Faeries' Garden

[Rykoyo]

Classified as one of the last remain gardens in the world, Faeries' Garden gives new meaning to the words 'design' and 'beautiful'. Its vast grassy plains twist and spiral in designs that just fascinate the eyes from afar and up close. Its trees stand tall and proud at only three feet above the average human height and are forever dark green.
The wild and planted flowers that usually rest within flower beds enhance the coloring and magnificent textures the garden has to offer.
There is no one who is not welcome...except, of course, for those wishing harm and destruction to one of the last, large, gorgeous gardens. Feel free to relax and enjoy the view.

[Rykoyo]

Rykoyo silently slipped into the garden, concentrating on keeping his feet a few inches off the ground so as not to disturb the precious greenery as he walked. He gazed around at the garden, and though the reason for his presence here was quite serious, he was unable to keep an excited twinkle from his eyes.

"What at a perfect place to explore! It's so open!" he thought gleefully.

He closed his eyes as he concentrated a bit more. Within moments, a pleasant breeze meandered through the garden. Satisfied, he thought,

"There. That's even better."

He quickly sobered, however, as his mind returned to his mission.

"This is no time for exploring, though. I've got to find Riho. She's been missing for months..."

He thought back to their visit to Moscovy, on the trail of Ice, the man rumored to be leader of the rebel vampires. His eyes narrowed as he recalled the confrontation, but softened again as the rest of the events played themselves out, culminating in Riho's disappearance. Since then, he had searched the wide world over, always on the alert for any word of her. Strangely enough, however, there had been nothing. That had left him a little shaken, but ultimately made him redouble his efforts and so had led him to discover this secluded garden. It was here that he hoped to finally close his search. As he continued to walk, he dropped into the now familiar state of heightened awareness, dimming his vision, but drastically heightening smell, hearing, and touch. His mind sifted the air, seeking a certain smell, that of blood-stained flowers, a certain heartbeat, and a certain pattern of eddies. He strained to pick up one or more of those unique signatures, but, as he had resigned himself to accept, found nothing. He sighed and, exhausted, slumped to the ground against a nearby tree. After traveling so far, he needed to rest again, but even so, he continued his search, forcing his tired mind to remain vigilant. After about a quarter of an hour, however, he gave up. With the last of his reserves, he called a sylph to take up the search and with a final instruction to wake him should it find anything, his eyes slipped close and he fell into a deep sleep.

[Lady Riho]

Riho stood next Ry, looking down on his sleeping form. Her right arm was gripping her left tightly, trying to keep it still while the bones tried to mend themselves back in position.

To be honest, she looked like a disaster had struck her. The dark navy blue dress she wore was scratched and torn in random places everywhere revealing dark, dried blood and broken skin. All along Riho's body, her wounds were healing but at a much slower rate than normal. The worst damaged was along her left arm where endless small cuts were visible as well as a large, disgusting, and still bleeding gash could be found on her shoulder. The gash on the shoulder didn't seem to be healing at all and blood continued to leak from the wound.

Her eyes still yellow, Riho tried to focus on Ry's face...a face she hadn't seen in what felt like years. Her lips parted slightly in the hopes of taking in deep breathes to both calm and control herself. It didn't take long for Riho to realize her vision wasn't going to clear any time soon. This, of course, put a stress on her body to focus even more and harder, but it just wasn't working. Her knees, all scratched and mud/blood covered, started wobbling and shaking almost to the point where she couldn't stand straight anymore. Instead, she was fighting to stay up at all. Her senses were dulled to the max so much that it was worse than the drunken human's senses.

"All those...stupid....fights..." she said slowly between each breath as her eyes fluttered open and closed. Though nothing really mattered at the moment since she couldn't see, smell, hear...nothing at all. Riho had just been lucky to locate Ry at all.

"Hey....Ry....Wake...Up..." Riho said weakly, as she slowly started collapsing after the word 'up' had been uttered.

[Rykoyo]

Rykoyo's eyes snapped open as he woke with a jerk. The sylph's "wake-up call" had blazed through his mind, what was essentially a much-amplified version of the signatures he sought. The flowery scent was nearly gone, vastly overshadowed by that of blood. That familiar heartbeat fluttered madly, but so weakly that he was sure it would give out at any moment. The eddies, graceful even now, told him that, somewhere, she was falling. They were so vivid, in fact, that she seemed to be right in front of him...

"Oh."

