time.”

                “Okay…” I looked him up and down and noticed the

                “Can you still do a bit of magic?” I asked disingenuously.

                “uh… Sure, what do you have in mind?”

                “Cover the wounds, I don’t want to get water in them.”

                “Okay…” And he did as I asked, naively as always. “… Why thou-” He didn’t even end the sentence, I lowered myself down and started splashing him time and time again…
                “Stop!” He cried out between laughs. “It tickles!” but I wasn’t going to stop just that soon, not just because this made my job much easier, but also because of how nice it was to see him genuinely laughing for once.
                As the water drenched him, I could feel the smells leaving his body, the little remaining charcoal, the sweat from all that exercise, the mud that had dirtied his fur, the blood that had dried out by now… All of that was gone.
                Of course the smell of wet dog is not much better, but it was better than what he smelled like before… I just don’t know why it felt so nice to see him clean, but it felt nice and refreshing despite the pungent scent.

                Once Vernon was properly drenched and the cute laugh subsided into just a grin I turned around. He was soaking wet, his fur was so heavy it actually looked weighty, his hair got over his eye… So, I approached and fixed it. “This is much better.”

                “You really think so?” He asked chuckling to himself.

                I touched the side of his smile and pinched his cheek… “Absolutely.” And he blushed once more.
                I then grabbed the improvised sponge and it was now much easier to help him out… It ran smoothly along the wet fur and removed all the incrusted bits.

                He once again began blushing, but this time he felt comfortable enough to relax and let me do my thing, he even felt more talkative. “Is your tail hurting?”

                “My tail?” I looked back at it, I actually forgot I had holes in there where the pins were stuck in before… And I just now noticed, there was still a pin in it. “Oh, I didn’t even feel this little bugger!”

                “Give it here…” He asked… And I did as he requested, still rubbing him. “… It might hurt.” He warned, but I just shrugged, I have a high tolerance for pain.

                But it didn’t really hurt, it felt less like pain and more like relief… Like a pressure that was there before had been removed. His eyes then widened as he looked at the pin. “This thing is heavy… It’s like five, maybe six kilos, and it fits at the palm of my hand.” He said playing around with the weight before washing it.
                I winced a bit when I lowered my tail back down and the water filled the hole… “Azreth don’t do that… You’ll get and infection!”

                “Never got that in my whole life… And I’m not about to start.” I kept rubbing and right now he was feeling more at ease with me, he was lifting his arms so that I could help him with it… “You want it? It’s kind of a like a cool souvenir if you think about it.”

                “it’s a pin, I was inside your tail…” He said it like it was meant to be a bad thing, and when I shrugged he added. “It hurt you… It’s not a souvenir!” He was considerate even at that.

                “Keep it, I don’t mind… In fact…” I said taking it and tossing it towards the camp next to his stuff where it landed with a heavy *thud* “…I insist.”

                He seemed hesitant at first but then he shrugged it off minding other questions of his. “Are the holes going to heal? I don’t know how your tail works with the whole half-breed thing… Are you like a gecko?”

                “A big, mean and toothy gecko.” I smiled grinning as much as I could. He seemed worried still, so I tranquilized him. “It does regenerate, but I was thinking maybe leaving it like that… It’s kind of badass.”

                “How would you keep it like that?” He questioned.

                “I could put another pin in it… One that isn’t draconite of course, what do you think? It could have spikes and it’d be really cool looking!” I lifted my tail towards my face and looked at him through the hole.

                He didn’t find it as amusing as I did, but he didn’t hate it. “You do you… I guess.”