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Rayla cried in pain as she used her right hand to hold grab her left arm. The formidable elven warrior was nearly in tears from the agony she felt as she tried to keep her left arm flat to the wooden table.
“Just hold on a little longer!” Callum yelled, putting down the red-hot iron as he ran over from his spot by the fireplace to come sit beside the girl. He placed his arms around her as he tried to comfort her. “It’ll all be over soon.”
“Please,” Rayla whispered, barely able to speak. “It hurts… so much.”
Callum swallowed heavil. It was harrowing for him to see the normally strong, confident, and determined Rayla in such pain and turmoil. He closed his hand around one of Rayla’s daggers and lifted the foreign weapon up, his focus switching between it and the darkened, dying skin of Rayla’s left hand behind it. He looked once more at the blade of the weapon, staring at the thin, vein-like design that ran through its length.
“No,” he muttered, half to himself and half out loud. “No, I can’t do this. There’s gotta be another way.”
Rayla half-turned to pull Callum closer by the shoulder with her good hand, staring into his bright green eyes with her violet ones.
“Please,” Rayla pleaded again, “just do it now. It hurts too much!”
Callum stared into her violet eyes and felt his soul being peered upon by an angel. His right arm began to shake, and he quickly clamped down on it with his left. Rayla turned back to keep her dying arm still on the table, her jaw clenched.
“He-here,” Callum said, offering a rag to the elven girl as he rounded the table to stand perpendicular to where Rayla sat. “It’s all I got.”
Rayla gratefully accepted the cloth and stuffed it into her mouth, bundling it up so she could bite down into it. There was little more she could do besides sitting as still as she could. They had left this issue be for too long and now the chickens were coming home to roost.
Callum closed his eyes as he ran through what he needed to do in his mind. It wasn’t particularly long or difficult to remember, but the act of doing them all would be. Opening his eyes again, he breathed out slowly as he leaned closer to the table. Rayla looked up at him with wide eyes, and he tried to smile as comfortingly as he could.
“It’s going to be all right,” Callum whispered, and then he lifted the dagger up and brought it down as hard as he could.
The inn was quiet when they returned. In near darkness, Callum climbed the stairs to the second floor of the building where the rooms were. In his arms, he held Rayla. The girl was finally quiet and asleep after all of the pain she had endured.
Callum passed his and Ezran’s room. His little brother would be asleep by this point – or, at least, he should be. He would have to get to bed as well, though there was no guarantee that Bait or Azymondias or perhaps even both would be sharing it with him. The next room was Rayla’s, so Callum maneuvered as best he could to use his right hand to push down on the door’s handle, all without accidentally bumping Rayla against the wall or door.
He strode into the dark room, quickly moving to the left side of the small, neatly made bed, bathed in moonlight from the window whose curtain had not been closed since that morning. He propped Rayla on one knee and one arm as he used his other arm to move aside the blanket. Callum gently lowered Rayla onto the bed, doing his best not to stir her from her much needed sleep. He slowly pulled her boots off, placing them by the edge of the bed before draping the blanket over her body.
As he stood up to close the curtains, he felt a soft hand brush his. Callum turned around to see Rayla blearily open her eyes, shifting slightly as she tried to sit up.
“Woah, woah, easy,” Callum whispered, sitting on the side of the bed. “Take it slow.”
“Where are we?” she asked, her voice slightly slurred as she slowly sat up in the bed.
“I brought you back to the inn after… well, after that.”
Rayla blinked a few times before she hesitantly removed her hand from Callum’s and slowly moved it over to her left arm. Callum winced as he saw her touch the bandaged stump of her hand, and his heart fell as he saw her lip quiver when she finally realized that she no longer had a left hand.
It was a necessary sacrifice. The bind was becoming too tight and starving the hand, letting it die and rot while still attached to Rayla’s arm. If they hadn’t amputated it when they did, it could’ve led to far worse problems for her. There was already one miracle with Azymondias – there wasn’t going to be another for her.
And even knowing all of that, Callum felt nothing but pain for the agony he was sure Rayla felt. There was nothing he could do to wipe away that look of despair that had crossed onto her face, and the feeling of powerlessness that came with that knowledge only made him feel worse.
“It’ll be alright,” Callum tried to reassure her while trying to reassure himself at the same time. “It’ll be fine.”
“Will it?” Rayla responded, her voice shaky. She held out her stump “I-I’m useless. Without this, I have nothing. I’m worth nothing.”
“No,” Callum immediately replied. Rayla looked taken aback by the strength of his reply. “That’s wrong. You aren’t useless, and you definitely aren’t nothing. I bet you that with even one hand, you’d still kick my butt anytime of the week.” His tone became more serious. “You mean the world to me."
“D-do you really mean that?” Rayla hesitantly asked, her distinctive lilt sounding like music to Callum’s ears. Still, her expression had an element of fear in it, as if she was scared that were she to ask, he would deny it. The look she had as she stared at him made Callum's heart pound hard, and for an instant, he felt his own momentary confidence falter before recovering.
“Of course,” Callum confirmed, leaning in and enveloping the girl in a hug. “You’ll always be important to me.” He pulled away after a few seconds to see Rayla slightly blushing under the pale moonlight glow. She was always pretty to him, but at that moment, she was especially beautiful with her silky white hair, bright violet eyes, and thin, light pink lips.
At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to kiss those lips. But Rayla yawned, and her eyes began fluttering with tiredness as she slowly slunk back into the blanket, so Callum bottled that desire somewhere deep in his heart and helped her get comfortable in bed again, fixing her blanket and pillow as she lay on the bed.
As he finished pulling the blanket out from under her and letting it drape over the side of the bed, he felt Rayla’s hand grab his arm, pulling him down to her as she leaned up. The next thing he knew was the sensation of a pair of slightly wet lips on his own, and with a start, he realized that she was kissing him. Kissing him. He was being kissed by a girl. He closed his eyes and savored the moment.
It ended all too soon in Callum’s opinion, and as the two broke apart, both slightly gasping for breath with a thin tendril of saliva connecting them, Rayla smiled. It was radiant and stunning to him.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice growing dimmer as she slowly slid back under her blanket, “for doing what I needed, and for taking care of me.”
“Always,” Callum replied. Rayla was already asleep so he wasn’t sure she heard him, but he took heart at the faint smile that played on her lips as she let sleep overtake her.
Standing back up, he quietly moved to close the curtains. Right before he pulled them shut, he looked back one last time at Rayla, at how the moonlight illuminated her sleeping form. She was truly a Moonshadow Elf – as beautiful as the light of the full moon. He absentmindedly touched his lips and remembered the sweet taste of moonberry that had been such a distinct taste earlier. The aching in his heart was less than before, and he knew that no matter what difficulties she would face in the future because of her loss, he would always be beside her to help her through.
Callum smiled and closed the curtains.