[flashback] lie down with lions.

[Caelum]

OOCA quick and dirty introduction of Cian Noc, Opal Order Healer, tied in with a little bit of Medicine and Herbalism training. Self mod permission brought to you by Denval's own Tabernac. Timestamp: 7th of Summer 504 AV The wind wept upon the Storm Sea and caused a brigantine by the name of The Bright-Eyed Mariner to chop against the frothing mouths of watery Laviku. In the distance swept a collection of straggling ship boats, filled to the brim with unhappy crewmen as the current pulled them steadily away from the burning wreckage of what had once been a merchant sloop. Clouds scudded across an otherwise clear sky, made pallid by the young moonlight, and rippled shadows to stretch like skeletal fingers across the man sent sprawling upon Captain Rezar's deck by a brutal blow. Surrounding the man was a motley assortment involved in an argument that rumbled beneath the snapping of sails at the borders of the bilge. The pirates were littered with sweat and bruises, soot and the occasional blood splatter all gained in their recent disagreement with the defeated captain of burning ship. A Drykas -- so labeled despite his pirate’s attire by the multitude of faded windmarks coursing his hide -- stood in their midst, arms out flung as he clumsily dodged the shove of a bellowing boatswain. "You gone blind, Motrieve?" The Drykas spat over the grumbling with an accent thick as the mist that hung in the heavens, spread between the stars. "He's a healer. The goddess Rak'keli Herself has marked him plain as the wart on your chin." "Bugger raised a blade to me, he did, Caelum," Motrieve scowled at his crew mate. "N'yeh," the Drykas dismissed with a sharp gesture, setting his surly mates back on their heels with a scowl before turning. Broken heeled boots clomped against the boards of the deck as he dropped a knee and reached down to grasp the face of the spluttering healer and turn it towards the lantern light. The light chased through opalescent swirls of color embedded in the healer's skin. "See? Holy marks, these are. Probably in self defense, petching idiot." “S’why you bitched n’ whined ‘til we hauled him aboard,” Captain Rezar sniffed while rolling out of his slouch against the bulkhead. “Eh?” A fond humor lingered in otherwise calculating eyes as the captain took in the fallen sunlord Sayo had fished out of the Suvan Sea a year back. Caelum scowled but it was not directed at his captain. It was instead at the steady blossom of blood leaking through the healer’s jacket. He lifted his eyes and blinked to find the healer staring back at him, sharp features pale and a disgruntled gleam in pained eyes. “A little help, horse lord?” The healer drawled, his Common redolent with irony for finding a Cyphrus citizen entangled by ocean tides. “Seeing as how you wanted me so bad.” “Not gonna be much use for Petrov’s fever, he dies of blood loss,” Rezar opined from above. That snapped Caelum out of his awed regard of the gleaming goddess marks twisting across the healer’s face and poking out of the collar of his sodden shirt. The light of them had pierced through armored walls of forgetting to stab at fragments of memory as if in an attempt to pin them permanently to the back of his skull. His eyes flinched, but he moved with haste to draw up the healer’s shirt and get a look at the injury. “Arrowhead,” the healer grunted, lean muscle beneath that torn flesh. “Cian, by the way,” he went on. “Cian Noc of the Opal Order. You a healer, horse lord?” “Mm,” Caelum hummed through his teeth. Absurdly gentle fingers pressed on the edge of the swelling surrounding the wound, watching the blood leak out sluggish but cleaner. “You’re going to want to talk me through it, I imagine.” “What?” Cian gasped with pain, covering it by snapping. “Rak’keli doesn’t love you?” A crumpled but clean handkerchief was tugged out of a pocket of sagging trousers and Caelum smacked it none too gently atop Cian’s injury to protect it from the general grime of the as of yet unwashed deck. He watched stone faced as the healer gulped and eventually recovered enough to glare at him. “Let’s not talk ‘bout gods, Noc. C’mon, up you go.” The Drykas dragged Cian’s arm over his shoulders before heaving the both of them back to their feet, swaying with ease on the tilting deck. Motrieve was given a scowl for his snickers as Caelum began to walk his prize in the direction of the helm ladder. Cian mumbled something unintelligible under his breath. “What?” Caelum blinked at him. “Nothing,” Cian caught himself from a stumble with a tighter grip on Caelum’s shoulder. “Just reminding myself that you probably saved my life. Or that you will save my life. Anything to keep me from poisoning you in your sleep, horse lord.” Caelum sighed. Of course the Ukalas would send him the snarky priest.

