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How curious. It was clear from the demeanor of the rabbit that the sickly boy had been caring for it some time now. He could recall longingly watching as his brother played with the forest wildlife, but never being able to approach one. They always ran away or bit at him when he was too close.
Mare kept a reasonable distance from the small animal, watching as he had always done.
For someone who’d grow up to become like him, Night was incredibly gentle. It was a quiet contradiction to who they were at their core. Rotten, selfish people, who would curse those who harmed them for generations and leave the soil dry and barren when retaliation has finished.
Yet his small hands, so used to flipping the pages of a book, unwrapped the rabbit’s wound and poured water into a small bowl.
“Dream was too busy to heal this rabbit,” Night quietly says, neatly tucking his legs beneath himself. “The village elder says that his energy should go towards prioritizing the people, not the animals. So I took care of it.”
He peels away the bloody bandages on the rabbit’s leg, his pale face flickering with sorrow to see the irritated wound beneath. The animal hardly stirs, almost sleepy with its calm. Mare observes closely, both the rabbit’s mood and the injury it has.
In his time supervising a gaggle of self-destructive, violent mercenaries, they often came into their own mortal injuries that would require healing and relocation that could not be fixed with the wave of a hand or a bowl of monster food. It goes without saying that most of them couldn’t provide enough healing intent to manufacture consistent resources in the isolated environment of their castle. Doing such a thing required regular manual upkeep of a farm land by a tender of magic prowess and stable, caring demeanor that none of them could devote the time to.
The alliance with Farmtale was a boon, one that benefited both Horror’s world and himself. Sometimes Nightmare wondered if it’d be better for him, to let the man go. He knew every time that he would never ask him if he wanted to leave.
Horror, after time spent with that flourishing world, became well-acquainted with animal husbandry and veterinary care. They had tried to bring livestock and farming to Nightmare’s castle world, but due to the prolonged, saturated exposure to his presence, the soil was incapable of retaining life. Everything died eventually, before it could yield fruit or nutrition. Even the animals were too stressed to survive for long, and it was deemed immoral to keep them in such a terrible environment.
Mare did not ask how Night knew how to relocate the rabbit’s leg. To push his fingers into the joint and listen for that fragile click.
Even at that moment, the animal remained gentle and relaxed, staring out at the grass with a large black eye. As if asleep without shutting its lids.
“You’ve done well.” Mare murmurs, a tall black shadow looming over the prone, bloodied creature and the boy who knelt before it.
Night lowers his head, a flare of pride and satisfaction distantly glowing in the blackness of his tired heart. “I care about all of them,” he says, avoiding the praise. “It just takes time for them to get used to me.”
Mare remembers the shiver of Dust’s shoulder under his palm, the solid weight of his bare arm through the glove that he wore.
“Yes,” he eventually murmurs, and the rabbit looks at him without fear in its eyes. He drinks down the pain that it suffers. “They only need to trust you.”