Bu'Ann was gentle, for being a female hyena, and that was one of the reasons she'd decided to train to become a bone setter in the first place. It was a bit less violent than fighting and hunting, and a lot more interesting. She was currently poking a prodding the wrist of an adolescent male, to try to figure out how bad his injury was. Whenever she hit a sore spot he howled as if he was dying at her paws. The howling ones were not much of a problem, she'd learned, and she suspected this one might also be a bit of a drama queen. It was when the patients went quiet you had to start worrying, according to the bone setter teaching her. Those that had the strength to fuss wasn't about to die anytime soon. The brown female turned her head away and rolled her eyes. He was behaving like a wuss, but she tried not to openly mock her patients.
"That really, really hurts," Corvus complained, "Do you really have to break it in order to fix it?"
The adolescent had tears in his eyes and his lower lip quivered. He was too young to be crippled! And he definitely was too handsome! This wasn't fair! Augh, if it wasn't broken before she must have damaged something with all the abuse she was putting him through.
"No," Bu'Ann said and pushed down firmly with her paws, "It's not broken. You a hunter?"
When Corvus had stopped howling he nodded and licked his abused paw. He started to understand the attitude towards bone setters among some of the older hunters. Unless they were actively dying they'd rather grit their teeth than risk a visit. It seemed silly to him, and he'd just thought they were afraid to show weakness in general. Perhaps they had other reasons... Or maybe he'd just had bad luck and this was a particularly brutal one.
"So you hurt yourself hunting?" Bu'Ann asked as she went to get some supplies from her cache nearby. She moved a few rocks that blocked the entrance to the crack between two large rocks she used for storage. You'd think hunters, guards and scouts would be equally accident prone, but in her experience hunters were injured more often. Scared prey could seriously mess you up, but they all had to eat so... Better them than her, honestly, and she could always do her part by patching them up as a thanks for the food.
"No," Corvus said and flipped his mane, "I was walking."
He'd pranced around, practicing his walk and not bothering anyone, and when taking a sharp turn to properly flaunt his latest creation (hide and decomposing bird wing, with an accent of dried grass) he'd twisted his wrist somehow. He'd ended up sitting there in pain for a while before someone heard him, laughed their tail off and finally took pity on him and helped him get to a bone setter. All he'd wanted to do was to give his pride a bit of fabulous fashion, but he didn't feel very fabulous now.
"Walking?" Bu'Ann asked, looking up from her rummaging, "Really? Hmmmmh."
She couldn't understand how he'd managed to sprain his paw this badly while walking. Perhaps he'd just had bad luck or got it stuck somehow. No matter, she didn't need to know how it had happened in order to patch him up. She extracted a rolled up strip of hide from her supplies. One of the slaves had been tasked with banging on it with a rock a couple of days until it was soft enough for her liking.
"What are you going to do with that?" Corvus asked, looking very nervous, "Is it going to hurt?"
Since the examination left him screaming he wasn't sure if he wanted to know what the treatment was like. Sure, he wanted this to be fixed, but he wasn't keen on more pain. He tried putting some weight on it to see if he could perhaps run away instead. Bad plan. Baaad plan. Owwie!
Bu'Ann shook her head at the younger hyenas antics and went to retrieve another item from her storage. It was one of the trade secrets she'd learned from the hyena training her, and luckily she rarely had to use it.
"This," she said with a dramatic gesture, "Is a very potent painkiller. You'll hardly feel a thing."
She carefully unwrapped the piece of hide to reveal what looked like a small pile of grass. With a look of deep concentration on her face she used one claw to divide the pile into a couple of smaller ones. She watched the piles from different angles before shifting a few blades of grass between them. When she was happy with her work she pushed one of the piles toward Corvus.
"Chew this," she ordered. "But don't swallow it whatever you do!"
Corvus gulped but did as it was told. Ewww! He promptly spat it out.
Bu'Ann glared at him.
"This medicine is very hard to get," she said between gritted teeth, pushing another of the small piles towards him. "This is your last chance, or would you rather be in pain. It's supposed to taste like that, how else would you know it's working?"
Corvus flinched, but the female didn't smack him. He closed his eyes and started chewing the second heap of icky grass, making faces but keeping the foul stuff in his mouth.
The brown hyena shook her head again, but finally had some piece to wrap the sore wrist. She wondered if he'd lied about "just walking" because she still couldn't wrap her head around how he could have twisted his paw this badly. Oh, well, it didn't really matter. Her job was fixing it. She tugged at the hide one final time and then decided she was happy with her work. Her fussy patient had done a lot of grimacing but only whined once. It was much nicer to work without all the howling and crying.
"There, you're done," she announced, "You can spit the medicine out now."
Corvus was relieved to get rid of the foul substance. He studied his newly wrapped wrist and tried to put some weight on it. It still hurt, but it felt as if he would be able to walk on it now.
"Right," she said, "You can walk carefully on it, but you should rest as much as possible. Tell the leader of your group of hunters you need a couple of days off."
She wrapped up the remaining pile of grass in the pice of hide and nudged the small bundle towards him.
"If it hurts too much you can chew this, but this is my last dose so don't come crying for more." she continued, "Get back here the night after next night and I'll see if I can remove the wrap."
Corvus bobbed his head as a thanks and carefully took the bundle in his teeth. He bobbed his head again and somehow managed to prance off, with a slight limp. The medicine made him feel a bit light headed, and he decided to go home to rest. He could deal with the other hunters later. If someone missed him they could seek him out. He was nearly-deadly injured after all!
Bu'Ann watched him go, her head tilted to one side. Wow... Well, she'd have to replenish her "medicine", even if she rarely had to use it. It sure came in handy in situations like this. The grass was just ordinary grass, but it was important that it had a somewhat bitter taste. The fouler the better according to the bone setter she'd learned the trick from. If it tasted bad enough her patient would think it must be strong medicine, and trick themselves into having less pain. Worked like a charm!
She'd been told to test chew a wad to make sure it didn't have any real effects. This was only the second time she had resorted to using it, so it was the first batch she had harvested herself. Luckily it had worked just as well as the sample she got from her mentor.
With a huff she closed her storage with the rocks and wandered off to find some more "medicine" to make sure she was prepared whenever she had to treat her next crybaby.
-fin-
Word count: 1400