They were bleeding from their nose because I had fractured it. I should have just punched them; it would have done less damage and I wouldn’t have wasted my mana. In my defense, it had happened so quickly. I barely remember seeing the general shape of their face just a hair's breadth away. The spell had left my lips before I could fully visualize it. 

After making a mental note to work on my reactions during combat, I stepped out of the water. I was thirsty and hungry, and now that I could relax, I started feeling the effects of both fights. The pain from my injuries almost brought me to my knees. I was ready to collapse on the ground and sleep. How I wish I could have, but I couldn’t afford to let my guard down with either the assailant in front of me or the wolf or the harpy. 

I had lost one of my gloves during the fight with the wolf with my scent on it. I was sure he could track me with that, if not the wolf then the harpy for sure. I momentarily wondered if I should lose a few gloves here or there to throw them off, but that would take time and I only had two more pairs.

My first priority was to bandage and somehow treat my injured right arm. I lost the first set of bandages to the water, so I had to pull out a second set. I had about five sets of bandages inside my hat. I always carry about that much because dark mages cannot heal. Let me stress that I cannot heal either myself or a companion or an assailant lying unconscious. 

The best I did for them was to turn them over so that they wouldn’t choke on their blood. Of course, I did that first, didn’t waste much time thinking about what to do at all... 

Once I had taken care of them, I realized just how wet I was from my plunge in the water. I had to fix that before I could use the bandages. Conveniently, I had a sigil that could help me warm up. The sigils for warmth were stitched to the underside of my dress just below my belly button. My thought process for that was because I could hold my knees and have the skirt in the middle. It’s basically like a warm pouch used during the horrible time of the month for ladies. 

Simple, direct, and efficient, that’s how I tried to be back then. I thought they were attainable goals for someone who only wanted to help her parents. However, life is seldom that simple or direct or efficient when you tell it your plans. I think there’s a saying about when life gives you lemons. I think life gave me seeds to plant and grow. While they grew I prepared to receive lemons instead the seeds grew to be limes. 

Once I got myself relatively warm, but before I could properly bandage myself, I turned my attention over to my assailant. While I was warming up, I kept my eye on them and noticed they were bleeding a lot. There wasn’t much I could do for them since I can’t heal so I thought it would be good enough to at least slow down the bleeding. I used my third and fourth set of bandages to help stanch the area. At that time, I wasn’t sure if I had broken their nose completely, which meant I had to be as careful as possible. 

Even though I was technically in a rush to skedaddle out of there from fear of being found out by the wolf or the harpy, I still took my time to, well there’s no nice way to say it, loot. 

My assailant had a round face and nose, the key characteristic that kind people have, with blue hair and aquamarine eyes. I wasn’t honestly sure if they were a boy or a girl, so they were and still are pretty. I did learn during the first term that they are a boy who does not want to call themselves a boy or a girl. It’s a bit weird since they are a creature that has a gender, but as the person who punched their daylights, I can respect their choice. I want to say we got along or rather we didn’t hate or like each other. We were basically indifferent to each other, especially since I took a scroll from them. In my second defense, they did have four scrolls. I could have taken all of them, but I chose not to leave them scroll-less. I only took one to bring my scroll number to five.

I also took some water they had in a flask after checking if it was safe to drink, of course. I tried to take some berries from a pouch, which were more questionable to eat. I remembered I read a book where there were these highly poisonous berries that someone got tricked into eating. I couldn’t recognize the berry so, I wasn’t about to test my luck. I was about to give up searching in his backpack when I found some dried fish. After a careful sniff and a good lick. I ate two and left the rest. 

After a successful loot and checking my bandage work, I was about to leave the water mage to his luck. When my conscience got in the way and talked me out of it. I did my best to hide them in a pile of leaves while still sitting up just to help them out. As I moved them, they started to stir. I figured I had completed the responsibility I owed and left them there. I was sure as a water mage they’d be able to heal themselves, that’s why I left with no regrets. 

I walked for a while trying to find a suitable place to rest and eventually completely crash. I needed to sleep somewhere safe. The place I found was a hollowed-out tree trunk. There were bugs, twigs, and moss but, I couldn’t complain because there were no other mud pits with sleeping boars to jump into for safety. I had no choice; my eyes were already closing from the effort of using a scare spell to shoo away as many bugs as I could. Once I had snuggled-in with sticks and leaves poking at every part of me, I passed out.