“The early bird gets the worm, and the early fox gets the bird.”

  ― Matshona Dhliwayo

  Lios froze for a second. He wasn’t sure what to do, would the creature try to attack him if he approached? The fox whined, it was looking at him and a soft, unsure growl left its throat, bringing him back to the situation at hand. He noticed a bit of gore in its mouth, but it was a slightly different color to the wounds on her hind legs. It was tinged a dark green. He took an unsteady step forward, watching as the fox rose back to its feet - it had stumbled - and raised its hackles. The fox was snarling now, its fur trembling as it shakily stood.

  “You're okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. I promise. See, look.” Slowly and calmly the boy spoke to the hurting animal. Gently he lowered the hoe to the ground, bending over carefully and keeping his eyes on the fuzzy creature. He took another slow step toward it, lowering himself until he was on his knees a few feet away from it. Suddenly he wished he had brought some food, something to bribe it with.

  On his hands and knees he crawled closer, wincing as it tried to back away from him whimpering. “Come here, we have to check your wounds. I’ll help you I promise.”

  On closer look the wounds seemed to be puncture marks, and one leg was bent strangely, twisted and cracked. The fox wasn’t putting much weight on it, if any. The punctures looked like they were festering too, causing Lios to wonder if they were infected.

  Is there anything I can do about a broken bone or infected wound? His heart dropped at seeing it, his confidence waning. The fox was weak, it definitely wouldn’t survive without his help. It might die with his help. Only option is to try, no sense giving up before I even give it a go.

  The animal was snarling, spittle dripping from its weary mouth. Its eyes flicked to the side, as though considering if it could run before Lios could catch it, or if it needed to fight. There was an amount of intelligence in its eyes, Lios realized, more so than most animals back on earth. Must have something to do with magic or the Overseer that he had heard about. Or the “system” that the Overseer commanded.

  While the fox distracted for a moment, the boy inched closer. Crawling toward it he unwound the wrap over his arm, his shield of a sheet. He would probably have to swaddle the fox if he could get it to trust him. It eyed him tiredly, not running but continuing to snarl in warning.

  He looked it in the eyes and spoke softly to it, telling it he wanted to help it. That he wanted to help it survive. He couldn’t tell the gender completely, but thought maybe it was a girl. Its features were fairly slim, even for a fox, though that could be due to malnourishment.

  Before he knew it, he was in arm’s reach of the shivering creature. She had stopped backing away; her snarl sounding more confused. With an unsteady hand he reached out, letting her sniff his hand knowing at any moment she could snap at him, bury her fangs deep into his hand. But she only sniffed his hand. Then he reached further up, placing the hand on the top of her head and scratching behind her ears. She collapsed, still watching him warily, now too tired to remain standing. A soft sigh seemed to leave her as her breathing seemed to slow, pained.

  Quickly Lios gingerly wrapped her in the white cloth, swaddling her and allowing the fabric to absorb any blood. He made sure to tie it tightly around the wounds to hopefully prevent too much blood from leaving her body. His heart wrenched as she made soft, pained mewling noises while he manhandled her as gently as he could.

  Then he stood, paying attention to her labored breathing. I hope I came in time... He didn’t know how he would feel if she still died, but with her in his arms he lifted his hoe back up and started retracing his steps. He had left a fair trail of broken branches and tamped down underbrush.

  Unlike before, though, he sprinted, feeling thin branches crack against his small body. Thankfully, most of them were over his head, but he still emerged from the woods several minutes later bearing dozens of small bleeding scratches. He winced when he emerged.

  His mother was looking around their garden frantically. He didn’t know exactly how long he had been gone, or when she had noticed him missing, but he could tell his mother was afraid she had lost him. She looked to be almost in tears when she saw him. Immediate relief overcame her frantic expression, but it fell as she saw he was bleeding and holding something in his arms.

  “Lios where did you go? You had me so worried!” She called out, trotting toward him as he breathlessly ran at her.

  He stopped in front of her gasping, unable to find air as he unceremoniously showed her the injured fox. Of course, swaddled as she was, Elaine could only see her face. At this point the fox was unconscious but still breathing. A tinge of red was soaking through the wrap near her legs.

  “We... We have to help her!” He told his mother, eyes shimmering. He didn’t have any medical or veterinary experience but surely someone in town could help? “She’s, she’s dying mom, we have to help!”

  “Slow down, tell me what’s going on.” His mother was checking him all over, barely paying attention to the fox in his arms.

  He unwrapped her, drawing a soft, pained noise from the fox. His mother finally turned her attention to the adorable animal, as though noticing it for the first time. So worried she had been for her son she hadn’t properly registered his words, especially between breaths as they were.

  “Bring her inside, quick. I’ll see if I can do anything.” She assured him though to Lios she did not sound all that confident.

  As far as he knew she was just a tailor, he still didn’t really have a grasp on how the system worked nor how skills worked though he had heard about them. He didn’t know if she could do anything and tears sprang to his eyes unbidden. He hadn’t cried since he was a baby, the mental acuity of an adult allowing him much better emotional regulation than he should have. Unfortunately, in this high-stress situation hormones began to run rampant, wrenching away some of his control.

