Of Silk and Scars
Just below the edge of the cliff, Chester finished marking the path for the waterway by tying a rope to a tree that clung precariously to the waterfall. He secured the remaining length of the rope with a tight knot and tossed it down the cliffside.
Monia, who had been walking toward Chester as he rappelled down, gasped in shock when she saw his palm. It was torn open and bleeding.
"Blood! You're bleeding!"
"Huh? It's just a scratch."
"You're not going to die, are you?!"
"As if a man could die from this."
Chester brushed it off, but to Monia, a torn palm was a shockingly severe injury.
"Eek! That looks so painful!"
"I told you, I'm fine."
Chester submerged his injured hand in the river, washing it thoroughly before examining the depth of the cut.
It's a bit deep.
After a quick assessment, he offered her another reassuring smile, pretending it was nothing.
"It's just a tear in the skin. No big deal."
Since I don't have proper medical supplies, it's best to leave it be.
If he had proper medical tools, it would be a different story. But without them, the best course of action was to leave it alone after a thorough cleaning.
Monia kept staring at Chester's wound. She vaguely recalled seeing injured people wrapping cloth around their hurts.
Even Chester had tightly bound his finger with a leaf when he had injured it before.
Drawing her claw knife, Monia sliced off a strip from the hem of her skirt and hesitantly held it out to him.
"Um, here."
"What's this?"
"Use it! Consider it a special favor!"
"As a bandage?"
Chester chuckled as he looked at the dirt-smudged scrap of fabric she was offering.
"I appreciate the thought, but I can't use this as it is."
"What? Why not?"
"Whatever touches an open wound has to be clean."
"Oh..."
"I'll sterilize it when we get back to the shelter."
After thoroughly rinsing the fabric in the river, they returned to the shelter. Chester placed the scrap of cloth in a wooden cup filled with water and boiled it over the fire to sterilize it.
Once sterilized, he carefully fished out the hot fabric and let it cool.
When it had cooled to a comfortable warmth, he wrapped the cloth snugly around his wounded hand.
"Will that make it heal?"
"No. If you keep a wound sealed tight, the lack of air will make it rot."
"Rot..."
"So I'll only keep it on for a little while, then take it off to let it breathe."
"Then why wrap it at all?"
"Well, I can't exactly pour boiling water directly onto an open wound... so I use this to disinfect it and stop the bleeding."
Monia couldn't quite grasp his medical logic, but she realized his injury was far worse than a simple "tear in the skin."
"Oh, what are we going to do..."
"I'm fine, really."
The only saving grace was that the wound had been caused by a rope, not a wild beast.
At the very least, the rope Chester used was a hundred times cleaner than a predator's fangs or claws.
"How can you say you're fine?"
After monitoring the wound for a moment, Chester picked up a piece of bamboo and went back to work.
"Wait, you're still working?"
"Of course. I'm not going to sit around and idle just because of a little cut on my palm."
"No! Rest!"
Chester ignored her protests. His first task was to hollow out the bamboo by puncturing the internal nodes.
The method was simple. He lit the end of a long wooden stick and pressed the glowing ember against the bamboo's inner membrane to scorch it.
Once one side of the node was charred black, he relit the stick and scorched another spot, repeating the process over and over.
When the entire membrane was ringed with black soot, he took a thick wooden rod and struck it.
Striking gently and carefully to avoid splitting the bamboo itself, the heat-weakened membrane shattered easily, breaking the node apart.
After carefully shaking out the debris, Chester repeated the process on the deeper nodes.
"..."
Monia kept casting worried glances at Chester's hand as she worked alongside him, mimicking his movements.
Every so often, Chester would pause his work, unwrap the cloth, and submerge it in hot water again.
A faint, reddish cloud of blood bloomed in the hot water as the fabric soaked.
He swirled it around to wash away the blood, boiled a fresh cup of water, and washed and sterilized the cloth once more.
After this meticulous cleaning and sterilization, he let the cloth cool to a warm temperature before wrapping it back around his hand.
Each time, he made sure to shift the fabric so that the previously soiled spots didn't touch the open wound.
At least the fabric is soft enough that it won't irritate the wound.
Though Monia's skirt had grown tattered during their time on the deserted island, it was originally a luxury item, as smooth and soft as silk.
"..."
Monia watched Chester work, noting how carefully he favored his right hand.
Normally, Chester would breeze through any task and spend his time keeping an eye on her. Now, his pace had slowed to match hers, if not lag slightly behind.
Is... is it really that bad?
Monia bit her lip in hesitation before making up her mind.
"Hey. I'll give you more, so stop reusing the same piece. You said yourself that dirty things are bad for it."
