As the overgrown man peeled his flesh-armor and the old skin from his midsection, one of the closer harvesters visibly cringed at the sick, wet noise it made. Liliana remained expressionless as always and leaned forward a bit, peering into the mangled muscle that had once been a solid wall. The bleeding had stopped, which was good and not at all uncommon in the cold weather; constricting blood vessels often lead to quicker clotting, except in severe cases. Actually, she would have guessed this case to be severe, until behemoth seemed to continue about his life with nothing more than a half-assed skin-bandage to hold his life in. Still, even though the bleeding had stopped, it was still a rough patch of gnawed body. She could almost picture where the bear had sunk his massive jaws into the skin, writhing with a death grip and twisting the muscle into a disheveled knot.<br/><br/>At the quiet complaint from the rock-hurler, she blinked slowly. Huh. A man who admitted when he was in pain? Most of the men she dealt with on a day-to-day basis seemed to like to insist they were tougher than a lead pipe, even when they were spurting blood from two gaping stumps where their arms used to be. It was almost amusing that they insisted on behaving that way, since they were more frequently less tolerant to pain than the women she had known. Someone openly admitting that they hurt to a total stranger was... oddly refreshing.<br/><br/>When he asked, hesitantly, for help, she finally turned her face away from his ripped-up belly and to his face. Her empty eyes stared from the depths of her hood, and after a beat she answered. "I will."<br/><br/>"Uh, Lilishka?" The sound of her boss's voice came from her left and her head swiveled to face him. "We're all packed. It's time to go. I know how you feel, but we made a lot of noise here and - "<br/><br/>"I'll catch up later," she cut him off, her voice flat.<br/><br/>"Liliana - " His voice and quick darting of the eyes explained faster than words his true worry. Leaving her alone with this guy? He may have saved them, but... he had tied a steak and femur bone to his body with a rope of intestine and was twice the size of a large man. Though the woman said nothing more to him, she fixed him with a stare. A couple beats passed, but in the end it was the harvester who pulled his gaze. "Fine. Meet you in Moscow. Don't die." He tossed her a sack about twice the size of her personal satchel, then turned around with a nonchalant wave of his had. The rest of the harvesters fell in with him and started south, back to the underbelly of the ancient capital, a few of them casting unsure glances back at the woman.<br/><br/>She said nothing to the departing group of men; in fact, once her boss threw her the extra supplies she didn't even look at them. Her blank stare turned back to the injured man in front of her. "You should relax." She would have said "sit", but she wasn't sure if that particular position would hurt his wound more.<br/><br/>Without another word, she walked over to a particular spot only a couple yards away and cleared the snow away, revealing a small indentation in the ground that was permanently blackened and charred. Some of the firewood stockpile was still dry and she easily tossed a few logs into the pit. The sack that the lead harvester had tossed her way became her next target and she rummaged through it for a few seconds, eventually withdrawing what looked like two small silver triangles attached with a silver rope and a flask. She poured a bit of fluid from the flask over the wood and then knelt down beside the pit, doing something delicate with the triangles, and suddenly there was a very small, red ember burning in the depths of the wood. It grew very slowly, but before it reached it's height Liliana turned away again and grabbed a small silver bucket, filled it with snow, and set it over the embers. It didn't kill the flame, but rather pushed it to the edges so that it surrounded the metal pail. That was her favorite thing about this cured wood; it burned hot but slowly, and had more embers and less licking flame. It made it smoke less and last longer.<br/><br/>The blonde woman untied the strips of leather that held her huge coat closed and shrugged the garment off, letting it fall unceremoniously to the ground as her body stiffened against the cold. Fire or no, her coat was holding in a lot of her body heat. Quickly she yanked her up left sleeve almost to the shoulder, revealing the linen strip that covered her arm. She unraveled the linen as quickly as she could, the cold starting to make her hands numb, until her left arm was bare. She clenched her jaw as tight as she could and shook her sleeve back down, yanking her coat back on as soon as she could, fingers fumbling to tie the strips again while she held the linen in her mouth. She wasn't sure how the massive man lived the way he did, wearing so little against the freezing air. If she had no coat, maybe she wouldn't be against tying warm, dead bear-flesh to her skin either.<br/><br/>The snow in the bucket was already melted. Great. She fished a small metal box from the extra supply pack and held it in the same hand as the linen wraps, then reached over to get the bucket of almost-boiling snow water from the embers. The smell of the cured wood, a slightly sharp, acrid tang, had started to overpower the sickly toxic scent of the surrounding Redwoods.<br/><br/>She was no doctor, to be sure, but even she knew how to clean and bandage a wound properly. With the herbal paste in the box and her other gathered materials, it wouldn't even take very long. Maybe she would cook some of the bear meat, while she had the embers burning. She had felt the familiar skin of a root vegetable in the extra supply pack.