  He followed her in, sniffling and trying to bind his emotions as he had all of these years. She took the fox from him and laid her out on the kitchen table before turning to him and noticing the tears, the first one dripping down his left cheek. It mixed with a drop of blood from one of his many scrapes and left a rusty streak. She stiffened for a moment but he didn’t notice, turning his attention to the fox and gently unwrapping her, having to climb up onto a chair and then the table to do so.

  His mother quickly pulled herself from the stupor and helped him, unsure what to make of her stoic intelligent son crying for the first time that she could remember. Once the wrap was off of the foxes legs a putrid smell lifted into the air, filling the small room. Lios gagged but his mother didn’t react, instead focusing on her task.

  She left the table for a moment and returned with a knife, a bucket half full with water from the morning, and several smaller pieces of cloth. Scraps from clothes made for clients, in recent years she was able to work from home after purchasing tools to help her sew.

  “What do... What do you need me to do?” Lios started, stopped as his voice cracked, then finished. The crack displayed more worry than Elaine had ever heard from the boy.

  “She was bit by a rottfang, it appears. Where did you find her?” Elaine asked as she wiped away some of the blood to get a better idea of what was going on. All the while she felt at the legs, felt for the different piercings in the animal’s skin. “Oh, you sweet girl... this leg is broken... I won’t be able to fix that with my magic...”

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  It took the boy a few moments to register the tone in his mother’s voice. It was almost as though she were already giving up. He frowned and took her lead, taking a cloth and wetting it to wash away the drying blood. It was sticky, beginning to coagulate in some spots, wet and slippery nearer the wounds.

  “If we can close the bites does she have a chance?” He looked up at his mother hopefully as she pursed her lips.

  “We have to get rid of the poisoned skin and muscle too. I can't heal poison yet in humans, let alone foxes. It might be best for us to put her out-”

  “No! If there’s a chance we have to take it!” He interrupted her, seeing that she was panicking. He had never seen her panic before, granted their lives were typically stress free and he had just slapped a dying creature onto their kitchen table.

  She was quiet for a moment, examining the foxes' wounds. She focused, trying to figure out a plan before starting to cut. I can cut away the poisoned areas but I need my hands to heal... I won't be fast enough by myself and if I send Lios away to fetch someone it’ll be too late... she thought factoring in the shallow breathing of the small critter.

  “Lios, I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do. I don't have enough hands.” She felt guilty saying it, her own eyes welling up a bit. She never imagined she’d have to tell her son that something like this was hopeless, that the first time he was adamant about something she would have to crush his hopes.

  “I have two hands Mom, tell me what you need!” He exclaimed, breaking her from her thoughts. She glanced down at the knife and shook her head. The five-year-old Lios had never even held one before.

  “Lios I’m sorry-”

  “Mother, listen to me, please. I can help! What. Do. You. Need?” He raised his voice, placing importance in his words. He was still crying, but he blinked away the tears, hoping his mother would trust him a little this time.

  She stared at him in shock before snapping back to the situation and taking a deep breath, steeling herself for the lunacy that was about to occur. “I need you to cut away the rot. Then I can heal her. Can you do that?” she had no confidence that he could, he was still a child as much as he acted like he wasn't. She knew he was different, a genius some would say, but that didn’t mean he could simply do something on the first try.

  To her shock, though, he held out a hand. She hesitated a bit but quickly the knife handle landed in his hand and he looked down at the wounds. He tried to pick out the worst, but they all looked pretty bad. “Which one first? Tell me where to cut.”

  She pointed it out to him and he leaned in and held the knife to it. He took a deep breath, wishing he had more time to practice with the knife with this body. On this leg there were six punctures, two of them especially looked bad, the rottfang poison eating the flesh around the wound.

  With a steady but unsure hand he pierced the foxes flesh and began to slowly cut around the wound, trying to remove the flesh. Too slowly evidently. “You need to cut faster, she’ll bleed out if you take too much time.” Now his mother took on a stern teaching voice, the type she usually reserved for when they were gardening or picking herbs in the forest. The type she had when she advised against eating a specific purple berry with tiny hairs on it, like a raspberry.

  Lios said nothing but increased the speed, cutting through muscle and skin. He gouged out an area around the wound as fast as he felt comfortable, having to put far more force behind the knife than he expected. It was like the knife was a touch dull, but he knew that wasn’t the case. His mother wouldn’t make that mistake.

  Could it be the fox has a level? He wondered as he used the knife to pull away the flesh, letting it land on the sheet that had wrapped her. The fox wasn’t even stirring at this point. Her breathing was shallow, quick breaths.

  “Good, I think you got it all there!” Elaine exclaimed and her hands glowed. She didn’t need to say anything to activate her skill, it seemed. Lios watched in fascination as the bloody patch scabbed over, healing but not completely. It wasn’t seamless. It seemed to take Elaine a lot of focus to heal her, a lot of energy too, because once that one minor wound healed she sighed heavily and shook her hands.

