Hex 04

"Oh, fine. I suppose we can put you up on the divan if you don't mind Delma's dreadful taste in reading material," sniffed Lefrui.

"Thank you. I don't generally mind sharing with books." Siri remembered something else. "And if you don't mind -- does either of you have any monkey rub? You know, the stuff for joint and muscle pain?"

"Think I saw a jar somewhere," Lefrui said.

"Yes, on the bookshelf behind the divan as it happens," Delmira hmmph'ed, walking off to collect some things.

Siri found it without too much difficulty. The decor was somewhat haphazard in here. Roughly half the ornamentation seemed to consist of diagrams of various plants and their ovaries, coloured glass bottles with interesting flaws and a great many pomanders. These last comprised a mixture of whole dried fruits prepared with cloves, and cloth bags with spicy smells.

Lefrui picked up his own case from behind the door. It was leather and closed with a clasp. Siri smiled at him and toyed with her shoulder strap again.

Delmira took her time. She finally appeared with a great leather bag, smelling of both fresh and smoky things. "So where's the patient then? Not Suze's, I hope. She'll be tempted to lock her door the moment she sees Lef."

"Nonsense, woman! I swear, the ingratitude. Just because of a little inflammation. I mean, who's allergic to pomegranate, honestly?"

Siri winced. Sparked by his offhand reference earlier to contraceptives, she thought it amusing that Lefrui would prescribe a known aphrodisiac to somebody called the Fecund. "Yes, Suze's, I think. The house with the wind chimes."

"Eccentric mare, yes."

"In that case, I'll just go in and talk to them first, shall I?" Siri said. She hadn't exchanged many words with Helmine on the way here -- more or less just periodically making sure she was all right -- and... well, the girl deserved warning.

"If n' you want," Delmira said and opened the door. "Shoo, shoo, little pilgrims!"

"Thank you," Siri said, shooing.

Lefrui swept on a brash woollen cloak with a sniff and followed her.

The panoply of bells outside chimed, horribly audible indoors, and there was a quiet conversation in the hallway. The elven woman and someone with a familiar, clear and earnest voice.

After that came a soft knock. "Helmine?" Siri said through the door, mispronouncing it in the same way that Suze had.

Lefrui got the door shut in his face.

Inside, Helmine lifted the pillow off her head and glared at the door. If it had been anyone else, she'd have... well, no, she wouldn't have shot them. Not without practice. Becoming left-handed was going to be a long road. "What."

"It's me again. I've found the local doctors and they're ready to see you. But there's no hurry if you want to rest a little longer." There was no intonation whatsoever on "rest".

Helmine considered the words for a moment. Then she sat up (wincing) and gave a long, steady sigh. She was sure there was... some trick behind this helpfulness. There just had to be. "Come in," she said in a flat tone.

Siri did so, and her eyes went straight to the areas she'd bandaged. She'd ditched the cloak somewhere and was keeping hold of her kit-bag.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

Even without the breastplate and coat, Helmine looked somewhat larger than usual for a woman of her height, and not exactly in the usual sense of a "large woman". It was a bit more muscle than body fat. It was the type of build that earned her some disparaging comments on her homeworld.

That combined with the look she gave Siri would have been menacing and possibly intimidating on another day, but it failed thanks to what her slightly reddened eyes and the bit of colour on her face suggested. She realised this herself and let it go, looking instead at her shoulder uninterestedly. "What... is the usual answer?"

Whereas Siri was not going to be beating anyone at arm-wrestling, insult or otherwise. A typical enough rural nineteen-year-old. If one went by the hands, she wasn't shy of work. If one judged by the face, she wasn't scared of Helmine.

"You say it's bad if you're feeling bad. It's stupid to play tough with healers. Has the hand changed?"

"Nothing," Helmine decided, feeling irritated all of a sudden. "Both."

"Both?" Siri blinked. "Well, are you ready for these two to look at it? They're older and more experienced and I hope they'll know what to do."

"Never mind. Yes. Yes." The irritation, almost always present on her face, crept into her voice too. Helmine took a deep breath and wondered, just in case, if she should have the dagger ready. Just to be sure.

"Coming, then?" Siri offered a hand. "But I should warn you, they seem a little bit... prickly."

Helmine ignored the hand. She got up on her own, trying to figure out what Siri meant. "Prickly?" the half-elf asked, uttering the word for the first time in her life. It was too bad she sounded completely and utterly uninterested -- because she was.

"Cantankerous... grumpy... well, it doesn't matter. And anyway, I'll be there too."

She opened the door. Suze appeared to be being apologised to rather pompously through the closed door. She gave Helmine a slightly confused smile and nod.

Helmine nodded politely to Suze, glanced at Siri (great, three people to off again if someone tried something... again) and moved to open the door and to exit the building. She didn't really know what the hell was going on, but --

Delmira was busy giving Lefrui a piece of her mind. "Will you shut up and -- oh."

"Stop being prickly," Helmine said, which, considering who she was talking to, wasn't really polite. Then again, it wasn't as if she cared.

In the meantime Delmira was busy looking confused.