“Jinyel.” Agnis stared through the barn, arms crossed with an unimpressed look on her face. “What is that?”
Jinyel, for his part, merely shrugged. The answer seemed obvious enough that he didn’t have to voice it. Agnis had worked at the medical headquarters for years, and before that, she’d been in the Imperial Mage Corps. She was fully aware of what a thairoc looked like.
The thairoch, however, wasn’t nearly so sure about Agnis.
“It’s filthy,” she accused, as the thairoch shuffled toward the back of the barn.
Jinyel blamed the barn for the filth more than he blamed the thairoch. This building was old, its boards nearly falling off the walls and its roof full of holes. The villagers didn’t use it anymore, and the Imperial expansion had given them much bigger problems to worry about than abandoned buildings. This barn would be torn down and replaced someday, but not today, and the villagers were more than happy to let Jinyel take its space instead of some wild animal.
Well, instead of some dangerous wild animal. The thairoch was big and intimidating, but Jinyel had learned over the past three days that there wasn’t a streak of viciousness in it. Long as a horse with wings twice that length on each side, it outweighed Agnis by far, but avoided her as if she might eat it.
“Do the villagers know you have an animal that size in here?” Agnis asked.
No, Jinyel replied in sign language, but she didn’t know sign language so all she gave back was a frustrated frown.
“Have you ever tended a thairoch before?”
No.
“It’s hurt.”
Yes.
“Doesn’t it look hurt to you?”
Yes.
“What’s wrong with it?”
Wing. Jinyel pointed to the thairoch’s wing, then to his own arm. Cut. He gestured a line between his fingers, to mirror the enormous slash in the animal’s wing membrane.
“The wing? It’s been cut on its wing?”
Yes.
“I assume that means yes. This would be so much easier if you talk to me, Jinyel. I know you can do it.”
Jinyel was suddenly and viscerally uninterested in conversation, and turned on his heel to approach the thairoch.
She protested, of course, and he let her insist and complain and wave her hands in feigned ignorance of why he would ever behave in such a way. He would respond whenever she ceased to insist he behave ‘normally,’ and it usually took a few minutes for her to get to that point. When it came to discouraging or encouraging behavior, Jinyel had found that training people was similar to animals, so long as the ‘reward’ was attention and the ‘punishment’ was the withdrawing of attention.
But there was a benefit to the tension. The more Agnis talked, the more accustomed the thairoch became to her voice. The animal relaxed when Jinyel approached, and looked at the old woman with confusion instead of fear. Like most prey animals, it looked for a leader, and took its cues from Jinyel. If Jinyel wasn’t worried, it wouldn’t be worried, either.
In due time, Agnis remembered that stern lectures simply did not work on Jinyel. She fell quiet, and Jinyel faced her.
This, he gestured, before he grabbed the thairoch’s wing and stretched it out.
The thairoch was content with this. Physical contact was the first thing Jinyel had trained into the animal, balancing rewards with uncomfortable poking and prodding until the thairoch was content to be moved around at will. Within the limits of Jinyel’s strength, of course. Jinyel was still human, and the thairoch was a full grown adult, so “being moved around” was really only singular limbs and perhaps the head. Dramatic motions, like rolling over, were simply not in Jinyel’s power. That was alright, though. That sort of training could come later.
Boldened by the thairoch’s calm, Agnis inched forward. She hesitated once she came in arm’s reach, but the thairoch trusted Jinyel that she was no threat and spared only a curious glance. Finally she put a hand on its shoulder, and when it gave no protest, she turned her attention to the wound.
“Can you lay it on the ground?” she asked.
Jinyel could indeed do that, and he settled the wing across the barn floor. The membrane was cut between the center two fingers, almost all the way from edge to joint. It had healed long ago, and there wasn’t a twitch of pain as she ran her finger along the edge.
“It healed cleanly,” she murmured, almost to herself. “I’m sure the poor beast wouldn’t think so, but it’s very lucky to have been hurt this way. Especially dragging its knuckles around to walk, it would have been so easy for a wound this size to become infected.”
She straightened, and peered at the uninjured wing.
“Can you spread the other one out, Jinyel? This is easily fixed ― almost too easily. I must be sure to create exactly enough membrane to match the healthy one, or the fingers might be pulled too close together. Or too far apart. It wouldn’t be able to fly in either of those conditions.”
Jinyel did as she requested, although it took a bit more time. When he pulled out one wing, the thairoch wanted to fold the other. It took two repetitions on each side, along with a low sing-song, for the animal to understand what he wanted.
“Hmph.” Agnis frowned. “You’ll sing for an animal, but you won’t even talk to me?”
This animal doesn’t complain when I’m quiet, Jinyel replied in sign language.
“You know I can’t…” She reconsidered her words. “Nevermind. You’ve got both wings out, now put your hand on the animal. The rest of its enervations are healthy, correct?”
All good, which Jinyel accompanied with a nod. The thairoch was underweight, and its muscles were oddly developed after so long on the ground, but there were no other injuries. With a bit of graft, food, and rest, the animal was likely to make a full recovery.
