10 10. Playing surgeon

Tutee was scared, no, terrified of the creature in front of her. Liam perceived that easily even if she tried to hide it.

Her body language, each twitch of muscles, the vein around her neck indicating an increased heartbeat, the tail, and folded ears, and even how the bioluminescent dots on her changed in intensity all were red flags.

But the most evident was her eyes on him. Full of fear, fear of death, fear of him. Despair mixed with hopes and so many more. 

Never before has anyone looked at him this way, it was unpleasant, strange but ignorable and she just avoided death, a traumatic event so he could understand. But that didn't mean he liked it.

He was far from being friendly-looking too, his helmet vaguely shaped like a skull, cold grey eyes, his voice, and how he decapitated a viperwolf and head-shotted another with a knife. 

And compared to a Na'vi thin, ridiculously tall, and elfish frame, he was extremely muscular for them even if his armor hid most of it, all in all, he was pretty intimidating. Even if he was smaller.

Another thing he remarked was how both looked, even if they were of another species they looked like teenagers, they were kids, even if they were both taller than him. 

One boy and the other a girl, both wearing the bare minimum of clothing. Two kids with one exhausted and the other exhausted while weakening as he slowly bled out, he couldn't get a good grasp of the injuries but he needed to act and act fast or the young Na'vi would die. 

Doing simple hand gestures he conveyed to the girl the general meaning of what he wanted her to do and by the look of it she understood, running up to the heavy door he pushed it open while the girl moved the boy. 

Liam was aware of what he was doing, the potential danger involved in saving them, but also the potential gain of doing so, the latter per his meager knowledge about Na'vi's general peaceful ways outweighing the first.

It was a gamble, but one he would have had to do at some point anyway.

And that without forgetting an important fact, he wasn't heartless enough to let people, be they human or Na'vi, die when he could save them. 

However, he was no suicidal madman such as a self-sacrificing righteous hero or a martyr for the weak, poor, and defenseless. His life came first and foremost before all as selfish as it sounds, he was a survivor. Not like he ever thought of himself as a saint.

The two Na'vi didn't magically pop up either, from their apparent young ages, even if he overestimated their strength, would always be inferior to his. 

It means a tribe, group, clan, or whatever they are called for Na'vi was within the reach he often moved when collecting resources and hunting.

From the direction, they came from and if they moved in a roughly straight line… There should be a group of Na'vi in the general direction of the giant grotto.

While the grind in his mind shifted together he took a large cover sewed in a patchwork of stingbats' hide from a wooden box and lit a torch for him to see better.

Then opened boxes, willing various objects out of his inventory such as a stash of pink aloe vera, a saline solution in an opaque glass bottle, and more.

The two unknown Na'vi didn't need to know that he could 'magic' things in and out of existence with the glowing prism embedded in his left arm. It was common sense, a resource he was slowly but surely running out of. 

"Place him here.", Lian said in a serious voice, nearly making Tutee, who was carrying the other Na'vi, jump out of her skin. Everything around them was unusual but she ignored it, more important things were on her mind.

Not understanding his words but still what the figure wanted she carefully placed Mìruk on the butchering slab making the wounded teenager groan weakly. 

Tutee was uncertain, exhausted, afraid, confused, and many more but at that moment her training as a tskararem kicked in. 

She was no stranger to the wounded and the ways to tend to them be it healing or… Reducing their pain before their ultimate journey to the embrace of the All-Mother. 

Liam placed all of what he picked up on the stone slab and observed the Na'vi teenager's injuries.

'Damn… Those are nasty claws and bite wounds but nothing that seems immediately life-threatening…', Liam analyzed with his barebone knowledge of Na'vi biology but even it was evident nothing vital was touched. 

And he felt a weight left off his shoulder at this discovery, the kid will survive the night. He was thankful that the viperwolves tended to play with their prey because otherwise, neither of the two would have even reached the wall of his base.

Mìruk was breathing heavily, delirious, unfocused eyes looking at everything but saw nothing other than vague shapes, beads of sweat all over his body, deep gash, scratch bites, and marks all over his legs, the furry tips of his tail missing, bitten of by a viperwolf.

And his left hand was mangled beyond recognition, blue skin pierced by bones, and his thumbs hanging only by a thread of skin and all of it was profusely bleeding. Liam was conscious that if it was him from before he wouldn't be this calm, at all.

Now was the hard part. The current situation was way beyond his domain of expertise even if he now was essentially a polymath, not only that but this was an alien, even if technically it was him the alien in the equation.

The best he could hope to do was to slow or stop the bleeding, disinfect the wound as best as he could, bandage him, and maybe suture them. He could only do first aid, so it won't be pretty.

Tutee didn't stay idle, she grabbed various plants Liam placed and started to grind them to paste with the mortar while singing something shamanistic similar to prayers, a string of words coming back with a name he recognized as Eywa. She was praying to her Goddess.

The fact she helped surprised the human, she could do whatever mystical things she wanted as long as it actually helped. He took note of what plants she took and ground, however.

He learned through trial and error what plants could be used, but for him a poisonous plant that will cause someone else to puke their organs but for him, it will cause a negligible stomach ache for the day.  

And that was without taking into consideration that a plant could be harmless to humans but deadly to Na'vi and vice versa. 

Here she used the pink aloe vera and two other plants and he was certain it was to reduce the pain and put the teenager to sleep from what he knew about those plants.

So it was better if she did this, as she should be more knowledgeable on what are the medicinal plants of the great plains and how to take care of the wound of her kind. She was very young but age can be misleading and the time was not to doubt. 

