Hex 08

"Have a look here, Buckley," the ferais said. "Double cloche, real glass, made to my own specifications."

"And the colour patches?" asked Siri.

"Ah. Now that's my exclusive secret. Only joking. It's to do with the therapeutic effects of different colours of light. Actually cutting-edge research, you know." Lefrui, it seemed, always moved his hands and arms a lot while talking.

"Effects on the plants?" Siri said.

"Oh yes, very noticeable. For example, the green filter makes them very sickly. Good for things you want etiolated, like bean sprouts. And then the secondary effects in the patient, which are far more complex..."

Helmine watched, listened and thought about all those nutty 'experts' she had sometimes met at the orphanage. Some teachers they had been, thinking that everything could be dealt with a logical model that was blind to anything but its own single-sided line of logic. This was far interesting -- as much trying to figure out what one word meant and what that apparatus was all about. She suspected her mother would have smoothed Lefrui's ego for days on end just to get a replica.

It really wasn't the time to feel homesick, though, she thought with a frown and kicked a pebble so that it flew over a fence farther away. She was struggling to keep up appearances as it were, with all of these good-for-nothing bastions of mediocrity around her.

She had to admit that the cigarette was all right, even if it... left a strange taste in her mouth. Helmine hoped it would be gone before it was time to eat. Once she was done with the cigarette, she dropped it and stepped on it properly. Maybe I ought to ask for that recipe, the half-elf thought as she turned to regard Buckley and Lefrui.

"...after all, remember that not too many years ago they still thought the heart heated the blood," Lefrui finished.

Siri had been listening politely throughout, critical mind decidedly engaged. She kept those thoughts to herself for now. Debates would be more comfortably held indoors and out of earshot of the patient. (Again, basic professional courtesy -- at the very least, she felt, one ought to earn the right to denounce one's colleague as a quack as Lefrui and Delmira did. She hadn't got that impression of either of them.)

"So, a few days until they're ripe? Do you need Helmine for anything else today?" she asked the ferais.

Lefrui got up with a barely-audible crunch of the knee joints. "No, not now," he said, scintillating at them both. "I think I'll make up some of my baked-apple jollop this evening. Do you drink alcohol, my dear?" he asked Helmine.

"Yes," Helmine said absent-mindedly, not even realising how alien her next two words must have sounded: "When safe."

She made a gesture of some sort with her left hand, possibly to tell them that she was going to go inside -- which she did. "I needed now, later?"

Delmira, who had been busy wrapping the cigarettes into a small package, looked up at the half-elf poking her head in the room. "What?"

"Need me, now... or later?" Helmine tried.

"Oh, later. Go get some rest while we wait for Lefrui's little concoctions to become ready," the human sniffed.

Helmine shrugged and assumed she was dismissed.

The ferais cocked his head as if to say "of course". His concoctions were always safe...

"I'll go with her and see that she's comfortable. I want to have a last glance at those bandages," Siri said after Helmine had disappeared back indoors. She seemed to be almost asking Lefrui's permission. "Do you need... anything fetched from the shops, or anything?"

"No, no thank you. You could ask Delmira the same." He brushed off his shins and headed back inside after Siri.

Delmira didn't either, so the youngest of the medical contingent made for Helmine's lodgings. Suze Lafecond's other children seemed to have arrived home in the meantime. Arguments, narration and general playtime ruckus were audible.

She'd better have a quiet word with them, or their mum at least; let them know the patient was not to be played with too strenuously. As for mouse droppings in the bed and all the other old classics, poor Helmine was probably on her own there.

Siri found their mother looking ever-so-slightly hassled and wondering how the mud had got inside the collar as well as all down the front and sleeves. "Well, I'll tell them..." Suze said.

In the meantime, Helmine just slowly shambled her way into her rented room and found... someone tampering with her gun. She didn't even bat an eye. If she did, the child would have thought it to be important. "Hello," she said, receiving a reply immediately, "you want something interesting?"

Just moments later there was laughter from the room.

"Irènie! Don't play with our guest's instrument, it's bad manners!" the child's mother said from the doorway.

Addressing Helmine then, she added "Sorry. She used to come in here all the time when it was Renard's room." The feraisai woman beckoned sharply at her youngest.

Instrument? Helmine sensibly left out that it was, in fact, a weapon. She looked dangerous enough as it were, probably. The little magic trick (the good old 'oh is this a penny I found from your ear?') had gotten the little one's hands off it, anyway. "No worries," Helmine said wearily, looking at Suzy for a while. "Worked with children before."

"Oh, a teacher?" asked Suze, patting Irènie's gold-bobbed head. The child had obeyed the summons in modest time, still giggling after the 'magic' trick.

Irènie cast a shrewd look at both of them and announced "She's not teaching me sums, mama. I won't!"

Helmine tried hiding a smile, but ultimately failed in front of her one great weakness (children). She knew mathematical terminology. It was essential in her line of work... any of them. "Yes. Before..." hm, "I came here. Many jobs before," she said, staring at her injured hand.

Suze Lafecond had eventually managed to shoo her youngest out of the way by the time Siri headed out. She took a double-take through Helmine's open door and, since the patient wasn't horizontal yet, stopped to talk.

"I almost forgot. I got you some cream for your neck," she said. The red blisters seemed to be zosterien rash, what they called shingles where Siri had grown up. She'd noticed it while examining Helmine the first time - though, of course, there had been more pressing things to deal with then.

"Stop the itch?" she asked, eyeing Siri cautiously, but not too cautiously. Helmine was a little worried by the prospect of having built up a modicum of trust toward the healer-in-training, but... Siri was better than those two others in some ways.

Even so, Helmine looked a little wistful or apathetic. She kept her face straight, but her posture betrayed it. Besides; she was far more worried about her hand. Arm. Whichever it was by now.

Siri simply said "I hope so." She held out the jar. "Wash your hand afterwards or it'll get hot."

It was calculated, of course, not offering to apply it for her. Paralytic or amputee, you kept the patient thinking independently.

"Hands," Helmine corrected. She knew as much, but was too tired to make a strong objection to that. Nonetheless, she got rid of her outermost shirt to spread the cream properly. As could be expected, she was far more muscle mass and shoulders than fat -- although there was that, too. Her stomach was quite feminine in that regard. Helmine seemed not at all aware of it; in fact, it had not occurred to her she was to spread the cream later instead of now.

During the process, she kept up a nervous routine of speech. "Is all good?"

The girl didn't seem embarrassed, although she may have been... overly careful not to let her eyes linger.

"I've told the small people to be gentle with you," she said with a smile.

"Is fine. Children and I work well together," Helmine said, now a little more warily, using her injured hand to spread the cream. The rash was quite sensitive enough to tell when she touched it, after all. So was her nature; Siri smiling like that all the time had begun to creep her out a little, but common sense interfered.

"Oh, do you have children yourself?" the healer asked.

"No. Was a teacher," she said matter-of-factly, a little stung by the question nonetheless -- that much was obvious just by looking at her permanently annoyed expression: it deepened a little. Of course, it could have been the rash. Helmine had only hate for that itching damned thing.

"A worthy job. You should be proud."

Of course, considering the state she'd found Helmine in, Siri had to wonder just what the stranger would have been teaching the young people.