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Post by Rosalind on Aug 6, 2017 8:17:01 GMT
"Suhail? He'd love that. He's interested in you because he's the only one of his brothers and sisters to have reptilian features. They all have Reptile influences but you don't see it in Humans, and he doesn't understand why. So you're another person who looks more like him, and he's not seen that before. But he also loves animals, Anoki will fascinate all of them except Ramla. She's the youngest of the girls, and might find him a bit scary." As she spoke she was leaning over Russ again, checking on how he was going. His colour was good, his breathing even and regular. His pulse was a little fast, but that would be the sleeping draught, it wasn't unusual, plus if his true form was a small mammal sometimes that could have an effect on things like blood pressure and heart rate - just a little, even in Human form. Over all she was happy with how he'd come through the surgery, and she lingered a moment later to bless him with good fortune. The magic transferred from her to him in the form of a soft white-yellow glow, brief and warming. She hoped it would help.
"That depends on him, a little, but I'd recommend giving him two weeks at least. You can stay longer if you think he needs it, or just if you want to. Help's always welcome, if you've got the time, but the main thing is Russ heals. So you just do whatever you think will help with that, first and foremost." Matthias' instincts were good in that regard; he was at Russ' side immediately, offering comfort through his presence. Rosalind had seen enough patients over the years to know that these things - unmeasurable, nebulous things - like feeling loved, cared for and protected, made a difference. She picked up Dart and then left them alone in full confidence of Russ' recovery, and retired to the kitchen to make dinner.
The kids had done as asked of them with the quick efficiency of children desperate to get their chores out of the way so they could do more interesting things. By the time Rosalind left Russ and Ezer the windows had been opened, the place dusted and swept, and the beds made up. Zayn, chasing Suhail in a lively game of tag that took them around the yard and through the kitchen and washroom, paused to inform her that Hamza had taken Amira hunting for small game just beyond the river. Hamza always went on these excursions - as the eldest, he was the only one allowed to lead them - and he was scrupulously fair in alternating which of his siblings he took with him, much to Zayn's disgust as the second eldest and in his opinion the one who should go along all of the time. Rosalind was washing and cutting vegetables with Ramla's help, the little girl standing on a chair to reach the counter top, while Dart gurgled away in a wooden highchair, when Hamza and Amira came back covered in mud and bearing several young rabbits. She sent all of the children up for baths while preparing two different meals - a stew for most of them, and soup for herself. None of the swamp children took kindly to vegetarian meals, while she was an obligate herbivore, and she figured Matthias and Russ would prefer stew too. As darkness fell the house filled with the smell of food, and before long she was ferrying bowls and fresh bread and cutlery into the lounge, where they would eat. She found Matthias on the couch with Russ and set things up around them - there was a large dining room attached to the living room, but Russ would be more comfortable in here at least tonight.
"Is he awake yet? I have something he can take for the pain, if he is."
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Post by Matthias on Aug 16, 2017 9:33:43 GMT
Matthias nodded and his storm-gray eyes flickered to the window. The snake was too big to easily maneuver in a house without destroying things with his wings and tail. After a while Matthias finally said, “he's bigger now than when I was a kid, but I think I was probably close to the age of your older ones when I got him. He probably remembers how to treat kids. I don't think there's a reason to be afraid of him – I've never seen him try to eat anything bigger than a turkey.” He had actually seen Anoki eat a full grown bull, but Rosalind didn't need to know that. The snake would never actually hurt a human – or a daemon, Matthias hoped. Anoki hadn't ever met one of those before so he couldn't be sure.
“I guess when we leave is up to him, then,” he said dully. Given the chance Pontius would likely never leave - he was a home body by nature and was constantly frustrated by Matthias' compulsively nomadic nature. Gods help him if he realized wandering from house to house like Rosalind did, having to deal with that would make the half dragon's teeth itch. Just knowing he was the technical heir to two large properties was distressing – even if he couldn't actually claim either of them.
