Once the elf took his hand, Ryathane pulled, helping as well as he could to get her to her feet without causing more damage. He kept his eyes on her leg, wondering if she would be capable of standing on it or not. 
	She started to moan when she put her weight on it. He raised an eyebrow when she clearly tried to change its tone, his ears all too familiar with the sound of pain and the attempts to cover it up. Her grip on his hand tightened, the pressure only strengthening his belief that her leg bothered her.
	[i]At least it hasn’t buckled under her,[/i] he thought. [i]That’s always a good sign.[/i]
	[b]”Uh… Thank you… Sir,”[/b] the elf muttered.
	Ryathane gave a single dark, snorted chuckle, in part at being called 'sir.' “Don’t thank me yet,” he muttered under his breath as he cast a quick glance around the forest. “We aren’t exactly out of harms way.”
	The songs of crickets and rustling of smaller animals had already intensified, the manticore’s presence all but forgotten by the surrounding wildlife. He glanced back at the manticore as if to reassure himself it had not, in fact, all been a dream, that the presence of the elf’s hand in his was not a mere, albeit convincing, fabrication of his slumbering mind.
	[i]I suppose I [u]could[/u] have fallen asleep in the tree…[/i] he thought doubtfully, before the elf asked him his name.
	His eyes narrowed, and he looked at her for a long moment, debating on what name to give her. He frowned at his own hesitation.
	“People around here know me as Thatcher,” he answered stiffly. “Shade Thatcher. My... [i]camp[/i] isn’t too far from here.” He drew her arm over his shoulders, ignoring whatever reaction she had, and returned her tight grip. “Lean your weight on me. You don’t want to put too much on that leg--at least until it’s properly bandaged.”
	A wolf howled further off in the distance. Ryathane scowled as a new thought occurred to him; they were about to leave a perfectly good, fresh corpse in the middle of a carnivore-infested forest. It may as well have had a giant sign over it reading, “FREE FOOD.”
	“Isn’t that just [i]fantastic?[/i]” he growled under his breath, his gaze off in the direction the wolf cry had come. He turned his full attention back to Aeylisia. “C’mon. The sooner we get you situated, the sooner I can come back. My week’s rations relies on delivering that beast’s head.”
	[i]Why did you [u]tell[/u] her that?[/i] a voice screamed in the back of his mind.
	He scowled again, and, almost in defiance of the opinions waging an unseen war against each other, took a couple slow steps forward, waiting to make sure the elf would be capable of walking and did not pull her arm from him. Though, whether because he didn’t want to lose the possibility of a secondary meal ticket, or because of gratitude and chivalry--especially since she was wounded because she helped him bring down the beast--he could not quite say. Or, perhaps, he just could not resist helping such a stunning woman... even if the stories said her kind would gladly gut him in his sleep.
	Ryathane’s lips quirked slightly in a nearly imperceptible smirk. [i]I’d like to see her try.[/i]