[Caelum]

"For the last time, Noc," the Drykas dropped a heavy, peg legged stool to the cabin floor with a thud. "I don't want to know how you're going to poison me in my sleep. We're at a dearth of wormwood these parts anyway." The healer was sprawled on the plank bunk that Caelum had laid a worn, clean sheet across after removing the thin pallet in a continued attempt to keep it clean of bloodstains. His discarded shirt and jacket lay in a filthy heap on the floor, leaving him bare chested in the swinging lantern light. Lean muscles wrapped long, narrow bones and a livid bruise was rapidly spreading from the shallow puncture wound beneath his rib cage. The broken shaft of an arrow had left behind splinters in his skin. Despite the wash of blood, sea water and soot, Rak'keli's swirling marks stained him with no less than three, dully glowing emblems of his calling. Face, right shoulder and left hand. He was a good looking man of indeterminate age with a mop of unruly chestnut hair and a sharp, lynx smile that flashed teeth as he held himself up on an elbow to look between his injuries and his caregiver with an increasingly deepening dread. "Do you know anything about healing?" Cian wanted to know. "We're about to find out," Caelum muttered while hunkering down on the stool to flip open a weathered tool kit. Cian released an exasperated breath. "I'm serious, horse lord." "And I'm not a horse lord, healer." "The sheer multitude of your windmarks tell a different tale," Cian snapped back, scowling while Caelum leaned forward to settle the kit on the edge of the bunk where the healer could peruse it as well. "Take out that carbolic bottle. What's your name anyway?" The cloudy bottle of disinfectant was removed from the kit. "Right now it's Kasb'el." "So why were your blood thirsty mates calling you Caelum?" "That's also my name," Caelum delivered the Orderman a bland smile. "I've got a whalebone needle and some catgut." He offered those out on a scarred palm. "No silk. How soon will you be able to help with Petrov?" "Soon as I'm not in danger of turning green with rot. Let's see that," and Cian snatched the carefully packed box smelling richly of musk and green things from Caelum's hands. It was flipped open by hands that were amazingly steady. Then he was a surgeon, a man who lived and died and, more importantly, others often lived and died by the steadiness of his hands when they were deep among living tissue and thicker things. "Got any burdock?" "Eh, yes," Caelum was sliding a wooden bowl onto the side of the bunk. "But what's that going to do?" "Purifies, helps with inflammation. Dump, here," he shook out a puddle of the dried leaf crumbles into his palm. "This into the mug and pour some of that hot water over it. We'll let it steep for awhile." Caelum leaned backwards on the stool to hook an index finger into the handle of the pewter mug. Sliding its rim beneath the edge of Cian's palm, he carefully brushed the measured amount into the mug. Steam skirled towards the ceiling when he poured water from the kettle over it. As he did this, Cian grabbed a handful of the laundered rags and leveled himself on an elbow. "Best to let it bleed out any leftover grime," the healer hissed through his teeth and tilted his head pointedly. Caelum hastily lifted his hands from their dunking in the grog-bucket, pinched up a fresh rag, and applied slow, light pressure to the edges of the cut. Cian exhaled meditatively, watching the too bright beading of his lifesblood dull as it soaked the rags. "Enough, enough," he cleared his throat and Caelum lifted his hands, already reaching for the tweezers and the carbolic when Cian said, "Douse those, then remove the splinters." The tweezers glinted dully in the golden light. Rocking waves rolled the ship like a metronome, keeping the lantern at sway. Caelum's eyes were narrowed, breath still in his lungs as he plucked the splinters out one by one. "Sweet Priskil," Cian cursed as the last splinter was discarded into the bowl. "Alright," he inhaled. "Not too horrible, Kasb'el-Caelum." "That's good," the Drkyas bowed his head, heavy braids loosening from their knot as he yanked off the stopper of the carbolic bottle. "This next part's going to be." "Tell me how a horse lord ended up on a pirate ship," Cian said after a long minute. He eased himself down until he lay flat on the sheet, long fingered hands spreading purposefully down on either side to brace himself. "Why?" One side of Caelum's mouth turned down, his own hands hesitating. "'Cause I need the bloody distraction, you fool," Cian swore. "So go on, tell me a story."