He would have to ask Rosalind about finding a place to sleep that wasn't full of children. The couch had been nice in an empty house but after Matthias saw the fourth flash of dark hair and lily-white skin out of the corner of his eye he came to the conclusion that the runts made him wildly uncomfortable all scurrying about. And seriously, what were their names? Had Rosalind introduced them? Pontius liked kids, surely he would remember the names of one or two of them.
And speaking of.
Where the fuck did all these kids come from?
They were humans so they weren't hers. Right? Matthias was pretty sure they couldn't have been hers unless he had missed something entirely about hoe reproduction. They weren't former slaves, not like Pontius or himself. They didn't have the nervous energy of slave children, they didn't have the ugly broken skin and the distrust of strangers that stained the personalities of both Pontius and Matthias. So why did she have them? Was he allowed to ask? Was it okay to ask?? Was it okay for him to not ask???
His head snapped up when Rosalind spoke, surprised that she had approached. “Uh,” he said astutely. He looked down at Pontius and realized his breathing had gone from short gasps to deeper breaths and that his eyelids had started fluttering.
“Hey,” he said softly. He put a scaly, clawed hand on Matthias' shoulder and shook him gently. “Hey, Russ, you hungry?”
“Mmng. Just put food in my mouth please.”
Matthias shook his shoulder a little harder and Pontius tried to bury his face in the half dragon's stomach for a moment before he reluctantly blinked his dark eyes open before he propped himself up and looked around. “Smells nice,” he said sleepily, “Wha's cookin'?”
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Post by Rosalind on Aug 22, 2017 8:53:34 GMT
Rosalind hadn't seen Anoki again yet, so didn't know how big the snake-creature had gotten. Blissfully unaware he was now large enough to swallow most of her children in a single gulp, she nodded at Matthias' reassurances without thinking too much about it. Hamza was handing bowls and spoons out when Rosalind got to the lounge carrying the last of the food, and as she sat cross-legged on the floor opposite Matthias and Russ on the couch, the children arrayed themselves around her like a fan. Ramla was still staring, her shyness leaving her in awe of most strangers, but the other children were used to Rosalind's visitors and now that they weren't brand new to them, were back in their own heads as children tended to be. Dart rolled on the floor behind her, chewing his fist with babyish gums, but the other children took bowls and helped themselves to the stew now on the coffee table. Rosalind waved her hand to indicate Matthias and Russ should do the same.
"Welcome back, Russ. I made stew for dinner. How're you feeling? Do you want something for pain?" She'd be amazed if he didn't, but some people were funny about those kinds of things. Far too many people, in Rosalind's opinion, thought they needed to be stoic and bear the agony until it passed naturally. Considering she made several different kinds of mixtures that would give relief, this seemed absurd and stupid to her, but to each their own.
She hoped he wouldn't be disconcerted at waking to find himself in a lounge, not the surgery room where he'd gone under, with six children arrayed around the healer that had treated him and a pile of food within arm's reach. But waking up in the arms of someone you cared about, in a warm room stirred by a cooling night breeze through the open windows, seemed like it might be nicer than waking alone in a sterile treatment room. Rosalind's homes were cheerful, warm, chaotic, friendly places, but nothing could make a surgery room pleasant. She served herself a bowl of soup - the only vegetarian option, and solely for her, the swamp children didn't give it so much as a disdainful glance - and broke off some bread to go with it. They'd travelled several days to get here and when they'd arrived Rosalind had gotten right to helping Russ. She was hungry.
"We were just chatting about you and Ezer staying a while. A couple of weeks at least, would be great. You can stay as long as you like though." It was a rare moment of quiet, except for Rosalind's chatting, because the children were occupied with food, and less given to talking when they were eating. Not necessarily out of politeness, though; they were just very serious about eating.
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Post by Matthias on Sept 3, 2017 8:01:01 GMT
Pontius blinked sleepily and Matthias helped him sit up, careful to move his set leg delicately to the floor until he was sitting independently. The shifter was groggy, unused to the feeling of medicated sleep and instinctive nervousness wasn't enough to overpower the unfamiliar drugs.
“Do I want . . ? Hmh, I'm-” Pontius rubbed his eyes with one hand and tried to burn off the confusion. “I can't feel anything,” he mumbled, “everything's numb.” He yawned and blinked sleepily as he turned his head to rest his cheek on Matthias' shoulder. His bright eyes were heavy lidded and his breathing started to slow down and even out before Matthias shrugged him off.