She fed Mìruk the paste of medicinal herb by delicately lifting his head while still muttering prayers, the effects were immediate as his breathing became better and his expression became peaceful and serene if a bit strained.

Liam focused on the mangled hand, the thumb was as good as gone and most of the hand too, he put a rope and a stick right above the wrist, a makeshift tourniquet. 

Tutee, even if afraid of the figure, was going to stop what he was doing as it was not how her Mother thought her until she saw how the bleeding of her friend's mangled hand virtually stopped as Liam tightened the rope. 

Never had she seen such a strange method used before, she decided to trust him, if she fought him for what he was doing he would have knocked her out anyway.

To put it simply their way to heal was based on various concoctions either of plants or animals' organs, sometimes a mix of both. 

Then there was the use of incense, various rituals to get rid of evil spirits aka disease or parasites, sacrifice, songs, and more. Sadly the results of such methods were varying, with most ending up on the negative spectrum. Life even for the native on this enchantingly beautiful moon was harsh and unforgiving.

The next day, late in the pandorian morning, Liam was awake, he wasn't fatigued one bit as he was awakened after having slept enough time, he needed less sleep than a regular human.

He stayed all night surveying the Na'vi, mostly out of a healthy dose of paranoia, while preparing himself and thinking of plans for what was going to follow. He was not happy that this was forced upon him.

He also learned the name of his two temporary guests, the girl had said the name of the boy while she prayed, and the boy while in his during the operation and after in his sleep. 

Speaking of, the girl stayed awake until sheer exhaustion caught her, and she fell unconscious in the middle of another prayer. Quite an impressive show of will in his opinion. She was strong.

Hearing a groan of pain Liam lifted his head, putting the knife he was cleaning back on its sheath his gaze fell upon a very confused and rapidly waking Mìruk. 

This confusion was rapidly cleared as fragmented memories of what happened slammed into his mind.

Liam's slightly bored and amused grey eyes met the yellow ones of the rapidly panicking teens who were gradually coming back to their senses. The air became tense. Lucky him what made his friend was still in effect he was only getting a percentage of the pain.

Mìruk was covered in bandages most imbibed with red blood even if recently changed. The wounds were in grand parties disinfected by Liam saline solution, and half of them were sutured.

With the mangled hand, Liam did what he could try and salvage as much as possible but without training in the field of medicine besides first aid, adding to the lack of modern equipment, convenience, and medicines.

He was forced to amputate the thumbs, and half of the end digit of the pinky finger with Tutee accord first, ans without considering the potential damaged tendon, nerves, and muscles of the hand he couldn't do anything to help. He tried to lessen the damages as much as he could.

But at least there was no more bleeding, and low risk of infections if taken care of properly and the hand wasn't entirely amputated.

This lack of fingers was a problem he could solve down the line by making prosthetics for Mìruk if given the opportunity in the future. 

He had plenty of knowledge on how to do that from the various engrams, be they from the game or not. This means he could easily design such things as high-tech hand/fingers prosthetics.

But without access to anything advanced, it will always be worse than biological. And Liam already had done more than enough.

Before Mìruk tried to do something immensely stupid another groan, softer and more feminine was heard and his gaze moved to his chest where he was met with an awakening Tutee. 

His expression and realization as to who was sleeping on his chest were hilarious to Liam who stopped a laugh from escaping him, they were no really different from humans in that aspect. 

Standing up Tutee smiled but looked over sadly at Mìruk, and she hugged him with tears in her eyes. As the two cried their hearts out Liam smiled while he felt a pang of hunger and decided to cook.

Standing up without attracting any attention, he came back with a ceramic cooking pot, three plates, three wood forks, a kilo of marinated Tapirus lard, something akin to potatoes, various herbs, and water.

Never has Liam's attention strayed far from the teens for more than 3 seconds. He knew they aren't dangerous, but he didn't know them, or how Na'vi this age really behaved, or Na'vi's behavior in general for that matter.

Mìruk and Tutee both never saw any humans at all. They know of the general physical characteristics, the fives finger, lack of a tail, no neural queue, and a skin color completely alien to them. 

And also a greater pilosity. The human has strange 'haircuts' on his chin, cheeks, around the mouth, and on his chest, arms, legs, above the eyes, and more it was quite puzzling to them.

Another thing was shouldn't sky people need to have a strange device on their faces? Maybe their savior is a different breed of sky people, or maybe it was false amd they didn't need that, who knows?

But their savior had a strange prims-like object glowing in his arm, it looked more like an integral part of his body, sky people also have that apparently.

Stories of sky people or demons were shared through stories from other tribes at the yearly meeting of the migratory clans of the great plains or when trading resources with other clans. 

Depending on the storyteller the stories were often more than not grim, and unbelievable for most of the Na'vi, flying metal birds capable of raining fire down and destruction on Eywa, insanity. Unknown to them, they were lucky the RDA didn't see or found anything of significance in those wild and dangerous plains.

But one thing was certain for the horse clans of the plain: humans existed and you needed to be wary of them but the Na'vi held the belief to only judge one own action, of course, that was only theory and mostly for other Na'vi. The two teenagers were incredibly curious about these sky people. 

And everything around them only fueled their curiosity, there was much strange contraption but none was remotely similar to the horror the stories told. It was relieving.

<I-I… I'm infinitely grateful… You have saved me, no, us… You saved us. I cannot express how thankful I'm to you, sky person, our savior, savior of our foolishness. I will forever be in your favor, I swear this on the All-Mother.>, Mìruk spoke, voice hesitant, ears showing mixed emotions, mostly shame and sadness at his state and the implication but his gaze never faltered.

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