“I… I don’t know” Blue panics.

“Ah! The church! Maybe they know what to do there!” April desperately tries to come up with ideas.

“Then we’re going there!” Blue declares. She still wears the mask so she doesn’t have to put it on, she just lifts Julie up and tries to get her under the door.

‘I thought it would be harder to carry, but somehow she doesn’t feel that heavy.’ Blue thinks.

April helps her quickly. “Vince you just stay here, okay?”

“Oh, okay.” His usual energetic self has disappeared.

They stand outside with Julie still being unconscious. The sun started to set as the surroundings turned dark.

April looks at Blue. “Can you carry her?”

“Of course.” Blue confidently says. April helps getting Julie on Blue’s back. They hurry to the church.

The church doors are already closed when they arrive. April knocks on the door and gets no response.

“Ugh.. Let us in!” April shouts as she continues knocking.

After a while the doors open and a priest comes to look. “What are you doing? Disturbing the peace here!”

“It’s an emergency! Please help our friend!” April pleads.

“I’m sorry but we don’t just help. It’s almost night time, there’s no one here.” The priest says as he closes the door on them.

“What now?” Blue questions.

“Fuck, I don’t know.” April looks frustrated.

They just stand there, no clue what to do.

The door carefully opens with a creak. This time there’s a small figure peeking out the gap.

“Come in, quickly.” The figure whispers.

“Who are you?” April asks, wary of the stranger.

“I can help, I’ve been watching the doc work since I was born. Now come in before anyone notices!” The figure answers.

With no other choice they head in and follow the figure. The figure leads them to a dark room. “Stay here, I’ll light the candles.” The figure heads out.

“This better work.” April says worried.

“What else can we do...” Blue sadly says.

The figure returns with a lit candle, the flame reveals the person holding the candle.

The figure is a little girl, a bit shorter than April. She has auburn red hair in a ponytail reaching her shoulders. Her shirt and skirt are both black and look to be made specifically for her size. She wears black kneesocks with no shoes, probably because they’re inside.

The girl quickly lits the candles in the room, making it visible. There’s one table in the middle of the room and a few bookshelves full of books. On the right side there is a desk with a chair. On the desks are some jars probably full of herbs.

“Okay so step 1, eh. Let me get the book.” The girl says while walking around seemingly aimless. She grabs a book from the desk and starts reading it.

‘Grete Herball? What kind of book is that?’ Blue thinks.

“Okay, now then let’s look at what the problem is and find the fitting herb.” The girl talks to herself, probably to double check herself.

“Can you put her down on the table?” The girl looks at Blue and asks.

“Oh, sure.” Blue quickly does as she says, leaving her with blood stains on her dress.

The girl searches Julie for the cause of the bleeding. She quickly finds the cause, a big slash on Julie’s upper body. “But how?.. She should’ve been dead already…” The girl mutters to herself. “Oh well doesn’t matter, where’s slash wounds in the book.”

“Hmm, how about we first clean it?” The girl grabs a cloth and a bottle. She puts some of the liquid from the bottle on the cloth and rubs it on the wound, softly of course.

“Okay and now the sewing part. Where did they leave the needles?” The girl rummages through the items on the desk. She finds a needle and a string of unknown material.

“Calm down, it’s just like in practice, where we sew two pieces of cloth together!” The girl nervously stands next to the table.

April and Blue aren’t standing close enough to see the exact movements, but it looks like the girl is very steady in her movement. Also slow.

The girl is working hard on focusing, which is visible on her face. There’s sweat beads appearing on her forehead. After what feels like a few hours she’s finally done. She wipes the sweat of her forehead and moves on. “Okay now to end it with we put honey on the wound and then eh.. wrap a cloth around it maybe?” The girl starts talking to herself again.

The girl grabs a jar and gets yellowish liquid out of it. She puts some of it on the wound before grabbing a white cloth to wrap around the wound. “Can you help lifting her back up? So I can wrap this around her.” She asks.

Blue moves to the table and takes one side, April takes the other, and together they get Julie into a sitting position.

The wrapping goes a bit clumsy since both Blue and April were standing in the way, but there is no other option.

“This is all I can do to help, I think.” The girl says a bit unsure.

“Then what now?” April worriedly asks.

“We wait. That’s all we can do.” The girl sighs.

Blue curiously asks the girl. “So what’s your name?”

“Ah, it’s Katherine, but everyone calls me Kate.” Kate says.