“Food, Russ,” he reminded him gently.
Pontius sat up again, trying to look attentive but it was pretty clear that the half dragon was far more interested in the promise of food than the shifter was.
Matthias scooted off the shelf and fetched two bowls, and he ladled an equal amount of soup and stew into each, not quite grasping that they weren't meant to be mixed. He balanced one bowl between the four spines on his tail and held the other as he fetched spoons and bread for the both of them. Pontius was a little listless as a bowl was set in his hands but when Matthias sat back down beside him he raised it to his mouth and sipped the broth.
“Yeah, since you can't walk we, uh, could stay here for a while.”
“Mm-hm?”
“Because I don't want to carry you.”
“Mm-hhmmm?”
Pontius was looking at the soup but the tone made it clear he was very aware that if Matthias didn't like Rosalind they would already be gone. Matthias took the bowl from his tail and set it on his lap, perfectly content to just eat soup. He could understand the feeling of the children in their single minded determination to chow down, and he wolfed down his share so fast that his fangs left groves along the back of the metal spoon as Pontius ate slowly, swirling his spoon along the bottom of the bowl between every bite.
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Post by Rosalind on Sept 9, 2017 0:25:22 GMT
"The grogginess and numbness will pass soon. Tell me if your leg starts to hurt, I have something you can take. It tastes awful but it helps." If the anaesthetic brew Rosalind had given him was still working all the better - it'd spoil the taste of his food if he had to have the pain powder now. She made no comment on Matthias' interesting choice of soup and stew mixed - for as long as she'd known him he'd been preoccupied with food, any food, and becoming a half-dragon had made him if anything more ravenous and less picky. She wondered what Russ would think, since she guessed the other boy was probably a little less non-specific in his tastes, but she supposed he'd figure it out if it bothered him.
Nor did she comment on the beating her spoon was getting from Matthias' enthusiastic consumption of the meal. In fact, she smiled a little to herself, because more than anything else she wanted the people she loved to feel comfortable and cared for when they were with her. So, the only thing she said, was encouragement to do just that.
"Take seconds. Take thirds. I made lots, and it doesn't keep." Rosalind cooked a lot these days - six children, even if D'artagnen was still breast feeding, demanded a lot in the way of food. And the swamp children had had terrible diets when she first met them, preferring stringy, bland meat and rejecting vegetables of all kinds. Slowly, slowly, she was increasing the variety of what they ate, though the thick stew of mostly rabbit and gravy was well within their preferences.
"Good. You can stay and heal, let me make sure that leg gets better. The bandages will need changing daily for a bit...oh, and you really need to stay in your Human form for a bit. No full moon for a little while, thankfully." The shifting and reforming of bones when a Shifter changed form would do the setting of a broken leg no good at all. This was always a complication in her Shifter patients - if they came to her injured like this within a day or so of the full moon, she'd often treat them for infection and pain but nothing else until the moon passed. Otherwise, she just had to do it all over again afterwards.
"I hope you'll forgive me being a little nosy, though. How did you two meet?"
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Post by Matthias on Sept 9, 2017 10:17:15 GMT
“M'kay,” Pontius mumbled. The grogginess had lowered his usual defenses, even as the smell of food and touch of a warm bowl started to wake him. He got a chunk of something on his spoon and blew on it a few times before he crunched it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing without tasting anything. After a pause he scooped up another chunk – this time some sort of meat he thought – and started blowing on that in turn.
Matthias had already finished his first bowl.
“Thanks, Rosalind,” he said to her offer, getting off his seat to load up his bowl once more. Pontius had said he was as ravenous as an actual dragon and he wasn't entirely wrong. Neither of the boys had ever met anyone who ate more than Matthias did and Pontius glanced at the children with mild curiosity, wondering if they would find it strange or could be bothered to care.
