Her lungs were filled, and she turned her head to the side and coughed out heaps of the salty ocean water. She didn’t remember the ship sinking. She was prepared, she thought, and then…
“There there. Take it easy, sugar.” A soft and kind voice spoke, and Adrianna immediately looked over towards the source of the sound. The woman was likely a few years younger than Adrianna, though it was possible they were the same age. She was likely attractive, if she hadn’t looked like a drowned rat, with makeup streaks along her cheeks from thick liner.
She patted Adrianna’s back as Adrianna coughed up more water, but as her senses returned to her, Adrianna tensed and tried to get out of the woman’s reach. Adrianna rolled onto her stomach, though her limbs felt like jelly, and began to scoot away. “Aw honey, calm down. Stay here. It’s going to be okay. You have a few cuts on you. Let me look at them.” She reached out once more for Adrianna, but the magi panicked.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” She shouted. “Get away from me!!” Her voice sounded high compared to her usual calm, collected way of speaking. Fortunately, it could easily be attributed to the cracking that occurred in young men going through puberty. She twisted her arm from the woman’s grasp, ending up on her back once more, and she scooted away a few feet.
The woman’s kind disposition melted away and she glared at Adrianna. “You don’t have to be such a jackass. A simple ‘Thanks for saving my life’ would do just fine.” She glowered.
Adrianna had another coughing fit, and when she looked up again, her rescuer was preoccupied with someone else. Good. The last thing she needed was someone touching her and…trying to tend to her. Ugh.
As she got better control of her limbs, Adrianna moved off a little way from the others. She shed the jacket that had likely saved her life while she floated unconscious through the water, and possible led to her being dragged onto the shore and resuscitated. The woman was right. She did deserve a little gratitude, and she was right to be upset. But it was better for Adrianna to keep her distance for now, rather than get to close to someone. Last she remembered, there were hunters on that ship.
Her clothing was soaked, and unlike most of the other men, she wasn’t ready to peel off all of her layers and let things dry. She did take off her pack, grateful she had attached it beneath the life jacket, and took off her boots before assessing the cuts the woman had mentioned earlier. They weren’t bad, just a few on her arms, though a cut on the life jacket itself suggested she would have had a rather nasty piece of glass embedded in her chest if not for the bright orange vest.
Adrianna was glad she had wrapped her kit well, because most of the herbs and gauze still seemed to be dry. In the back of her mind, she knew the right thing to do was to take care of the others now—to help revive those who could come back, and then tend to their injuries. She knew it was the right thing to do, but she had to make sure she had her own faculties first.
One of the cuts on her arm needed to be stitched, but the other two simply shared a bandage wrapped around that region of her forearm. Fortunately, the stitching needed to occur on the non-dominant hand’s arm, and she spent the next few minutes taking care of that. She could have healed herself… but someone had already noticed her cuts, and having them disappear would be pretty damn suspicious.
Once her immediate needs were tended to, Adrianna did her best to get her mind off of her still dripping clothing. She looked around instead, briefly taking in the people, and then looking beyond them down the shoreline, desperately hoping she would see a pier, or another helpful landmark of civilization.
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