Hex 06

The junior healer sat forward, cup held in both hands.

"The paralysis seemed to start in the fingers and spread throughout the hand in no more than a couple of minutes. In a way, what I'm more confused about is that it stopped."

"Did you go in?" asked Lefrui, inhaling the steam from an experimental ginkgo-rosemary blend.

"I tried. It was... bizarre, Guep. I was blocked, I couldn't -- it was like she had no hand." She swallowed and looked between the two of them. "You've seen this before, right?" It's something easily fixable, right?

"Never," the ferais said. He was sober. Not solemn, but sober.

Helmine's expression turned all kinds of interesting when she realised exactly what she was tasting. She stared into the mug, then at Lefrui. "Not old," she muttered in an offended tone. "And last week."

Delmira didn't seem to know what to make of that, but then again, she was ignoring Helmine altogether anyway. "I'd love to say yes just to make Lef look bad," she said slowly. And that was all she was going to say.

The patient in the meantime drank her tea and feigned ignorance.

Lefrui, when Helmine caught his eye, was the picture of innocence. One would never imagine he had just dosed the patient with a blend designed for menstrual cramps.

"I'll have a look," he declared, getting himself more comfortable on his padded footstool. A veteran medicine man, Guep was able to work in the altered healing state without altogether losing touch with the real world in the meantime. Not that he would be solving any crosswords at the same time, either...

"I was there first," Delmira muttered, leaning forward with the mug firmly in one hand. She seemed to be a part of the group that believed in discomfort as a way of furthering their concentration.

Helmine just looked at Siri questioningly and tiredly while Delmira made initial discoveries. All sorts of rhythms and rumblings and the kind of strange scents she should have expected from someone slightly alien. There didn't seem to be nothing that out of the ordinary about the anatomy (that comment about last week suddenly made sense to her, but she didn't want to think about it).

There was, of course, the fact that the right arm smelled like several things right up until the wrist. There was this strange bittersweet smell Delmira couldn't place, of course, but -- nothing, just nothing beyond the wrist.

"I bet you're really confused now, you old cheat," Delmira said to Lefrui.

Siri had looked as reassuring as she could at Helmine's unvocalised question. "It's called the Quigley trance. It's a doctor thing; it lets us see more closely, as if from the inside."

"We called it the Laroche state where I come from," Lefrui put in, slowly, humming.

He had paused to get a feel for the lungs out of curiosity. They were as rough as anything; the lungs of a fit under-twenty, he would say. If the patient did smoke as she'd said, she must only just have started.

Foul habit. Such horrible eye-watering stuff that hag puffed away on. Lefrui was sure she did it to keep him out of the room. In his own... well, his co-owned house! Bah!

But everything was pulsing normally, barring some little pinpricks elsewhere, except for the right hand. That sent a quiver through wherever the real Lefrui was just now. Everything had a texture, even dead and dying tissue. Especially those, indeed. But here... the subject might as well have been born without a right hand.

"You're lucky I'm here to crib off, big good-for-nothing fraud," he told Delmira.

"Yes, aren't I, I'm sure you have the perfect explanation for this sort of thing. Your diplomacy skills will make sure the patient understands the diagnosis, too," Delmira shot back, while the slightly bewildered patient shot looks at the two so-called 'experts'. Helmine had her doubts.

In fact, the foreigner was slowly starting to smirk mirthlessly.

"If your aromatic quackery doesn't drive her from the room first," he sniffed at the human. "As it happens I have several ideas. Spirit blue, I think, and yellow poivron..." Lefrui kept muttering for a while.

Siri was keeping her doubts to herself. She wasn't in a position to criticise how other people worked.

"Bah. I'll just go roll a few sticks for her and be done with it," Delmira huffed, got up and walked off, muttering to herself.

Helmine in the meantime frowned, sighed and started. She set her mug down and began to twist her right hand's fingers into a loose fist. Then out of that again, then into a fist again.

The ferais seemed to come to some conclusion. "Yes, the yellow. Excuse me, ladies, while I check on my garden. They should be ripe in a few days. You couldn't have chosen better timing!"

He kicked the stool back behind him with one carpet-slippered foot and strode towards the back of the house.

"Helmine," Siri piped up. "If they can't help, we'll try elsewhere until we find someone who can. Don't worry."

"Will live," Helmine said. She looked determined, certain... and then a little doubtful. She knew that if this wasn't going to work, she was just going to have to live with it. Trying to accept it was less easy. "Thanks," she said, somehow expecting that Siri wouldn't figure out exactly hollow that word rang.

Siri's thoughts were following a different path, it was true. She smiled at the acknowledgement.

"And I don't know what he can be growing in the middle of winter." Winter was the time for pruning, she'd always been taught.

Helmine shrugged, uncertain of what Siri was talking about. "What did... Guep say? Few days?"

"He seemed to be saying he's growing something in the garden. Something that can help, I suppose. Herbs, or..."

For some reason Helmine made Siri want to witter on nervously.

"Want to see," Helmine said and pushed herself up. She looked toward the direction Guep had went into and headed that way. Herbs. She wasn't really all the interested, but as much as she disliked home, Helmine was vaguely interested. It was winter. How was he growing things?

"Yes, yes, come and see!" Lefrui called her from outside. He had several plants in a curious contraption that seemed to be made of uneven glass pieces held together with some kind of resin. A makeshift cucumber frame of sorts, it was placed against the wall of the house. Several coloured filters and other gubbins were stowed next to it.

Siri glanced with some interest, reasoned she'd have time to look properly later and went to offer to help the other human.

"Sweet peppers," Lefrui said, pointing out a modest plant with miniature dark green fruits. "In a few days they go yellow, and then--" he popped his lips "--we swoop. It has to be yellow, you see, for the jaunium to outbalance the vertinium."

Helmine looked suitably impressed, or so she thought. In reality she looked terribly apathetic and irritated. She considered for a moment, constructing the words for a moment. "And the hand?" the half-elf asked, giving the ferais a thoughtful look.

"It's all to do with an imbalance of the ondiments, you see. If we dose you with the right blend of extracts, it should shock the system enough that your hand will pop right back to life. A scientific approach, you see, unlike Delma's mad ravings."

Lefrui took out a red translucent filter and pegged it to the frame.

Helmine decided she wasn't even going to try to understand what Lefrui was saying. She made a non-committal sound and, rubbing warmth into her right arm, walked back inside to mope some more. Writing her travel journal was going to be a problem, too, it occurred to her.



Delmira, then, was busy sitting down and -- rolling 'sticks'. That they were essentially tobacco mixed with something else was of no consequence. There were of course other things as well: her personal incense designs, some in a kind of spiral designs, some as sticks... "Oh. Hello again, Buckleyhurst. Where's the patient?"

"Guep is showing her some plants," Siri said. "Is that incense? What do you use?"

"That," Delmira said, pointing at the incense she had laid down in several little boxes by under the window, next to a gold-plated clock. "is incense. This is tobacco mixed with herbs... and peppermint oil. I doubt the patient is going to be stopping any time soon, and this just happens to work in a much faster way than Guep's... nutrient bombs. Not to mention nobody has to run toward the outhouse twice in an hour. Have a seat?"