“Can I shift into my half form?” Pontius asked. But what he was really asking was 'am I stuck without magic until the next full moon?' He grunted as Matthias sat down heavily in the seat next to him once more and his thick tail briefly smacked across his lap. “I've only ever broken fingers or toes before and those usually heal fast, even when I shift.”
“Your hands look like you stuck them under a mill stone, Russ.” Matthias said flatly.
“Look not everyone can have fffuuuuu-hhhhecking flawless scales and claws.”
“There's a big range between 'perfect' and mangled.”
Pontius clicked his tongue irritably and ate a chunk of carrot without blowing on it first and burning the back of his tongue. He flinched as he pressed his lips tight together and screwed up his face for a moment as Matthias returned his attention entirely into his mix of soups. Despite their argument, Matthias had a point. His fingers were roughly calloused striped with paler and rough scars over the lumps and ridges in his digits. His fingers still worked even if they were a little shaky, but that was something he'd like to avoid when it came to his legs.
Matthias took up Rosalind's offer once more and loaded himself a third bowl as Pontius finished his fourth careful bite. It was probably only because Matthias wasn't next to him, shooting warning glares that the shifter spoke freely of their history when asked. “Oh, Ezer was bought by the family my sis' sold me to back when we were both super little. Like, Ezer didn't know how to f-hecking talk and I'm pretty sure I was still figuring out walking in this form.” Pontius gestured vaguely towards his entire body to indicate he meant his human body. “We honestly knew each other all our lives. Course when I got sold off t'a lumber crew and Ezer got the whole, y'know -” Pontius drew his thumb across his throat and made a gagging noise “-sentence I figured that was that but he showed up again as a lizard and decided to drag me all across Litharia.”
“No one's looking for me anymore, and even if they were I look unrecognizable and my brands are gone,” Matthias grumbled as he sat down again, “Russ is still branded, though, and those are made to last a slave's whole lifespan so we have to avoid anywhere with human law enforcement.”
After a moment, Matthias asked, “Hey, do you know how to remove brands?”
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Post by Rosalind on Sept 11, 2017 9:07:57 GMT
To a degree, the five swamp children shared Matthias' preoccupation with food. They had not been starving, not often, at least Rosalind didn't think so. But they had not always had enough, and they had always lived with more people than they had the ability to support. This might not be the case any more but the memories of an uncertain childhood died hard, and for a time they ate with single-minded silence. Eventually, though, small slender children reached satiation and it was well before a hulking half-dragon youth did. At this point Hamza got up and fetched a book - Rosalind had taught him to read and ever since he'd been obsessed with encyclopedias - and buried his nose in it. Ramla leaned against Rosalind, content to watch, but Amira and Zayn both stared at Matthias with increasing amazement at the way he was practically hoovering up the food.
"You know...you're not 'spose to eat the spoon too. Right?"
Rosalind prodded Zayn's shoulder gently, a cue that he'd been inadvertently rude, and the boy huffed out a sigh. He didn't understand why telling the truth was rude.
"Depends on your half form. If your legs stay more or less the same as they are now, you can. Avoid it if they turn more like your animal form." Rosalind set her own bowl down and pulled D'artagnen onto her knee. The two year old immediately started playing with her hair, and occasionally glanced over at Matthias from under his black curls, curious but wary.
"Shifters do heal faster than Humans. But that break is a bad one, might lay you up a little longer than some fingers."
What followed next Rosalind wouldn't have dreamed of coaxing out of Matthias given all the time in the world. Maybe in drips and hints and implications, slowly, over years. If she was lucky. And here was Russ, sharing openly...she didn't think Matthias had ever said much about his past before. Not with any kind of detail, anyway. And those details...sold off as a child so young he couldn't talk. And sentenced to death? Rosalind glanced first at Matthias, brief but full of righteous maternal fury - how dare they - and then over at Amira and Zayn, both still staring open-mouthed at Russ and Ezer.
"Sold? What do you mean, sold? You can't buy people."
"You can, actually, Amira. Well, not you. Never you, or any of us. Bad people sell other people...I'll explain more later."