  “That one next. We’ll get the worst ones on both sides then finish it up, okay? We can do this.” Her panic was mostly gone, replaced with a determined calm. The calm helped Lios to focus as he leaned forward with a knife that was too large for the finesse required, with a body too weak to use it with ease, and carved into the fox.

  He had never been bothered by blood, thankfully, but he had also never had to cut into another creature like this. He had never even gone hunting. Unable to stop himself, the combination of the welling blood and the stink from the rotting flesh made him gag. Still, he managed to get through it and cut out another rough patch of flesh.

  “Good job! We’re lucky the fangs didn’t go too deep, its mostly surface level.” Elaine said, taking a breath as her glowing hands hovered over the wound, closing it with another scab. “It’s all I can do to stop the bleeding right now but if she survives this I can heal her more, okay?”

  “Understood, where next?” Lios responded curtly, focused on the surgery. She pointed to one more particularly rough spot, he assumed that's where this next cut would be but didn’t want to act impulsively. He wasn’t an expert at this, had very little experience with this in fact, and wanted to follow someone's lead who seemed to have at least a little bit of experience.

  The third cut went about as well as the others, if not better, as Lios learned how to better control the knife with his fragile strength. It seemed he had just enough power to do what he needed to do, thankfully. Then they moved to flip the fox over, getting a slight, quiet whimper as the fox twitched in its unconsciousness. This was the broken leg.

  He followed his mother’s instructions, and they quickly cleared then scabbed over the next puncture with ease. The second one, however, was nearly disastrous.

  Lios moved as he had before, cautiously but quickly, knowing that his mother would heal the animal's wounds as soon as she was able. He cut deep into the wound, this one festering further than the rest, and sliced through an artery. Blood weakly sprayed from the open wound, more than all the others had bled. She was already so low on blood that Lios stilled in horror as it spurted, splashing against his face.

  “Lios! Lios focus! Finish the cut and I can heal her! You have to be quick!” Elaine shouted at the boy breaking him from his frozen state. His heart was racing, his hands were clammy. He could hardly keep a hold on the handle of the knife but he kept his grip. He, quick and careful as he could, cut the rest of the wound and opened it up, a swath of envenomed flesh splatting onto the sheet as he worriedly checked to ensure the fox was still breathing. She was, if only barely.

  “One more son, then we can take a rest. She’s lost too much blood to get all the smaller punctures right now.” Lios heard his mother say, a twinge of anxiety in her normally confident voice.

  He nodded, letting her know he understood as he leaned over the fox for the last time that night, for better or for worse. He gulped heavily, seeing how weak she already was from the blood loss. Sweat dripped down his face, off of his chin, and fell around her small frail body. Carefully as he could, a touch shaky from the nerves, he dug his knife into her flesh, carving out the rot. No artery was struck this time. The blood simply weakly pooled around the fresh wound.

  Then a soft glow, an expression of extreme focus as his mother poured the last dredges of her mana into the wound, closing it up with a scab, Her brow furrowed as Lios watched the fox carefully, watching for any signs that things were going wrong.

  She still only took the shallowest of breaths. She was still otherwise. But her biggest wounds had healed. Her breathing had gotten a touch easier, it seemed. She seemed stable.

  Finally he plopped back, his rear hitting the hardwood chair he had been standing on. His hands trembled and chest tightened as he looked up at his mother who was smiling down at him gently, the situation distracting her from her own anxiety from when he was missing.

  “Let me put together a poultice to help her heal. She’ll take some monitoring and we will probably have to hand feed her for a while but she should get better. I think...” She frowned at her own lack of confidence. “I’ll ask tomorrow if there is anyone with experience healing animals. I’m sure the only ones are those who work the stables, and unfortunately Strellas are very different from foxes. But maybe they’ll know something.”

  Lios nodded numbly, his vision getting a touch blurry as his chest simply kept tightening. Tears streaked his face, blood from both his scratches and the fox etching visible trails. Why am I crying again? Over a fox I don’t even have a history with? The boy asked himself, frustrated. He had had much better control of his emotions for the past five years. Now though, his emotions had been rising and falling since finding the fox hurt, since half expecting her to die on his way home. Not to mention his nerves during the operation, or the deep anxiety that it would all be for nothing, that she would die.

  He cried quietly, watching dimly as his mother flitted through the kitchen, went out to the garden to pick some herbs, and mixed some things together in a mortar and pestle. Soon she was rubbing the wounds with it and wrapping the fox with a slew of bandages. Only once she had done that did she turn to her quietly crying son, dirtied and bloodied, and come to comfort him.

  She whispered in his ears how proud she was of him, how terribly difficult what they had done would be for adults let alone a child. She took a wet cloth and used it to wash the blood from his face and hands. Once this was done she helped him don some clean clothes and the two laid down in his parents’ bed, with her worriedly comforting him. It was to this scene that Zeke returned home.