Oops [Hollypaw]

Honeybee limped into camp, grimacing at the pain shooting through one of her front paws. She'd caught the bird hanging between her jaws, but in the process her paw had landed squarely on a splinter of tree bark that she was sure she'd only made worse in her attempt to remove it. Pelt prickling with embarrassment, she turned toward the medicine den - newly occupied, and not by her mother any longer - and ducked beneath the rocky overhang.

"Uh, Hollypaw?" How strange it felt, to not see her mother tending to someone or even grandma Wolfstar fiddling with those awful traveling herbs. The den was quiet as it had been, but the young tom who now occupied it wasn't someone Honeybee knew all that well. "I wound up with a splinter... And can't get it out..?" Her voice rose nervously in pitch, ears flattening against her head in embarrassment or uneasy or maybe pain. Maybe a combination of all three.

Hollypaw had been fiddling with the herbs when one of his clanmates entered - Honeybee, if he remembered correctly. "I can help," he said, checking her paw. Stars, it was really jammed in. "What did you do? How did it get stuck that deep?" He tried to grab the splinter with his teeth, but he couldn't maneuver his jaw to grab it properly, and his nose kept on getting in the way as he tried to pull it out. Is this what a medicine cat has to deal with every day?

He sure hoped not.

"I was chasing after a bird in the trees. Felt my paw land on something sharp. I got the bird, though." She mewed, then cringed a little as Hollypaw attempted to get the splinter out. Unsuccessfully. A quiet, pained hiss escaped her, but the young warrior held still.

"I... Tried to get it out myself... I think I just made it worse." She grimaced. Maybe... Maybe she shouldn't have done that and just let the medicine cat handle it. But it had seemed like such a simple thing to do in the moment, until it wasn't.

After a few minutes of struggling to get the splinter out, Hollypaw let out an exasperated sigh. He had an idea, but it might not be the best. He needed something to prevent infection... weren't dried oak leaves good for preventing infection?

"Keep your paw up," he said, moving away to grab a couple leaves. "I have a plan to get it out." After getting the oak leaves, he returned to the splinter. "This will hurt a little."

The ginger tom dug a claw into his clanmate's paw - as gently as he could, but he needed to scratch it to get the splinter out. Blood began trickling from her paw as the ginger tom opened a pathway to take the splinter out. He moved to grab the splinter, slowly pulling it out of the she-cat's paw.

Got it.

Immediately dropping the bloody chip, he grabbed the oak leaves and immediately chewed them. I need cobwebs. Placing the poultice on Honeybee's paw, he grabbed the cobwebs before tightly wrapping it around the poultice he placed. "It would be good to not walk on that paw for a while," he said. "You should stay in the medicine den for the night." The ginger tom sat down, his tail over his haunches.

Honeybee nodded at the order to keep her paw up, doing as instructed while Hollypaw gathered up some leaves. They had a purpose, she was sure, but Honeybee hadn't spent much time in the medicine den to know what that purpose was.

"Foxdung, only a little?" Honeybee's ears were flat against her skull as the hard skin of her pawpad was pierced with a small spray of blood. "Ow." The fluffy warrior muttered as Hollypaw kept at the splinter, managing to work it free after what felt like ages but really couldn't have been all that long.

She couldn't tell if staying in the medicine den was an order or a request. If it were an order, it was very much one Honeybee would have liked to refuse. Her reluctance showed on her face for a moment, but the warrior sighed and relented. "Okay... How long do I have to stay off this?" She was uninterested in the possibility of aggravating the wound in her paw now that the splinter was thankfully gone.

"Thank you." She added almost sheepishly. For all the pain and now the annoyance of being told to rest, Hollypaw deserved that much.

Honestly, Hollypaw wasn't sure how long it would take. Her wound would heal quickly. "I think you may be able to return to warrior activities as soon as tomorrow," he said. "But I'd like to monitor your wound daily for the next few days, to make sure it's not infected and to re-apply treatment if necessary." That seemed the most reasonable.

After Honeybee thanked him, Hollypaw felt his pelt flush. "Of course," he said. "I'm happy to help." The ginger tom sat down awkwardly. Honeybee was the first cat who was going to stay in the medicine den for the night, and Hollypaw was... excited. Stars, he wanted to get to know her better. All he really knew was that she got a splinter in her paw after catching a bird, and that wasn't nearly enough.

"...So, what's your favorite kind of prey?"