My Soul for Another, This I Swear. (solo)

[Mara]

Spring 34, 512 AV
The Place of Purging


A swinging hand in a distortion of pale olive skin and obsidian nails exiled a counter of all of its adornments, mooring them in a smatter of clatters and knocks upon the toughened structured floor. Mara slammed his hands down upon the work surface with a displeased grunt. All the bits and pieces piled beneath his ends and were crudely encountered with a kissing toe of a black boot until papers and metal stormed against the ether before gravity seduced them.

Just chimes earlier he had been to visit Hellebore after exhausting all of his alternative opportunities. The elementary answer had been that they had no knowledge what was materializing with the patient Mara was entrusted to, and it was not their assignment to expend themselves on it any further. That was it, end of story, conclusion of banter. He was told to strive to sidestep harassing others with his own charges and sort it out himself or dispose of the body and ,for all intents and purposes, the issue. Mara expelled expletive after expletive until he had reached his existing homestead.

He was furious with the response. They were not even going to put forth any effort. It appeared doomed for failure so they were going to consider it as such. He could subsist. Hell he was breathing, but they had more imperative concerns to attend to, and Mara's stray was a low priority with the flux of surrogates. There was no way Mara was going to lie back and allow him to leisurely depart this life, racked with pain and at in his own holds. It was insupportable.

Bowing over the counter with a white knuckling grasp and arched neck. His fangs extracted themselves from the confides of his gums and clamping jowl as the trembling rage wrought over him. He had self-proclaimed his defeat that he needed support, and still he was swatted away as a pest. A flick of the back of their hand and he was to buzz away with flapping wings and leave them in peace.

Sian's indistinct groan shattered his ferocity in one suave note. He released a hiss like a compressed inflatable and uncurled to pace to his bedside, incisors slowly withdrawing from between gnawed lips.

There, in an exterior of luminescent wrappings, was his patient, his refugee. He cocked his head to the left and stared at him unabashed, a mess of blackened hair and a sun-kissed complexion all but concealed under stiff shreds of eggshell textiles and a equable rag draped across his forehead. It had been two days since their circumstances had been thrust together. His injuries were substantial and took Mara the better part of a day to mend them into a state of stability.

Chimes came and went and before dusk could cover the sunless city when an anomaly was exposed. There was something amiss about the puncturing series wreathing his tender neckline, Mara had treated and dismissed it. It now seemed a perilous inaccuracy and the unchanged question haunted him as the fever sunk in. What had he missed?

More importantly, it was done. The laceration had mutated, restructuring itself into an excretion as murky as soot and springing freshly sprouted swells from a simmering pit of moist tar. It was exotic, apparently not just to him, but all healers of Kalinor. For he had placed aside his qualms and gone to them for any advice they could offer, with bifurcated tongue or not. Still they had nil to offer him, just as confounded and unsure as he was in this emergent ailment. They merely told him to keep doing what he was doing because it seemed to be confining it.

It did not seem ample, despite the fact that he was expending every modicum of vitality he possessed. At Sian's side he set upright and removed the cloth crowning his head revealing the plaster of tentacle-like strands of tresses clinging to the dampened surface. He immersed the towel in the chilled water and caressed his face with the damp rag and passed it over his fissured lips. He dipped it again and anointed him with it. Leaving it in place and pressing his hand to its surface of his own covet.

His eyes had remained paled and lilac, a pastel cousin to the dark amethyst that many Symenestra were born to. They would not budge for more than an instant to flashes of gray or ruby, to the budding amusement of his co-workers. They had seen him stunned this way before after the storm but in the same fickle gray. Both times he offered little explanation and they passed him over like he had some sickness. It was taken as some feebleness that despite his inert expression, his emotions could be translated through such a noticeable trait. His tasks kept him too occupied to bother, for what he cared for now, was lying before him.

He had not gone missing from The Place of Purging since he arrived to remedy Sian. He had slept there, eaten there, studied there, and most prevalently labored there, more than all of the preceding. The Cribellum was tantalizing, but he knew he would be offered no help. The Librarian especially appeared to harbor some condescension for him. His disdain was not more or less than others but it was just enough that it was made unmistakable that help would not be give to someone of such adulterated blood. Not to mention he was sure that any time spent, idly flipping through unbreakable codes would accomplish no more than a trifling tug to help the urgent decline of his patient. It was just impractical.

A deft antenna stroked over the melting layer he had encased the onyx magma in. It was near enough the stage for a new treatment. He had changed all his other wrapping several times already and purified them until his own fingers felt raw with antiseptic. He wanted to be sure it was not infecting each entry wound. The same mistake would not be made twice. So far it seemed contained, but the moss of scattered grey vein-like structures coagulating about it, ascertained that it was in his blood now, pumping freely throughout his system and then gurgling from the open wound. Sian cringed as it was fingered over, and a muffled growl stirred drops of fresh sweat onto Mara’s fingers. His stomach lurched as the wave of powerlessness rung over him.

