Sequoia reached forward and brushed a light kiss over the faint scar. She then flipped over onto her back, unbuttoning her dress with a practiced hand. Right between her shoulder blades was a large, ugly knot of scar tissue. "I fell off a horse while I was riding and landed on top of a sharp rock. Nearly bled out before my parents found me." She brushed a hand down it. "Hurt like a bitch but I came out of it okay."
Aniña ran her fingertips over the scar and placed a kiss to it, just like Sequoia had done to her. She turned around gently to show the many, many slash lines over her back, some looked like they were still healing, “Whip, for not turning up to training when I was sick.”
Sequoia couldn't respond to that. It was so stunningly unfair, so obviously biased to hurt her wife, that she could only let out a distressed wine. She pushed forward, pressing kisses up and down the lines with abandon as if by covering them in her love she could heal them.
Aniña whipped away a tear that had fallen with her finger while Sequoia kissed her scars. It wasn’t just one time that it had happened, it was many times. For eveything thing she did wrong, she had earns another. it just brought more tears to her eyes that she had trouble holding back.
Sequoia kept kissing until she ran out of space to kiss. Once she had reached the bottom of Aniña's back, she trailed back up, eventually pressing a tear-stained kiss to her lips. "I'm sorry, Habibi. I'm sorry." She remembered the things she'd said when she was signing the marriage papers and felt even worse. How evil had Aniña thought she was?
(I'm getting unreasonably sleepy, so I'm heading to bed. Goodnight.)
“I-It wasn’t your fault, Liran. You didn’t do anything.” Aniña said quietly, turning back around to face Sequoia again. She whipped away her tears, feeling embarrassed that she was crying. Weak… That one word rang through her mind over and over. She hated it, couldn’t even think of it without wincing a little.
(Goodnight)
Sequoia frowned. "No. I'm not apologizing for what I've done… well, not very much. I'm apologizing because you deserve apologies from people." She lanced waywardly at the clock and gave a little yelp, jumping from the bed. The potion needed to be taken from the flames and applied to Aniña's shoulder. She yanked he bowl off the flames juggling it from hand to hand.
Aniña swallowed when she saw the bowl, “That’s what’s going on my arm?” She asked, glancing from the bowl to her shoulder to back to the bowl and Sequoia. She didn’t like this but it was better then being in pain.
Sequoia nodded. "Yeah. It doesn't look great, but I promise, it's my best attempt to heal you. Let's get that bandage off your shoulder." She set the bowl over on the bedstand and began unwrapping the bandage with gentle fingers. Most of the bandages were soaked through with dried blood. "I'm going to put this on your shoulder now."
Aniña nodded, “Just do it.” She braced herself for pain that would come when the antidote was to be applied. She just hoped Sequoia would do it quickly and get it over and done with.
Sequoia scooped some up onto her fingers and spread it quickly over Aniña's shoulder. It smelled wonderful, earthy and sweet, but her fingers were already starting to burn a little. This was going to hurt like a bitch, especially because it would have to stay on for an hour to be effective. "You okay?" She asked, hoping it wasn't too painful.
Aniña noddd, “Y-Yes… keep going.” She said through gritted teeth. Gods did it hurt, but Sequoia had to keep going. Aniña didn’t want to die and this was the only way for her to get better. She scrunched the bedsheets in her hands, trying to focus on something else.
(Sorry I was out, pizza came earlier than I thought.)
Sequoia finished spreading the gel out on Aniña's shoulder. She fled to the bathroom to wash her hands off, sighing in relief when the devil poultice was off of her fingers. Once she was lean she walked back into the room. "Okay. That's 5 minutes down. Only 55 to go."
(All g)
“I don’t think I’m gonna survive for another 55 minutes… it hurts like Othylia.” Aniña whined, resisting the temptation to whip the gel off her shoulder. It stung like crazy and she had to do this for another 55 minutes! Someone save her.
(Thanks.)
"Othylia?" Sequoia asked, word clumsy on her tongue. It must've been one of her gods. It was a strange name, so different from Saint Kali, Saint Mar, Saint Jol, and the others. She walked over to her little potion table, gathering the herbs needed for a fairly basic painkiller, one that wouldn't interact with the poultice.
“Othylia, God of Yster or Hell.” Aniña muttered, fiddling with a strand of her hair. She sighed a little as she remembered her Gods and Godesses. She hadn’t prayed to them for a while and figured she shoulder later on.
Sequoia was having similar thoughts. She needed to pray to Saint Kali, her patron. She was known to her followers as 'The Painted Saint'. Sequoia ad everything she needed for a makeshift altar. "We don't have a god for our hell. We have Malino… The Black Spirit." The last part was whispered, so she wouldn't gain his attention. One never needed the attention of the soul eater.
“Ah… we don’t have many gods or goddesses…” Aniña shrugged her good shoulder. They had quite a few but not many so she made sure she prayed for them when she could. Aniña would have ti do that later when she wasn’t in pain.
"We have 2. The Creator and The Destroyer. Pax and Belli." Their names were whispered with awe. Humility. She checked the clock. "52 more minutes, Habibi." She mixed together a few of the herbs and crushed them into a poultice, carrying it over to Aniña. "Eat this"
Aniña este the herbs and coughed a little afterwards, “We have quite a few, but we only have a couple that we pray too.” She explained with a small sigh, “Homestly I can’t remeber some of them…”
Sequoia muffled a laugh with her hands. No need to seem rude. "We have over 1,000 saints. I know… half of them? They're so specialized that practically everyone has a separate one, especially when you add in peoples interpretations."
Aniña laughed a little, “A thousand? Really? Wow… that’s a lot. We have maybe fifty? I’m not sure.” She shook her head with a smile. It seemed so little number compared to the amount of Saints Sequoia had.
"Mmhhm. Plus, everyone has 3 different aspects, all of which take different kinds of worship and stuff. It's crazy." Sequoia wondered about Aniña's 50 gods, about how everything could possibly be represented when she had so few. And they didn't even worship all of them. Her wife's culture was so strange.
“That sounds so complicated. You have one god for one thing and that’s it.” Aniña said nodding her head a little afterwards as if she was agreeing with her own statement. Everything was simpler when you have less things to worried about.
"Well, they still stand for their own things, they just have different aspects. Saint Kaali is the saint of war so her aspects are war for glory, war for morality, and war for necessity." She shrugged. The system was a bit complicated, but it covered everything you could ever need to pray for.
Aniña shook her head, “That sounds complicated still. You have one god for one thing. Like, Trir God of hunting, Liran Godess of love and so on.” She sighed and leaned back onto the pillows.
"Wait! Liran is the goddess of love?" She blushed, feeling incredibly flattered. Liran was her pet name. She was… that was… wow. A goddess? Aniña thought she was worthy of being compared to a literal goddess? That was just the best thing she'd heard all day. All week even.
Aniña smirked a little and put a hand behind her head, “Yup. Goddess of love…” Her smirk turned into a soft smile, “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed…” She said quietly.