He dug fingers into the top of the thairoch’s scruff, where it liked to be scratched. The animal let out a contented chitter. Its enervations pulsed beneath the fur like veins of fire, warm and glittering.
Agnis put her hand on the injured wing. She closed her eyes and breathed, as she usually did before a project, and Jinyel closed his eyes to match.
Through the thairoch, he felt her power. This was the only way for their sparks to feel one another; something about the bond between mentor and apprentice made their magic incompatible. He felt it now, in the way enervations ‘blacked out’ as she touched them. His spark didn’t want to even look at hers. But even so, she left behind a negative space which Jinyel could read. He observed her spark flood the thairoch’s veins, swift and confident. The veins bent to her like threads to a seamstress, and she built flesh around them like a weaver on a loom. That was the truth of graft, Jinyel supposed: the ability to turn living flesh into art. Or, in Agnis’ case, to simply repair it.
She always used her magic for the same thing, and sometimes Jinyel wondered if it was by choice or simply because she hadn’t thought to use it differently. He never asked ― asking the wrong question, to anyone, could trigger monologues, and listening to monologues made him want to tear his hair out ― but he wondered if she had ever done more than heal. If she purposely turned flesh into something different than it had once been. Made it into something more.
But that wasn’t a question for today. Today, she healed, and the thairoch’s flesh was all too eager to obey. Fresh wing membrane spread across the gap, reinforced by veins and soon covered up by downy-hair. Agnis sat back on her heels, finishing the magic with a sigh from the bottom of her lungs.
Jinyel opened his eyes and scratched the thairoch’s ears in reassurance.
“Finished,” she hummed. “That thing has a good temper.”
Exhaustion weighed in her limbs as she stood. Jinyel swooped in to help her, taking an arm to ensure she didn’t fall. The thairoch, for its part, assumed this was all a strange social activity, and folded both wings back into place at its side.
“Silly thing,” Agnis chuckled. “Does it even know it can fly again?”
Perhaps not. Agnis was a master of graft, and could deaden pain in a way Jinyel couldn’t. The animal curled up in its corner as if nothing was different, and Jinyel helped Agnis to the door.
“If it doesn’t know,” he said. “I can teach it. Tomorrow.”
Agnis jumped at his voice, then chuckled. “You’ve got a way with beasts, boy.”
“I try.”
“I’m glad…” To hear your voice. She didn’t have to say it aloud for Jinyel to know what words came next.
“It is earned,” was his only answer, and that seemed to satisfy her.
Jinyel, for his part, merely shrugged. The answer seemed obvious enough that he didn’t have to voice it. Agnis had worked at the medical headquarters for years, and before that, she’d been in the Imperial Mage Corps. She was fully aware of what a thairoc looked like.
The thairoch, however, wasn’t nearly so sure about Agnis.
“It’s filthy,” she accused, as the thairoch shuffled toward the back of the barn.
Jinyel blamed the barn for the filth more than he blamed the thairoch. This building was old, its boards nearly falling off the walls and its roof full of holes. The villagers didn’t use it anymore, and the Imperial expansion had given them much bigger problems to worry about than abandoned buildings. This barn would be torn down and replaced someday, but not today, and the villagers were more than happy to let Jinyel take its space instead of some wild animal.
Well, instead of some dangerous wild animal. The thairoch was big and intimidating, but Jinyel had learned over the past three days that there wasn’t a streak of viciousness in it. Long as a horse with wings twice that length on each side, it outweighed Agnis by far, but avoided her as if she might eat it.
“Do the villagers know you have an animal that size in here?” Agnis asked.
No, Jinyel replied in sign language, but she didn’t know sign language so all she gave back was a frustrated frown.
“Have you ever tended a thairoch before?”
No.
“It’s hurt.”
Yes.
“Doesn’t it look hurt to you?”
Yes.
“What’s wrong with it?”
Wing. Jinyel pointed to the thairoch’s wing, then to his own arm. Cut. He gestured a line between his fingers, to mirror the enormous slash in the animal’s wing membrane.
“The wing? It’s been cut on its wing?”
Yes.
“I assume that means yes. This would be so much easier if you talk to me, Jinyel. I know you can do it.”
Jinyel was suddenly and viscerally uninterested in conversation, and turned on his heel to approach the thairoch.
She protested, of course, and he let her insist and complain and wave her hands in feigned ignorance of why he would ever behave in such a way. He would respond whenever she ceased to insist he behave ‘normally,’ and it usually took a few minutes for her to get to that point. When it came to discouraging or encouraging behavior, Jinyel had found that training people was similar to animals, so long as the ‘reward’ was attention and the ‘punishment’ was the withdrawing of attention.
But there was a benefit to the tension. The more Agnis talked, the more accustomed the thairoch became to her voice. The animal relaxed when Jinyel approached, and looked at the old woman with confusion instead of fear. Like most prey animals, it looked for a leader, and took its cues from Jinyel. If Jinyel wasn’t worried, it wouldn’t be worried, either.
