She doesn't fish, but she forages for more tubers, and also chops up some of the nearby dead tree to feed her fire. Then she feeds her friend another fish, and holds out her hands full of water to let him get a drink, too. 

Then she bundles up between the feline and the fire and lets herself fall asleep, not alone anymore but still free.

The next few days pass in a high intensity blur.

She fishes a lot. (She's starting to run low on the berries, and works on spearing them without it. It's much harder.)

She starts stalking and attempting to hunt small game. (She needs a lot of practice. It's not until the third day that she gets her first catch.) 

She starts assembling the skeleton of her rain shelter. (It collapses. She cries. She starts again.)

She feeds her friend, lets him drink from her hands, and carefully checks on his wounds, which he lets her do more and more. (He's still hurt, but he's definitely recovering. By the third day, he's attempting to stand every few hours.)

(By the third evening, he's capable of standing and moving short distances! He limps over to Kaitiaki.)

Sniffsniffnuuuuzzzzle! licklick. 

!

She reaches out, tentatively, and pets him. He leans into it. 

!!!

She doesn't make any more progress on her woodwork, that evening - she falls asleep curled up against to her new best friend, body and heart full of warmth. 

In the morning, she wakes up to him licking her face. She sits up slowly (she really doesn't want to startle him!) and looks at him thoughtfully. 

"Damisa," she says, after a while. "I'll call you Damisa." 

Damisa slow-blinks at her, and then sniffs curiously at one of the fish skeletons. Food? 

Awwwww. Unfortunately, they're all out of fish.

"I need to catch some more," she tells him. "Do you want to come with me?" 

(It turns out he does! He's still hesitant when moving and limping a bit, but when she heads out towards the river, he's right behind her.)

Kaitiaki doesn't want to mess around with the berries while Damisa is around, so she spearfishes without the handicap while he drinks the fresh water and watches. (He tries wading in deeper, but the cold water on his still-healing wounds does not agree with him, so he returns to the shore.)

She tosses him a few freshly-skewered fish; he snaps them out of the air with delight. It's a delightful way to spend a few hours, and quickly becomes their morning ritual - they stay until he's full enough to start napping at the riverside and she's gotten enough extra fish for his dinner and her lunch.

Then they head back to their campsite (Kait grabbing branches and sticks on the way), where he happily sleeps by her side for several hours while she tends to fire and cuts notches in the long branches as needed for the shelter. (It's going to have to be bigger than she originally planned; it needs to fit both her and Damisa, who's still growing, as far as Kait can tell).

Once he wakes up and she's eaten lunch, they go foraging/hunting/exploring. He mostly watches, at first, but after a few days he starts using his nose to help, nuzzling Kait when he's caught the scent of berries or small game.

She loses count of how many days pass like this. It seems less important than the material changes each day brings: her shelter (nearing completion), her food stores (increasing as she stockpiles the river tubers), and her best friend (no longer limping or wincing, now starting to fish for himself).

He is on his way home with FRIEND when he hears DANGER. FRIEND doesn't seem to notice. He GROWLS. Hey, look out!

...She stops, looking at him; he's peering intently at a patch of brush, still growling, ears flattened back. Huh.

She gets her knife out. It's been dulled by the woodcarving (more precisely, by her inexpert woodcarving technique), but it's still a decent weapon. She peers into the brush, and strains her ears.

She hears... some kind of faint movement.......

Kait barely sees it before it lunges - a huge snake, bigger than any she's ever seen, with wicked fangs, coming at them from Damisa's bad side. She shouts in alarm and it strikes, aiming for his bad leg. She jumps forward and kicks its neck, knocking it away!

She's off balance, though, and as she stumbles, trying to regain her footing, the snake recovers and then bites her leg, hard

The pain is like nothing she's ever felt before. She can feel the venom pouring into her blood.

She screams.

FRIEND is HURT!!! 

He will BITE RIP KILL -

(Snarling, Damisa bites the snake clean through.)

Hands trembling, she pulls the dead snake head off her leg, biting her cheeks to avoid screaming again.

She washes the wound out with water, but the poison is already in her, and the fang wounds aren't small, either. 

She binds the wound with a strip cut off her ruined pants, and manages to limp back to the campsite with Damisa before passing out from the pain.

FRIEND is HURT... Badly, it seems.

He licks her face, repeatedly. She doesn't respond, not even to cover her face the way she does if he licks her while she's asleep.

He is WORRIED. She needs HELP.

...He will GET HELP. 

She wakes and sleeps and wakes, delirious from the pain and the poison.

- the butcher's son, beating her into the ground, stabbing his knife into her leg again and again as she screams - 

Damisa is gone. She calls his name, weakly, and when the only thing she hears is silence, sobs. (She'd thought -)

- Little Imesah, coughing and coughing and bleeding from the wound on her back leg. "Why didn't you save me, Kaitiaki?" she asks in an otherworldly voice. "Why did you let me die?" -

She's feverish. Her arms feel so heavy. Moving her leg hurts so much she almost blacks out (does black out, the first time).

- Her father's wife hits her again and again and again - 

She's pretty sure she's dying. 

(Damisa runs as fast as he can, ignoring the pain in his wounded leg. He travels several miles up the river, where he finally catches the strange, friendly scent he remembers helping Mama, last year, and follows it east.)

He will find HELP and then bring HELP to FRIEND

The friendly scent is extracting salt from hickory sticks over a low simmering fire. "Hello there, little friend, what's the trouble?"

"FRIEND is BADLY HURT! She SAVED me from an EVIL SLITHERER! She NEEDS HELP", Damisa attempts to communicate with feline body language and vocalization.

"Oh, well, that sounds serious." He pokes the fire a little bit and gets up to follow where he's led, whistling for his friend.

The HELP'S FRIEND is BIG and SCARY and VERY VERY DANGEROUS but Damisa will be BRAVE. 

(He's leading Zisel downriver, past an increasing density of harvested tubers and cleared underbrush sticks.)

Somebody's been busy.