A faucet stream of clear cool water covered the dripping infection, washing away with it flecks of black gems and irritated skin. His hand rested steady upon it and the other wrapped about his blessed mark of Morwen to prudently cool the area into a glimmered lake of renewed and translucent ice.

He plucked his arm to his chest and detained it closely, stroking over his snowflake character as he thought of any idea that may come to him. A shiver lifted hairs upon the restful body, so Mara reached the hems of his coverings and pulled them back over Sian’s chest to comfort him. "Hold on. I swear I’m doing all I can. I won’t let you die."

Bell by bell the night was falling and Mara kept his actions up, the office returned to its serene order, items cleaned from the floor and returned, and tools decontaminated even in the most sterile of places. It was compulsory for him to reason clearly, without order he would be unfocused. Distraction could cause him to miss something, and to miss something could cost Sian his life.

"Dra-Marvasa" a grey curtained head stuck into the room he occupied with an air of indifference pushed between his glazed lids. "Are you staying again?" His voice was a forced purr of saccharine spirits.

"Yes." His eyes glanced up from under his bowed head and cascading lashes, a familiar tome in hand. He sat just feet from his patient, legs crossed, book in one hand, and scalpel twirling between the deft and impatient fingers of the other.

"Very well. As soon as the place is locked up, remember you can't leave." For who’s protection this statement was uttered he did not know, nor did it matter, he had no intention of leaving. He was not putting on a front to dance some human dance in front of their eyes and appeal to their humanity. Still they seemed suspicious of him. Each day he could relate them as much as he could differentiate himself, and they could appreciate it as well. It ruffled more than a few plumages among those that had actually been around him for a lengthy visit.

Mara nodded "I know." Was he to continue being treated as a new comer? He had not been there long, but enough to know how this all worked. There was no doubt their trust was not fully gained.

He captured the look of the Symenestra’s golden spheres tracking the progress of his swaying blade in a trance. He stilled it pulling his palm around the hilt and bring the blade just to his face to give him a questioning look as to why he was just standing there waiting for something to happen. Perhaps that Mara would slip and the blade would fling into his own neck and they could be done with him.

His voice cleared with a deep and throaty rasp, and he added to his statements "Others should be by shortly to check upon the females as usual."

"Of course." A calloused reply, his eyes drew back to his reading without another glance and resumed the twirling of the knife.

Narrowed eyes and a repugnant snort were left in his departure and Mara looked back to the door to be sure he was gone.

He rose almost immediately and folded his book and scalpel upon the empty seat. Sian was only feet away but the distance between them made him uncomfortable.

The progress was unhurried and after these two days of endless preservation to the flesh wolfing infection, he was making some influence. It was retreating and the skin was clearing. Inflamed skin dwindled to soggy white and rose colored gapes of uninvolved skin. He estimated that if the rate continued this way, it should return to its original cleansed state upon a second sunrise from tonight. He could not be sure, but it was more optimistic than before.

Still Sian seemed only pacified, and stilled. Moans and shudders slackened to occasional and his fever came down just an insignificant degree. It was not enough for Mara. He wanted him to wake and declare he was well, as unlikely as it was. He had no idea what he was doing. Would it ever truly restore? It seemed questionable. No his journey would have a biography written into his torn flesh.

He could only hope that he had assisted more than he maltreated.

Mara’s hands ran through Sian’s velvet threads. “Zintila may just be pulling through for you. Maybe she can in fact hear my prayers as well.” He wanted him to make it. So he could hear his name and his story. He could only guess why he had traveled to Kalinor. Where there only two to begin with as they had been brought in? He wanted to know, to put name to this face and understand why he was here, and why Mara could only guess at the suitable actions. More than all of that he required him to live, to succeed in his journey that had been such a disaster and return to the home he seemed so fond of, to his Zintila, for she deserved such a faithful individual who would whisper her name upon the throws of death. This man would survive, if he expended his very soul in doing so. It meant nothing. This work would not be for nothing, his patient’s struggle would not be for naught. He should not be alive, he should have died from his injuries, from his struggle, but he had managed. He must have something worth holding on for. Mara kept in expressing this to himself, to raise his deflating life-force and push onward. He would not let him go, not until he was mended, this he silently vowed.

[Poison]

THREAD AWARD!

Skills: Observation 2, Medicine 2
Lores: Using Ice Reaving to treat an Infection, a Mutated Infection
Notes: A very well written thread!