There she was, looking like a mountain rolled over her, in the middle of crumpling to the ground.

"RI!!"

Since it was physically impossible to uncoil himself from his sitting position fast enough to catch her and his mind was exhausted, he gave the sylph a desperate mental command:

"Catch her!"

In that instant, Riho's broken form blazed sky blue and her fall was arrested. Instead, she drifted gently backwards until she lay completely on her back, cradled in a luminescent cushion of air. He stared at her in horror, taking stock of her many terrible injuries and desperately wracking his brain for a way to ease them. His eyes were drawn to her left arm, which she had been clutching as she fell.

"Broken... And that gash alone will kill her without help. Gotta take care of that first..."

He took a deep breath and the horror he felt receded, knocked violently aside by bitter sadness and an intense fear for Riho. He felt his senses heightening again, but they now focused entirely on her. The solution came to him with the force of an epiphany. He closed his eyes and sighed. This wouldn't be pleasant for either of them.

"I'm sorry, Ri.", he whispered, "This is going to hurt a lot, but please bear it."

A silhouette of Riho's body, and with it the eddies of magic surrounding her, welled up before him in his mind's eye. He focused upon the cushion the sylph had crafted and, gradually and very gently, increased the pressure it exerted on her arm, slowly stemming the flow of blood from the innumerable wounds that covered it and immobilizing the shattered bones. Once the bleeding had been stopped, her heart rate steadied, slowing and gaining strength once more, but only very sluggishly. He breathed a sigh of relief at that, after which he thought,

"I need to close that gash. Now it gets difficult..."

With ease borne of desperation, he formed scores of tiny vacuum pockets along the gash and sent them shooting in and across it, trailing shining strings behind them. The strings bonded with her skin and the vacuum pockets he had used for needles dissipated, effectively sutured the wound closed.

"She's lost a lot of blood... When she wakes up, she'll probably be really hungry. It would be dangerous if she were to feed from me then. Besides, she'd digest whatever she got from me and no good would be done. I need to replace the blood she's lost somehow... Would her body even accept my blood? I just don't know... I'll let her feed, of course, but what then? Short of having an Earth Elemental Bender treat her, there's only good old-fashioned bedrest."

With her wounds finally stabilized, he opened his eyes and stood. He gazed down at her unconscious form, his eyes dimmed from anguish.

"Ah, Ri," he said quietly, "What happened to you? Why couldn't I have followed? I promised to protect you and you've gone and made a liar out of me."

He barked a short, bitter laugh before kneeling and gathering her gently into his arms, carefully avoiding her left arm so as not to jar it. For a long time he stood there, tenderly holding her to himself as the adrenalin left his system, and then the tears came. Welling slowly, they spilled over and ran down his cheeks. Closing his eyes against them, almost inaudibly, he said,

"Please be okay, Ri."

[Lady Riho]

Suddenly everything went black and eerie quiet. It was obvious, even to Riho's subconscious, that she had passed out. It was a slightly peaceful experience since the pain and worry instantly vanished as though the tide had come in and wet the sand temporarily. The only downfall remained the simple fact that Riho could no longer actually control anything about herself besides her subconscious thoughts and feelings. Luckily, though, she'd found Ry in time and even Riho's subconscious trusted him.

Even as Riho's body was mended and repaired, she felt nothing from the pain and agony that should've come. The hunger was there, like always, but for once, unlike the past few days, it wasn't eating her alive in the subconscious world. This would later be the only good thing about being unconscious. There's a reason a vampire never lets their guard down...never truly falls asleep and loses themselves to the subconscious.

Although the subconscious didn't desire blood...doesn't mean the body didn't crave it. Weakly, Riho's right hand slowly began to crawl up Ry's arm in a way that was almost plain out creepy for someone asleep. Riho's mind didn't accept for reject the body's desire to survive. Instead, the body and mind were separated so much that there was no way one knew what the other was doing. First one hand...the other was sure to follow soon.

[Rykoyo]

Almost as if in direct response to his words, he found that Riho's hand had begun to move. He took a little heart in that, at first taking it as a sign of her coming out of her faint. But as soon became obvious, her mind was not behind the movement. It was headed slowly but surely toward his neck.

"I thought this might happen. Dangerous, indeed. I might need to have the sylph help if it gets too bad..."

Carefully, he eased his way to the ground, once more taking care to avoid jarring her arm, until he knelt on both knees. He gripped her more tightly to steady both himself and her and waited.