"But-"
"Later. Uh, a magical healer who removes scars is the only way you should ever try to remove brands. And they need to be good at what they do, too. Anything that fades or distorts or tries to disguise a brand in any way, without removing absolutely every trace of it, is tantamount to a death sentence if they ever catch you. Don't try it unless you're sure it'll work. I don't have that kind of magic sorry Russ, or I'd remove them myself." Rosalind knew more about the slave trade than she'd like, and she definitely knew that the only thing a Shifter could be that was worse than an escaped slave, was an escaped slave with a tampered brand. If the Hounds ever got their hands on you and your brand was intact they usually at least tried to take you back to your owner. Tampering with brands carried the penalty of execution, though - no questions asked. And they weren't exactly thorough in ascertaining the difference between a scar and an old brand, either - Rosalind had known Shifters be killed for the simple crime of having a burn scar in a suspicious place.
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Post by Matthias on Sept 12, 2017 9:32:59 GMT
“Hm,” Matthias said without looking up, “I had no idea I wasn’t supposed to eat utensils, thank you.”
The sass was automatic, a thoughtless response delivered in his usual monotone as he continued to eat at the same rabid pace. His throat turned the food he ate into ash before it started boiling in the scalding acid of his stomach. Steam and smoke escaped his mouth in small clouds between bites the faster he ate, some dracanic form of the hiccups that didn’t stop Matthias for a second. “Suhail’s -” please oh Gods let that be his name “- reptilian too, isn’t he? Doesn’t he get ravenous?”
Matthias raised the bowl to drink the broth, and without even biting down with any real force his serrated fangs left little dig marks in the clay.
Pontius set his half eaten bowl on his good leg and shifted his bad one a little, getting a feel for the cast. “I lose about a foot or so of height in my half form but it’s still more or less the same.” He stopped his repetitive movement as he felt a dull twinge of discomfort. A warning not to move again but not actually painful. Even so, Pontius said, “ow.” Then, “I don't, um . . . get how much it's supposed to work before I need pain killers. Uh, I've never had . . . well . . . any of this before. Medical treatment, I mean. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.” Pontius grinned nervously and his gaze darted away then back to Rosalind every couple of seconds.
When the children made it clear they were unfamiliar with the concept of slavery, it was the boy's turn to look utterly baffled. Slavery was . . . everything about who they were. Even if Matthias had escaped a long time ago he still drifted into old habits. How could someone just . . . not know? And more to the point, there went Matthias' theory that the children themselves had been slaves. He didn't know why but he felt oddly . . . disappointed? He'd file that away for later analysis, he decided as he shared a look with Pontius.
A long time ago, An older maid in the household had collapsed, and shortly after her corpse had been hauled into the street to rot in sun until someone could come and collect her for the garbage. They were young, young enough that they found an older slave – who was probably younger then than they were now – and asked her why she wasn't buried. “Only people get buried,” she said, all knowing, “And you know-”
“Slave's aren't people,” they said in perfect unison.
“Not legally,” Matthias clarified. He hadn't really picked up on Rosalind's unwillingness to talk on the matter because, well, it was like refusing to talk about the fact that botanists existed. He did shift his gaze to Rosalind as he added, “legally slaves are objects, and after a while you start to think it's true.” He didn't understand why she looked so angry. She had known all of this, he thought. Maybe not the death sentence part, he kept that part very quiet. But he had been around the same age as her oldest when he first met her, and he had made no secret of the fact he was a slave then. “I was born into slavery, actually. My mother was the one who was sold into it, I think. I never met her.” He sat back into the couch and shrugged as his tail fwumped into Pontius' lap. “We can figure something else out abut the brand.”
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Post by Rosalind on Sept 16, 2017 7:38:27 GMT
Amira and Zayn looked at each other for a moment, mouths slightly open in amazement. Then, already forgetting the prod from Rosalind, Zayn looked back at Matthias with a concerned frown.
"It's made of metal, you can't eat metal-"
"He's not being serious, Zayn."
"What?"
"He knows. We talked about sarcasm, remember?"