She tore several more strips from her skirt and handed them to Chester.
"...Thank you."
Accepting the scraps with a word of thanks, Chester rinsed them with water from the bucket and hung them by the window to dry.
"I'll make good use of them."
"...Okay. ...Um, is it really alright to just leave the wound like that?"
"Hmm?"
"I mean, shouldn't you do something else for it?"
"No. Doing too much would actually make it worse. Normally, a wound like this should be stitched up."
"St-stitched?"
Sewing human flesh? Like a piece of clothing?! The unimaginable concept made Monia's face turn pale with horror.
"If we tried that out here, pus would just build up inside the closed wound and make it rot. It's better to leave it open so any infection can drain out."
Chester continued working as he explained. Having cleared all the nodes, he peered inside the hollowed-out bamboo tube.
"It's very jagged inside."
"It's impossible to get a perfectly clean cut. Besides, there's no real need to smooth it out."
"Is that so?"
"A few rough edges won't stop the flow of water. Though... I suppose stray leaves floating down the river might get caught on them."
Deciding it was better to be thorough, Chester and Monia divided the labor.
Chester punctured the nodes, and Monia smoothed them down.
For sandpaper, they used branches from the very tree their shelter was built upon.
Using the strangely hard bark of the branches, she rasped the inside of the bamboo, grinding away the jagged splinters until the surface was smooth.
"Mmm, is this good enough?"
"Yeah. Keep going just like that."
"Alright."
They worked in this rhythm, pausing whenever Chester needed to change his bandage, and resuming immediately after.
The two kept at it until late into the night.
It was grueling work. The sheer volume of bamboo was daunting, requiring delicate precision to avoid splitting the stalks, and Chester's injured hand made every movement a struggle.
When darkness finally fell, they packed up the bamboo and prepared for sleep.
Monia, bathed in the soft glow of the campfire, stared at the wound on Chester's palm.
His hand was thick, calloused, and heavily scarred. The vivid red gash cutting right through the center of his palm looked painful just to behold.
Monia simply watched it, her gaze fixed and silent.
After staring for a long time, she quietly dragged her moss bed closer to Chester's side.
Inch by inch, she crept nearer until she was resting right beside his head.
From that close distance, she tentatively reached out, her fingers gently tracing the edges of his injured hand.
Fearing she might accidentally touch the raw wound, she pulled back slightly, keeping a safe distance as she softly caressed his uninjured fingers instead.
"Heal quickly."
She whispered the words into the quiet night. And so, for the first time since the storm, the two slept close together.
When Chester woke up the next morning, he found Monia's fingers loosely intertwined with his own.
Tilting his head back, he saw that she had rearranged her bed into an L-shape relative to his, and was now fast asleep just above him.
Gently extricating his fingers, Chester sat up and inspected his palm.
The hot, humid climate of the island was terrible for open wounds.
Though only a single day had passed, yellow pus was already beginning to seep from the cut.
Moving quietly, Chester gathered Monia's claw knife, two of the skirt-strip bandages, a wooden cup, a glowing ember from the hearth, the water bucket, and a basket. He slipped out of the shelter and headed down to the river.
Using the ember, he built a small campfire, filled the cup with water, and set it to boil.
He dropped the cloth bandages and the claw knife into the boiling water to sterilize them, then submerged his hand in the cool river, slowly washing the wound.
After rinsing it thoroughly, he noted the angry red swelling around his palm. He fished out one of the sterilized cloth strips and gently dabbed at the wound, using the damp, warm fabric to clean and disinfect the area as best as he could.
He pressed the warm, damp cloth against the cut, wiping away the grime to ensure the wound was as clean as possible.
Next, he picked up the sterilized claw knife and brought it to his palm.
"Sss..."
A sharp, sudden jolt of pain made him flinch, but he gritted his teeth and focused on treating the wound.
He began scraping away the blackened flesh and clotted blood from inside the cut.
He rinsed the knife in the river, then dipped it back into the boiling water to sterilize it again.
Once more, he brought the sterile blade back to his hand.
After a few moments of careful prodding, he located a pocket of thick, yellow pus deep within the wound. He gently pressed the tip of the knife against it.
With a slight nick of the blade, the pocket ruptured, and the built-up fluid immediately began to spill out.
"Ngh..."
Swallowing a groan of agony, Chester scraped out the remaining infection and washed it away in the river.
Once he had cleaned the wound as thoroughly as possible, he wrapped it with the second, unused cloth bandage to finish the treatment.
"Whew."
Chester flexed his fingers, opening and closing his right hand to test its movement.
With his wound finally tended to, he filled the bucket with fresh water, placed it in his basket, and made his way back to the shelter.