“Well nice to meet you, Kate” April smiles. “And thanks for the hard work.”

Kate hesitates a bit. “So.. Eh.. I think you’re better off taking her back. The priests won’t be happy if they see you here.”

“Alright then, we’ll head to the well first to clean up.” April states.

“Oh yeah cleaning, I’ll go with you.” Kate opens the door to walk out, but instead walks into a priest.

“And what is the meaning of this?” The priest asks in a stern voice.

“I’m sorry, I can explain! It’s not what it looks like!” Kate panics.

The priest ignores Kate’s panicking. “I thought we rejected them, so why are you helping them?”

“I.. Uh.. I couldn’t just leave them like that.” Kate says unsure.

The priest sighs. “Look, we don’t reject people because we’re heartless or anything. If the doctor isn’t here there are dangers in taking every sick and injured person in. We don’t know if they’re infected with anything, and like that could make everyone sick by letting them in. Now go get some water to clean everyone up, we’ll keep her here until the doctor checks her tomorrow.”

“Then why aren’t you kicking them out? If she possibly can infect people shouldn’t you kick her out?” Kate asks confused.

“They can leave, the girl on the table has to stay. The doctor can check her tomorrow if she carries an illness or infection with her and in case she does which one. If we just let her leave here we don’t know that and just get sick, if we do know we can try to prevent it or treat everyone on it.” The priest explains.

“I’m sorry for troubling you, Father!” Kate bows and quickly runs out.

The priest sighs. “Troublesome girl, helping others at the cost of herself.” He mutters to himself. “So, I think you two need new clothes. Most people don’t think blood fits an outfit.” He jokingly says.

“That would help a lot, Father.” April respectfully says to the priest.

The priest takes his leave, leaving behind Blue, April, and Julie who’s still unconscious.

“Let’s hope she’ll get through this.” April says with a worried tone and a gaze to Julie.

“Of course she will.” Blue says confidently. “It’s Julie, she never loses her confidence.”

“Haha, let’s hope she thinks the same way.” April laughs.

The door opens and the priest walks in with some clothes. “Here, change into this after Kate returned with the water. Leave your old clothes here, we’ll burn them tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Father.” April bows, and pushes Blue to do the same.

“Oh, thank you, Father?” Blue hesitates.

“No problem, my children. Come back tomorrow to see how your friend is doing.” The priest leaves the clothes at the desk and leaves.

Shortly after Kate returns with a two buckets of water and some cloths. “Here, wash yourself with this.”

Kate herself seems to already have cleaned herself, there’s no blood anywhere. “Do you know the way out?” Kate asks.

“Yeah, we’ll be fine.” April assures. Kate takes her leave and they’re left alone again.

April gets a cloth and walks to the bucket. “Here, let me help you with your back.”

“Uh. Okay?” Blue replies unsure.

They wash themselves and change into the church outfits. The same outfit that Kate wears, but this time with black shoes attached.

“Come, let’s go back to Vince.” April says, taking Blue’s hand and leading her out. They both take one more glance at Julie before leaving.

“He didn’t say anything about my mask.” Blue states.

“The church priests don’t want to judge, since that’s something only God can do. I think they just mentally judge us and don’t say anything about it.” April shrugs.

“I see.” Blue thinks about it.

The hideout is finally in sight. They open the door and get in.

“Welcome back!” Vince welcomes them again.

“Hey, we’ll go check on Julie tomorrow alright?” April says.

“Sure!” Vince replies. “Can we eat now?”

“Yeah of course.” April sighs. She grabs some bread and some meat to share with everyone.

“Julie will get this tomorrow.” Blue states.

“When she gets back we’ll force feed it to her?” April teases.

Blue laughs. “She can do that herself.”

“Of course she can. It’s Julie.” April laughs too.

“Do you think we can get Kate on our side? So we’ll always have someone who knows what to do in case someone is sick?” Blue wonders.

“You’d have to ask her if she wants to leave her life at the church behind and move in here.” April shrugs. “I don’t know if she’s willing to do that.”

“Let’s ask her tomorrow.” Blue declares.

“Sure thing.” April replies.

They finish their meal together and head to bed.

“Let’s wake up early so Julie doesn’t have to miss us.” April suggests.

“Okay.” Blue responds.

“Okay!!” Vince happily shouts.

“You don’t have to shout, we’re here.” April laughs. “Come, we need our energy tomorrow.”