“Rikard, he’s hurt.” Trudy’s hand on his arm was tight and anxious, and she started to move forward.
Rikard wasn’t against women’s lib and he’d marched in several parades at Trudy’s side, but he wasn’t going to let her hare off unprotected towards a man who’d been a dragon that had just destroyed a dozen raised beds and part of a greenhouse. He grabbed a rake from Trudy’s gardening trolley, and tried to go first.
That worked about as well as trying to get Trudy to do anything ever went.
“He’s not going to hurt us,” she said impatiently, pushing past. “He’s obviously a shifter. And look, he’s injured.”
The man in the garden was completely unclothed, and when he moaned and writhed, it was clear that he was bleeding. It was green blood, which struck Rikard as odd, but then, it was less odd than the dragon had been. The shifters of their acquaintance were all standard Earth animals, and to the best of Rikard’s knowledge, all of them bled red iron blood just as humans did.
It looked like the stranger had puncture wounds on his chest, three of them in a row.
“Oh,” Trudy said in sorrow as she scrambled over the broken garden beds. “I think he hurt himself on the pea stakes.”
The iron stakes that the pea runners had been strung between were the only thing left upright in the garden – and they were dripping with the same green blood. It appeared that the dragon’s shapeshifting had transformed the wounds into smaller injuries, translating to where they would have been on the dragon’s form.
The man who had been a dragon opened eyes at Trudy’s careful touch and tried to sit up.
“Stop,” Trudy said, in the tone she usually reserved for the kids when they were about to run out in traffic. “You’ve hurt yourself.”
“I’ll heal,” the man said firmly, but he wasn’t able to sit until Rikard put the rake down and helped him, Trudy clucking her disapproval. The bleeding was already slowing.
Rikard was no slouch; he had dutifully gone to the gym for several hours each week to maintain a physique that younger men could wish for, but this stranger was clearly a bodybuilder of some kind, with big, rippling muscles.
Big, rippling, bare muscles.
Trudy was blushing, like Rikard hadn’t made her blush in years.
“Let’s get you inside and washed off,” she said briskly, clearly not sure what to do with her hands. “I’m sure those stakes weren’t clean.”
The stranger stood, and nearly crashed back down onto the garden bed. Rikard got an arm up under his, and Trudy, putting aside her embarrassment, took the other.
“I apologize,” the dragon-man said formally. “I did not anticipate the depth of my weakness. I merely need a place to rest a moment.” He sounded out of breath.
“Come in,” Trudy insisted. “We’ll put you in…” She must have just remembered that the guest room was still buried in moving boxes.
Together, they navigated him into the house. Rikard made a mental note to oil the hinges on the back screen door when it screamed at their entrance.
Their visitor made their farmhouse feel tiny; they had to turn him sideways to get him through the narrow mudroom, like an awkward piece of furniture.
An apologetic piece of furniture. “I am sorry… to put you out,” the man protested weakly. “Impolite…”
The two of them together could do little but drop him onto their own wide bed and the man collapsed back onto it gratefully.
“I’ll get some water,” Trudy said, vanishing.
Rikard swung the man’s legs up onto the bed, then wondered how to get the quilt up over his nudity from beneath him. He settled for getting another blanket out of the closet and covered him from the waist down.
Not that the man seemed bothered; he had lapsed into unconsciousness.
Trudy returned with a tub of warm water and a clean cloth. She had clearly splashed water on her own face as well as washing her hands.
She set her jaw and began sponging off the green blood that had dried around the wounds. They were only oozing now, barely seeping.
Rikard went to get the first aid kit and a towel. Moving with the experience of having cleaned out many minor wounds together, they disinfected the man’s wounds carefully and dressed his injuries. It was certainly easier than having to manhandle a thrashing toddler or weeping teenager had been.
The stranger’s breath was shallow, but even, and when they stepped back, he gave a sigh and seemed to fall into a deeper sleep.
“Should we… call someone?” Trudy asked.