"Oh. Whatever." He badly wanted to say that if Ezer knew not to eat the spoon why was he mangling it so badly, but the ten year old at least recognised that that retort would definitely earn him another prod from Rosalind. Instead, still frowning in a preoccupied, puzzled way, he took his and Hamza's bowls out to the kitchen and then joined his brother. He hadn't taken as easily to reading as Hamza, not yet, but Rosalind had huge leatherbound encyclopedias on all sorts of topics, and sometimes his brother picked interesting ones on animals or weapons, and he liked looking at the pictures.
"Not as much as you, I think, but yes. More so than his siblings. He's pickier, too, won't touch vegetables or fruit if he can help it."
At the very first twinge of pain Rosalind was up and into the other room, a clattering quickly starting up beyond the door. She emerged a few minutes later carrying a small crystal glass full of bright red liquid, which she set in front of Russ.
"You'll know when the pain gets bad enough that you want it to stop. If that happens, drink this - as much as you can stomach. It tastes awful, which is why it's mixed into raspberry cordial, which helps but doesn't mask the taste completely. If you need something stronger I have other things but they'll make you drowsy and out of it - this won't." He could take the other stuff, the stronger stuff, before bed if he wanted, but it was best he let his system clear the draught that had knocked him out before taking something more mind-altering for the pain.
Zayn had glanced back up from the book when Ezer explained about being a slave, and Amira was still seated next to Rosalind and was staring at him with even greater curiosity.
"They lived their whole lives in the Marshes before coming to me," she offered, by way of explanation. No child who had lived long in any of the cities, or even villages, could escape knowledge of slavery, but these kids had had a uniquely insular childhood, totally separate from the outside world.
"They haven't come across the slaving world much yet. He's right though, there are slaves all over Litharia."
"Will we ever be slaves?" Amira, brave, confident, sassy Amira, sounded ever so slightly scared at the prospect. Her only knowledge of slaves was how these two boys were speaking about it, and it sounded bad.
"No. You're freeborn Humans, and I'm a free Shifter and your guardian. If anything ever happened to me Hadjara would find you someone else to live with. Freeborn children don't become slaves unless they have no-one to care for them. Ezer was born into slavery, as you've just heard, and escaped. Russ...you're on the run, I take it?" The boy seemed chatty and open, perhaps he'd say a little more of his escape, which she strongly suspected involved Matthias.
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Post by Matthias on Sept 16, 2017 10:28:36 GMT
Matthias' gaze drifted between Rosalind and kid number three as they spoke about the basics of fucking sarcasm. Good gods they made him feel wildly uncomfortable. He was used to speaking flat and monotone but was he supposed to be entirely literal? Was he this . . . dense as a child? He'd ask Pontius if he didn't think he'd get fucking roasted and he wasn't sure how to ask Rosalind without insulting her child collection.
“My stomach turns everything I eat into ash,” Matthias said blandly, “if it didn't I'd probably be pickier, too.” He looked over at the barely touched bowl of rapidly cooling soup held lightly on Pontius' knee and he elbowed the shifter lightly in the ribs. “You'll heal faster if you eat,” he said quietly. Pontius made a face before he took a third, tiny bite of carrot.
“I'm not hungry,” Pontius grumbled. He leaned his head against Matthias' shoulder and let his eyes fall half lidded as he watched Roslind dart around before she returned with a bottle of red fluid. He still felt tired and out of it after the pre operation drugs but he still nodded when Rosalind said this batch wouldn't. “I can guarantee I've had to eat worse, ma'am. Rosalind. Sorry.” He wasn't lying. Working winters in the Tangle meant he'd eaten tea made from the metallic pine needles and pine cones and handfuls of ice, supplemented by hard, stale bread that had to soak in boiling water before teeth could break through it. There was no way anything she could give him would be worse that that.
As Rosalind soothed her children that they would never be enslaved, Matthias took the bowl of stew from Pontius before he wrapped an arm around the shifter's shoulders and ran a clawed hand through his wildly curly hair before Matthias kissed his temple. Food would make him heal faster but so would sleep, probably. “Freeborn children can be sold into slavery. Adults can be too. Derrek said he knew my mum and she was only a little younger than me when she got kidnapped,” Matthias pointed out. If his math was right, she was round about sixteen when he'd been born so she was probably five years younger than him, actually. Still, he thought it got his point across.
