• Solo • [Frontier] The Road To Recovery

[Jinyel]

Dawn came with a cool, sharp wind, and a chorus of songbirds that quieted when three travelers passed below them. At the beginning of the journey, Jinyel had made a halfhearted attempt to stay quiet. Now, he just wanted the journey to end.

The Runwaters village stood silent upon its river, still half-asleep. With the horizon just beginning to bleed red, only the earliest herders were out to check their animals, and they did with heads down and shawls bundled against the cold.

Atop the donkey, the crippled slaver was asleep. Or perhaps unconscious. The thirteen-year-old girl leading the donkey had beaten the man with all her strength yesterday, and with his hands tied and legs unable to walk, he’d had no choice but to lay and take it.

Jinyel didn’t scold her. Neither did he take pleasure in her vengeance, which surprised him. She had earned the right to beat her slavers, after all, but all he felt was bone-deep exhaustion and pain. He wanted to rest. He wanted his ribs to stop hurting. Maybe, after those were done, he’d have the energy to feel pleased that she could take as much revenge as she wanted.

“Are you staying with my grandfather?” the girl asked, the first words either of them had spoken in breaks.

Jinyel shook his head and signed, No. “Go to him. I’ll find somewhere.”

The girl hesitated. He could see politeness on her tongue ― come stay with us ― but it was tempered by sympathy. Understanding. She glanced at her own wrists, where shackles had scraped rings the whole way around, and then she glanced at Jinyel’s wrists, where shackle marks had long since healed into scars.

As a villager, she knew it was proper for him to stay with family. As a slave, she understood why he didn’t want to.

“There’s a barn,” she compromised. “Down that slope over there and then up the other side. The wall’s rotten on one side and we don’t use it anymore. They were going to tear it down and build a new one when the sun came back at the beginning of Ashan, but then the bandits raided and… it’s still there. The roof is still good. My grandfather won’t mind you using it.”

Jinyel dipped his head and signed, Thank you.

The girl hesitated, then attempted to mimic the sign back at him. “Will you… will you be alright?”

He would, he knew, but not if he was alone. With an unhappy sigh, he looked at the village.

“My… grandmother is staying with your grandfather,” he said. “Agnis. Tell her about the barn. Tell her where I am, and that my ribs are hurt.”

“Your ribs.” The girl glanced at his chest. “I can give you the donkey. Throw this bastard on the ground and get someone to come drag him. Doesn’t it hurt for you to walk?”

“I’ll be alright.” Jinyel nodded toward the village. “The sooner your grandfather gets that bastard, the better. I just need my grandmother.”

“I’ll get her.” The girl turned donkey and prisoner toward the river, and spared one last glance over her shoulder along with a whispered, “Thank you.”

[Jinyel]

As the girl had promised, the barn was worn, overgrown, and empty. A family of crows startled from the rafters when Jinyel entered, but no vicious predators appeared. The floorboards were rotten down to the dirt, but bore no tracks larger than a forest cat. Although the floor and wall seemed a bit unsturdy, the roof slats were even, and the interior of the barn was dry. At this point, dry and empty were the only things Jinyel cared about.

He found a nice pile of dirt, lay down, and closed his eyes.

“JINYEL!”

He opened his eyes. From seemingly nowhere, Agnis was suddenly standing over him. Then she was pacing to the edge of the barn.

“By Raskalarn’s bloody blade, Jinyel! I thought you were dead!”

Sharp, bright sunlight slanted through the windows of the barn. When had the sun gotten so high? Had Jinyel fallen asleep? He’d only just closed his eyes and he didn’t feel the slightest bit rested, but here was Agnis and there was the daylight.

[/i]“Trouble with your ribs,[/i] as if that’s supposed to be helpful! I don’t know if that means you’ve got a cold or if you’ve got a sword in your chest! Details, Jinyel! Diagnoses! Proper identification of ailments is the foundation of medicine, and you’ve just―!”

She paused and leaned against a post to catch her breath.

