Princess Tessa light foot's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Tessa knelt in the mud and counted her dying. Rain slid down her neck as she wiped poison-foam from a salamander's bark-like scales. Its ribbon tail twitched the wrong way. She had come to FloodWood to build a haven, a true hospital for every creature the rising waters were unmaking. Right now, she had a tarp, a stone basin, and not enough dry ground. The basin sat tilted in the moss, its murky water dotted with green. She had dragged it here herself. Three more creatures huddled at its rim, shivering. Two would not last the night under open sky. She stood. She made the choice she had been avoiding. The primary site was lost to seep; she would move them all to her second scouted clearing, where the ground rose and the old roots held firm. One by one, she carried them. The salamander first, cradled against her chest. Then the others, wrapped in damp cloth, set onto a flat, smooth stone she had cleaned weeks ago for exactly this. She sat with each one before leaving it. Presence first. Always. By dawn the rain had stopped. The creatures breathed. Tessa looked at the bare clearing, the stone, the basin, the small huddle of lives, and understood what came next. A shelter would not be enough. She would have to build the hospital itself, here, now, with her own hands.