“Yeah. I mean, I've been stuck in the Tangle around the same slavers since I got sold to the lumber runners and I don't think they'll bother to set out a warrant. Especially since a bunch of us escaped all at once.” He muffled a yawn before he went on, “the only ones who get sold there are sold dirt cheap. I think I went for two silvers? Maybe one, there was a lot of haggling so I could have been knocked down to twelve coppers. Our owners before that wanted me to get worked to death, especially since I was a house slave before this.”
“Russ is scrappy.”
“Gee. Thanks.” Pontius made a face but didn't move his head from Matthias' shoulder. “No one's actively hunting me since it would be cheaper to buy a new slave rather than hire someone to catch me. But we may want to go to the city eventually and I don't want to get caught.”
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Post by Rosalind on Sept 22, 2017 22:12:20 GMT
Zayn perked up at that, attention shifting rapidly away from the pictures in the book. His shifting disturbed Hamza, who frowned deeply but didn't stop reading.
"Ash? Cool! Wait a minute, can you breathe fire?!" Compared to the scaly, clearly reptilian and apparently endlessly fascinating Ezer, his wan-looking friend was off the hook. The children were used to ill people being around. A half-dragon, though? That was something new.
"The draught is still wearing off. Ezer is right, but there'll be breakfast in the morning and you should feel hungrier then." She elected not to comment on Russ' assertion he'd eaten worse than the troll's ear pain mixture. That might be true, but she'd yet to meet someone who tried it and didn't end up surprised at just how bad it was. The smell, as much as anything, was deeply off-putting. The raspberry cordial disguised that a little but troll's ear smelt like decaying flesh and vomit. Its dried and powdered form sadly retained those scents.
"You can take that up to bed with you, and drink it if you wake overnight. I'll show you your room soon, if you like. Whenever you're ready." All the rooms were on the second story, unfortunately, but she figured Matthias could carry Pontius easily enough. Normally patients slept in the healing room on the first floor but Matthias and Russ weren't just patients, they were guests and family. They'd have the guest bedroom, a small but comfortable room at the opposite end of the hall to hers and the children's rooms, with a round window overlooking the Tangle.
"They can. Not these children, though." He was being truthful, but Rosalind squeezed Amira's shoulder in reassurance as the girl glanced at her in alarm.
"I'd never let it happen, Amira. And even if I wasn't around, you know your Aunt. She'd rip the world apart to get you back." No exaggeration. Rosalind liked Hadjara a lot, but she knew the Daemon woman was possessed by something terrible and evil, that nonetheless seemed to bend to her will. While she hoped to never experience that creature again, there was an odd kind of reassurance that Hadjara would not only want to defend her brother and other family members, but had real power that made sure she could.
Rosalind glanced at Russ, a profound sadness colouring her eyes for a moment. Twelve coppers was less than what the apothecary could turn over in an hour when it was open. Twelve coppers could only get you a few jars of salve, or some fresh ingredients. For the worth of a Shifter's life to be so low was deeply wrong in her book, but unlike Hadjara, she was no wielder of power. Rosalind changed the world in small ways, but helping where she could, and that would have to be enough.
"I understand. Spirit would be your best bet to find someone magical to remove the brand. Make sure you verify it though, there's a decent market for people that say they remove brands but only end up doing so temporarily, or do a bad job. And you know you're welcome at the apothecary if you come to Spirit, too? Ezer knows where it is, and Farkle will let you in if I'm not there." The Cait Sith only let in people he knew, but he knew Matthias well enough.
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Post by Matthias on Jan 9, 2018 7:14:08 GMT
“No, I can't breathe fire.” Matthias said flatly as he tapped his spoon against the bottom of his now empty bowl. After a moment he just sat the bowl on his knee and raised his chin to look at the green eyed doppelganger that had spoken. “I have dragon blood, though. It makes me really hot.”
“I'll say,” Pontius muttered. Lightning fast, Matthias' elbow made contact with the soft meat under Pontius' ribs hard enough that the shifter grunted weakly and doubled over as Matthias rested his elbow on his leg once again.