[Caelum]

“A girl here,” Caelum spoke with resonant words that were absorbed by the healer’s clutching thoughts as he lay, eyes closed, forcibly maintaining a steady, slow breathing pattern. There was a gauze pad in Caelum’s hand, stinking with carbolic fumes that caused his nose to wrinkle. “Always a girl,” Cian muttered, a smile twitching despite his pain and his pallor. Caelum glanced up for a moment from the injury he was cleaning with careful, deft strokes. He examined the hard flattening of miracle working hands on the sweat stained sheet. Mouth twisting, he cleared his throat and set his mind towards inflecting his words with something steady and true. “No, not like that. She’s just a child really, but she pulled me out of the water after I fell. Right out of Dira’s arms while Zulrav flung fists of lightning at her ship. This ship.” “That’s good,” the healer breathed, knowing by touch the progress his makeshift pupil had made on his wound. He could feel the emanating effect of Caelum’s words as well. “Time to stitch. Small, close together. Here –“ Cian struggled to sit up, but Caelum dropped the bloody gauze and caught his shoulder to balance him. “Careful.” Cian slanted caramel eyes at the Drykas before examining the slashed skin. “This needle, with the curve. Need to get the under-tissue, see?” A clever finger pointed at the whalebone needle soaking in a mug of carbolic before he allowed his chirugeon to help him lay back flat. “Now tell me what you were doing falling into the ocean and so narrowly escaping merciful Dira,” he prodded. “There was a giant hole in the floor of the Ukalas that I apparently missed,” Caelum stated drily while twisting cat gut through the needle’s eye. “Stumbled right through.” “Missed the town meeting? Or just still half asleep? Breakfast, breakfast, whoops, who put that there? Kersplat?” “Something like that. Who knows?” Astonishingly, humor had brightened the so-called pirate’s face. Cian noted this through thinly opened eyes, observing the stability of Caelum’s grip, the intensity of his focus as he slipped the needle through torn flesh – “Ow,” Cian gulped and squeezed his eyes back shut. “Hold that needle like.. Here,” he lifted a blind hand, crooking his fingers in demonstration. “Use your middle finger to balance the back end. Better maneuverability.” He swallowed, feeling the shift in the air and the next plunge of the needle. “Ethaefal-Drykas, then,” he said hastily. “A Drykaefal. You sing?” “Dryka..” A startled laugh leaked of Caelum and Rak’keli’s priest smiled again through the prickling pain. “You should sing,” Cian went on, chattering his way with that untraceable accent through the last stings and tugs of Caelum’s sutures. “Your captain and mates, bet they benefit from that. Music is medicine, you know; and you’ve not got a beautiful voice, but it settles. Be sure to talk to your patients in the future whenever you work on them. You might be surprised.” He popped open his eyes, squinting one to peer down while Caelum tied off the catgut and reached for the gauze and the carbolic again. “You want me to singing to Cap’n Rezar next I have to patch him up?” Caelum rose his eyebrows, but his eyes did not waver from the clean up of Cian’s sewn wound. “Look, Noc. I’m no healer. Just know a little more than anyone else on board.” “You’re not? Could’ve fooled me,” Cian retorted. “Alright. One more swipe, then we’re going to put a poultice on it.”