In due time, Agnis remembered that stern lectures simply did not work on Jinyel. She fell quiet, and Jinyel faced her.
This, he gestured, before he grabbed the thairoch’s wing and stretched it out.
The thairoch was content with this. Physical contact was the first thing Jinyel had trained into the animal, balancing rewards with uncomfortable poking and prodding until the thairoch was content to be moved around at will. Within the limits of Jinyel’s strength, of course. Jinyel was still human, and the thairoch was a full grown adult, so “being moved around” was really only singular limbs and perhaps the head. Dramatic motions, like rolling over, were simply not in Jinyel’s power. That was alright, though. That sort of training could come later.
Boldened by the thairoch’s calm, Agnis inched forward. She hesitated once she came in arm’s reach, but the thairoch trusted Jinyel that she was no threat and spared only a curious glance. Finally she put a hand on its shoulder, and when it gave no protest, she turned her attention to the wound.
“Can you lay it on the ground?” she asked.
Jinyel could indeed do that, and he settled the wing across the barn floor. The membrane was cut between the center two fingers, almost all the way from edge to joint. It had healed long ago, and there wasn’t a twitch of pain as she ran her finger along the edge.
“It healed cleanly,” she murmured, almost to herself. “I’m sure the poor beast wouldn’t think so, but it’s very lucky to have been hurt this way. Especially dragging its knuckles around to walk, it would have been so easy for a wound this size to become infected.”
She straightened, and peered at the uninjured wing.
“Can you spread the other one out, Jinyel? This is easily fixed ― almost too easily. I must be sure to create exactly enough membrane to match the healthy one, or the fingers might be pulled too close together. Or too far apart. It wouldn’t be able to fly in either of those conditions.”
Jinyel did as she requested, although it took a bit more time. When he pulled out one wing, the thairoch wanted to fold the other. It took two repetitions on each side, along with a low sing-song, for the animal to understand what he wanted.
“Hmph.” Agnis frowned. “You’ll sing for an animal, but you won’t even talk to me?”
This animal doesn’t complain when I’m quiet, Jinyel replied in sign language.
“You know I can’t…” She reconsidered her words. “Nevermind. You’ve got both wings out, now put your hand on the animal. The rest of its enervations are healthy, correct?”
All good, which Jinyel accompanied with a nod. The thairoch was underweight, and its muscles were oddly developed after so long on the ground, but there were no other injuries. With a bit of graft, food, and rest, the animal was likely to make a full recovery.
He dug fingers into the top of the thairoch’s scruff, where it liked to be scratched. The animal let out a contented chitter. Its enervations pulsed beneath the fur like veins of fire, warm and glittering.
Agnis put her hand on the injured wing. She closed her eyes and breathed, as she usually did before a project, and Jinyel closed his eyes to match.
Through the thairoch, he felt her power. This was the only way for their sparks to feel one another; something about the bond between mentor and apprentice made their magic incompatible. He felt it now, in the way enervations ‘blacked out’ as she touched them. His spark didn’t want to even look at hers. But even so, she left behind a negative space which Jinyel could read. He observed her spark flood the thairoch’s veins, swift and confident. The veins bent to her like threads to a seamstress, and she built flesh around them like a weaver on a loom. That was the truth of graft, Jinyel supposed: the ability to turn living flesh into art. Or, in Agnis’ case, to simply repair it.
She always used her magic for the same thing, and sometimes Jinyel wondered if it was by choice or simply because she hadn’t thought to use it differently. He never asked ― asking the wrong question, to anyone, could trigger monologues, and listening to monologues made him want to tear his hair out ― but he wondered if she had ever done more than heal. If she purposely turned flesh into something different than it had once been. Made it into something more.
But that wasn’t a question for today. Today, she healed, and the thairoch’s flesh was all too eager to obey. Fresh wing membrane spread across the gap, reinforced by veins and soon covered up by downy-hair. Agnis sat back on her heels, finishing the magic with a sigh from the bottom of her lungs.
Jinyel opened his eyes and scratched the thairoch’s ears in reassurance.
“Finished,” she hummed. “That thing has a good temper.”
Exhaustion weighed in her limbs as she stood. Jinyel swooped in to help her, taking an arm to ensure she didn’t fall. The thairoch, for its part, assumed this was all a strange social activity, and folded both wings back into place at its side.
“Silly thing,” Agnis chuckled. “Does it even know it can fly again?”
Perhaps not. Agnis was a master of graft, and could deaden pain in a way Jinyel couldn’t. The animal curled up in its corner as if nothing was different, and Jinyel helped Agnis to the door.
“If it doesn’t know,” he said. “I can teach it. Tomorrow.”
Agnis jumped at his voice, then chuckled. “You’ve got a way with beasts, boy.”
“I try.”
“I’m glad…” To hear your voice. She didn’t have to say it aloud for Jinyel to know what words came next.
“It is earned,” was his only answer, and that seemed to satisfy her.