“It makes my body temperature really high.” They'd been living with a healer for . . . some amount of time. They might find his blood interesting enough and he added, “it heals me instantaneously, too. I haven't been sick in years and even broken bones heal in seconds.” On occasion, to prove his point, Matthias would so something like break a finger or stab his arm to to show off his healing. But Rosalind was there and he was pretty sure she would be very angry, or worse, disappointed, if he injured himself in her living room.
He nodded when Rosalind mentioned a room upstairs and mumbled a quick, “thanks Rosalind.” She had walked in on them tangled up and while that had been fairly innocuous Matthias figured that she would guess that they required only a single bed between them.
His stomach twisted as he watched her reassure one of the girls that no one would harm her. His eyebrows wrinkled slightly and his gaze darted back and forth between them before he side eyed Pontius. Yeah . . . he understood that sentiment. “No one should be enslaved,” he said softly, “no matter who they are.”
“Well this is depressing,” Pontius finally interrupted. He drew up his good leg and sat on it before he cleared his throat and looked at Rosalind. “We've been – or, well, Ezer's been . . .” he glanced at the kid clinging to her before choosing his next words carefully, “deposing slavers we've encountered. Ezer's frustrated that there isn't anything else we can really do to help.” He felt Matthias' glare boring into him and without missing a beat he said, “what? You didn't say not to talk about that. Anyway, who's Farkle?”
“The cat thing I told you about.”
“The ghost?”
“Yeah.”
“It's not actually a ghost, is it?” Pontius asked Rosalind. “If it can open doors it's not a ghost, right?”
“My Aunt's ghost could open doors.” Matthias slumped his shoulders and attempted to look more relaxed despite his ever mounting agitation. Just change the subject and hope Rosalind didn't realize that by deposed Pontius meant eviscerated. “I think I can find someone to take off a brand. And if I put a big tattoo on Russ's face no one would recognize him after I take it off again.” Or they could remove that patch of skin entirely but Matthias doubted Pontius would go for that one.
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Post by Rosalind on Mar 24, 2018 22:09:40 GMT
Russ' comment went over the children's heads - they didn't bother to register it - but it sure didn't go over Rosalind's who then had a devil of a time trying to stifle a grin. Zayn, fortunately, was far more interested in Ezer's dragon qualities, which he thought was probably the coolest thing he'd ever heard.
"Dragon blood," he whispered, eyes wide. "Neat."
Amira, meanwhile, was utterly reassured by the mention of her Aunt. She'd not seen half of what Hadjara could do, but that didn't matter because all five of their children thought she was a superhero. She'd swooped in one day and taken them all out of the swamp, after all - they'd barely known there was a world beyond the Marshes, let alone thought they could leave. She settled back down on the floor, leaning against Rosalind's legs as the Shifter woman ran her fingers through the girl's hair and began braiding it carefully for bed.
Rosalind knew better than to ask what "deposing" slavers involved, especially while the kids were around, but while she herself was a devout pacifist she certainly wouldn't be judging people who had suffered under slavery for years if they found a way to fight back. She was grateful to Russ for lightening the mood, and nodded in response to the questioning about Farkle.
"Farkle is a Cait Sith. He can turn invisible, float and rearrange parts of his body, but he's definitely alive. It's weird magic from Faery, as I understand it." They were independent creatures, who could understand if not speak the Litharian languages and who chose people to live with rather than becoming pets as such. Farkle had picked Rosalind decades ago now, though he liked the Apothecary best of her homes and most of the time stayed there. Which was handy, as she was away a lot and he was able to let people in if need be, and summon her back if really necessary.
She finished braiding Amira's hair and then clapped her hands together.
"Right! Bed for you lot. Hamza, you can read upstairs tonight." The older boy was already looking up at her, affronted at being given the same bedtime as his younger siblings, but appeased by being allowed to take a book to his room. With various grumblings and mutterings, and waves and goodnights, she herded the whole lot of them towards the stairs.
"Russ, Ezer, you two can stay up or go to bed whenever you please. I'll be up a while yet with Dart, but I know you must be tired from the healing, and the travel. Would you like to come up now so I can show you the room at least, though?"
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