[Caelum]

“Typically,” the Opal Order healer went on, undaunted in the face of piracy, kidnapping and battle wounds, “You don’t want to put a poultice on an open wound. It can slow down the natural healing process. Unless we’re talking about burns, but burns are a different monster entirely.” “So why are we doing this for your injury?” Caelum found himself squinting dubiously at the layers of clean muslin he had been instructed to unpack from his kit. He had not responded to the healer’s comment regarding Caelum’s own calling or lack thereof, far more concerned with getting Noc back on his feet so he had the strength and wherewithal to help Petrov. Cian was leaning back against the cabin wall at this juncture, a knee bent as he sorted out the wanted poultice ingredients from the limited kit. “Because I’ve gone and lied down with lions,” he pointed out, “And they are none too clean. They reuse their arrows and somehow I doubt they much bother with cleaning them in between battles. Oh, amazing, you have some androgaphis.” Cian held up a glass bottle filled with dried leaf crumbs and popped off the cap in order to sniff at the contents. Caelum, watching this, paused in his careful layering of the muslin where every other layer was sprinkled with the remaining carbolic. “Lions?” He pressed, having a feeling this enigmatic healer would carry on in his attempts to instill some medicinal education regardless of Caelum’s verbal prompting to that effect. “Fierce natured men,” Cian described. “Violent natured. You’d argue your crew mates are otherwise?” At Caelum’s pointed look, Cian carried on and handed him the bottle of dried leaves. “Spread that liberally over that last disinfected layer, then put another layer of fresh muslin on it and we’re going to pour a little bit of the hot water from the kettle onto it. Not enough to soak more than halfway through, however.” Caelum did as instructed, shaking out the flaking bits of herbs onto the spread of cloth. “I thought this was only good in tea,” he admitted once finished with that step. Rising, he snatched the kettle from where it rested beside the steeping tea mug. “It helps leech any leftover bits of bad things from wounds,” Cian explained. “Dirt. Grime. The infections that are spawned by them. You’re not a lion, Kasb’el-Caelum.” The Drykas’ hand jerked, splattering hot water onto the painstakingly arranged bandage cum poultice he had been crafting. “No, I’m a man,” he pointed out blandly and, hunkering down, steadied his arm by bracing it against the other so as to not over pour and thus soak the poultice. “Not a lion of a man. A lord of them, or you could be,” Cian surmised. “You’re mad,” Caelum opined. Cian’s smile was a bit wan. “I am more than the sum of my parts. As is everyone, including you. You have too many names so they work to divide you instead of define. Yet here, in this,” he gestured to the poultice, to the surprisingly neat stitches sewing up his skin, “Names wither and leave only the healer behind. Day or night, horse lord or sun lord, Caelum or Kasb’el, all of you is one when you battle the beasts of sickness and injury.” “When I lie down with lions,” Caelum set the kettle aside and met the healer’s caramel colored eyes. “Yes,” Cian’s mouth sharpened and he gestured at the poultice. “Spread it over the stitches and we’ll use a longer strip of muslin to tie it all in place. Hand me that tea we prepared while you’re at it. I’m going to need the energy.” Caelum stuck his tongue into his cheek, but he moved to pass over the tea before with hands made as steady as they could on the swaying ship lifted the carefully constructed poultice. He waited until Cian had swallowed before smoothing it lightly over the healer’s wound, gently pressing down the edges and ultimately reaching for the last of the muslin. “Where were you headed?” Caelum asked finally. “Denval. Lost city over somewhere around here, I was told.” Cian peered at his drafted pupil over the lip of his mug with an expectant quality about him. “Alright,” Caelum said while leaning back from having tugged the muslin around the healer’s torso. He began to tie it off, folding the ends into a sailor’s knot much to Cian’s apparent amusement. “I’ll see that you get dropped off there once Petrov’s better.” “That’s how to do it,” Cian smirked at him, approval evident in the gleam of his eyes. “Rak’keli will thank you for looking out for me.” “What’d I say about gods?” Caelum complained, but Cian just chuckled into his tea. END

[Tabarnac]

XP Award! Caelum XP Award: Leadership +1; Medicine +5; Herbalism +5 Additional Notes: Cian! Well done as always. As soon as you have your first gnosis from Rak’keli completed, I will be happy to moderate your next as it’s been over a year and Caelum is doing favors for the goddess by proxy. Way to develop a relationship with the gods against the will of your character! Sorry for the delay. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions or concerns. Keep writing!