[flashback] blood bets.

[Caelum]

"Mm," Caelum replied, noncommittal. He hunkered down into the other chair, tugging up the sleeves of his shirt and slapping fingerless gloves down upon the table with dull thwack.

"I'm just passing through," he said finally, words rubbing up against each other in a way that sounded nothing at all like the Grasslands. Then Caelum considered himself neither Drykas or a healer, but he did not bother to correct his patient.

The flask was tugged out of Doc's nimble hands and half it's contents proceeded to be dumped over his own, the spill-over splashing an oddly merry counterpoint into the rough wooden bowl. A piece of gauze was pinched between calloused fingers as he lifted a vial, squinting one eye at the painstakingly scrawled label. He nodded to himself before pressing the vial into his patient's hand.

"Drink that," he ordered. Sinking into silence, he began to clean Doc's knife wound.

[Murdoch]

The bottle was lifted to his lips and drained, and then he dropped it on the table.

He hissed a little as Caelum began his work, lifting one arm up to give him better access. In the other, a gold miza appeared as if from nowhere as he rolled it over his knuckles and back again. It was from Caelum's coinpurse, after all, but there was a price to helping a thief - price, not reward, though that might come as well.

"Where're you going then?" he asked through gritted teeth, muddy eyes watching whatever magic the Drykas was working. "It's a big wide world out there. Or so I've heard," he grunted.

[Caelum]

It was medication, tasting of sour wood honey, for both pain and infection that Caelum had given his patient. A flicker of dark eyes caught the golden miza dancing so nimbly across Doc's hands. His frown deepened, hoping it was not his if for no other reason than he had very, very few. It was pretty much the constant state of things.

Stupid stars.

"Not so big," he muttered, prepping a needle for the stitches Doc needed. He was careful to keep everything as sterile as possible, a mobile mouth seemingly always twisted into an awkward, annoyed line. "Maybe Nyka next," but he failed to sound happy with that. Truth was he did not want to go to Nyka, or so he had convinced himself.

[Murdoch]

"Nah, now's not the time to head north," he said with a chuckle. Muddy eyes stayed glued to Caelum's hands even as he continued to turn the gold-rimmed coin back and forth, abck and forth. "Just gets colder and colder every day, every mile you walk. You should head south to Riverfall or something, that's where people go to winter. The grasslands get cool, but that far down stays nice even in the dead of winter. But you know that, I suppose."

[Caelum]

"I've absolutely no interest in setting foot in Cyphrus." The words came out jilted, a bit jumbled as if the language was trying untether itself from his tongue again. That happened, betimes, especially when a chill clipped through his words.

The last stitch was tied off and impossibly gentle fingertips smoothed ointment and then a clean bandage over the wound. The sun-set eye squinted hard at Doc's face, judging the state of his black eye before, apparently, deeming it best left on it's own. Rising, he began to gather back up his assortment of tools.

"You can have use of the bed," he invited shortly. "If you try to walk home you'll liable to pass out half way there. I've work to do as-is."

[Murdoch]

"What, pass out from this little scratch?" he chuckled, rolling his eyes as he flattened a palm against the table - though he kept a careful watch on where this Caelum fellow was going to keep his medical supplies. Those could sell for a good bit of coin, after all. Or, apparently, just come in very useful.

"Nah, I'll be fine," he said as he caught the back of his chair with the other hand and leveraged himself up to his feet. "See? Right as rai--"

Of course, that was when his head went spinning right off the edge of the world and some fog rolled into his mind, taken up by the pain of the stitches until now and suddenly making itself known. "What the petch're you doin' to me?" he said, suddenly cautious, and would have drawn the dagger at his belt - only his knees buckled, and he tumbled into darkness instead.

[Caelum]

A jar shattered on the floor, a miniature star explosion as a pungent smelling herb wafted through the room and Caelum dove to catch his patient. It was only because he did not want all of his hard work to be ruined by a nasty blow to the head. That, at least, was what he told himself even as he caught the thief with a grunt.

"It's for the infection," Caelum managed to speak through his teeth, very carefully - not to mention slowly - working Doc towards the bed. "And the pain. Shyke, I said be careful."

It was about then that the stranger realized he was talking to an unconscious man. Whipcord and bone strained, but ultimately he got Doc into bed, covers drawn up and shoes off. While he was there, he also dug the gold miza out of the man's pocket because he was pretty damned certain it was his to begin with.

Bloody humanity. Do a good deed, get petched over.

All the same, careful fingers checked Doc's pulse before Caelum withdrew, stumbling back into himself while sinking down at the scarred little desk in the corner of this rented little room. It was not unlike the remains of his life. Scarred and rented and not a little empty.

By the time Syna's light threw itself across Syliras, he had collapsed into a ball on the rug before the hearth, rolled up in a blanket and of a completely different appearance than from the night before. The cold yet samaritan Drykas had been replaced by a being of vibrant beauty, seemingly dead to the world as dawn crawled over the floor on it's hands and feet like a supplicant towards him.

[Murdoch]

Murdoch awoke as he usually did: groggy, grumpy, and overall unfit for company. His usual frown deepened when he realized he wasn't in his house, he was in some dingy room. He glanced around, took inventory of the curtains and the desk and what sort of graffiti was carved into the headboard. Yep, definitely Traveler's Row. Had he gotten completely hammered and passed out in some whore's bed? That wasn't usually his style. He liked it better when they fell asleep and he could search their room for the inevitable stash.

He started to sit up, and a hiss of pain escaped his lips as his stitches fought this new movement. He looked down at the bandage wrapped around his waist, and then some memory of the previous night returned and he slowly sat upright and looked around for the Drykas who's helped him.

And saw only some godlet snuggled on the floor.

"What the shyke..." he murmured, carefully leaning forward and getting his feet on the floor. Maybe if he was quiet, he could just sneak right on out of here and never, ever tell anyone about this insane hallucination. Must have had something slipped in his drink, that's it.

[Caelum]

The thunder of hooves chased through dark dreams, riding up through the floor of consciousness until exploding behind his eyes in another broken, jagged bit of memory. He woke with a breath, thick and sharp, eyes clenching tight before slumbering their way slowly open.

He found himself staring at a stranger's shadow stretching across this borrowed floor. knifing at the puddle of Syna's light that had replaced Leth's paler illumination. He exhaled, eyes closing again but briefly, trying to surround and so guard the hollow, undimmed ache of his heart at the sight of the morning sun.

"Mornin'," he mumbled at last, untangling slowly from the nest of blankets, tangles of blood and bark hair straying into thickly lashed eyes and the heels of his palms scrubbing down cheeks that would not need much of shaving. Last night, he could have used one. This morning, refilled with all of the bold, striking hues of copper and tarnished gold, embers and blood, not so much.

"How do you feel?"

[Murdoch]

Muddy eyes went wide, shifting around the room as if looking for someone else - but there was no one else, just this... thing? Person? It wasn't human, he knew that much. It had petching horns.

"Um," he said, glancing down at himself. "All right, I suppose?"