Jinyel rolled onto his back to look at her. Even that simple movement felt like someone had kicked the wind out of him.

“Hnng,” he said, not really to add to the conversation so much as to reaffirm that he was alive.

“Young lady,” Agnis huffed. “Sit next to that absolute fool and give him some water.”

Someone settled beside Jinyel. Between the sharp daylight and the general exhaustion, Jinyel had to squint to make out curly brown hair and the awkward smile of a person who had ended up in the middle of someone else’s disagreement.

“Hnng,” Jinyel said to her, signing I’m fine.

“Oh no you don’t,” Agnis snapped. “I’m not the fool in this barn, Jinyel; I’ve learned what that sign means. Drink the damned water.”

The young woman held out a waterskin, pointedly looking at everything except Jinyel. Because Jinyel had no energy to deal with an argument, he drank the water with shaking hands.

“Now, since you’ve gone and adventured yourself into bad ribs, and because our sparks can’t touch, you’ve just going to have to fix it by yourself.” Agnis sat down on Jinyel’s other side with an irritated harrumph. “This girl’s got a good set of ribs on her. I checked them myself. That means you’re going to check them yourself, and then tell me what’s wrong with yours. Then you are going to fix it. Do you understand me?”

There was an unusual sharpness in her voice. She refused to look directly at Jinyel. Something was wrong, and it ran deeper than his injuries. But Agnis was always aloof around people who weren’t Jinyel, so he had no hope of understanding while this young woman was there to witness them.

So Jinyel didn’t investigate. He held out his hand, and the young woman, apparently already coached in her role, grabbed it. Jinyel closed his eyes, took a breath, and peered into her enervations.

[Jinyel]

Mutation

Competent Graft Mutation: Lick The Science
Jinyel’s tongue is long, narrow, and prehensile. At full length, it stretches a foot and a half can grab small objects. While it is retracted, a casual observer might think he has a swollen tongue, and his speech is noticeably garbled. It will take at least one cycle for Jinyel to relearn how to speak clearly after reaching competent.

It was a struggle to concentrate. Every breath ached. His left arm hurt with every flex of a finger. Perhaps he really had slept on this pile of dirt, and the adrenaline had abandoned him to feel all the injuries fully. He was alive, yes, but had taken a beating to stay that way.

“Breathe, Jinyel.” Agnis’ voice was low. “Focus.”

“Hurts,” Jinyel grunted.

“Focus anyway.”

Jinyel cracked an eye open to glare at her, but she wasn’t looking at him.

“Accept the pain,” Agnis said to the wall. “Don’t fight it. I know you want to. I’ve had to use magic while injured, too. But whenever you try to avoid pain, you are giving it power over you. You must have power over your own mind before you can accomplish anything.”

Jinyel took a deep breath. It hurt again. He winced. Either she heard him hesitate, or she was simply so familiar with this pain that she knew he had done it.

“Pain flows like water,” she murmured. “You feel it, pulsing from your injury like an overflowing bowl. When you flinch, you are attempting to stop that flow. Don’t stop it. Don’t even try. Let it flow to its end, or else you won’t understand it.”

Jinyel took another breath. It was easier to follow her instructions when he thought of pain as water. It pulsed almost like a current, and when he thought of it as a river, he didn’t fight it. When he didn’t fight it, the sensation changed. It was still pain, but it stopped being his enemy. It became information, while he became merely an observer inside his own body. He observed his own enervations hiccup around his ribs like streams diverted by fallen trees. He’d seen hiccups like this before, in others.

Strangely enough, it made his tongue burn.

“Cracks,” Jinyel whispered. “Two ribs. The cracks don’t reach all the way across the bone.”

“Good.” Though her word was positive, Agnis’ tone was cold. “And her ribs?”

Perched above his own pain like a passenger in a boat, Jinyel was able to focus on the young woman’s enervations. Through her hand, he felt her ribs, where energy flowed unbroken and smooth.

“Start from the back of the rib,” Agnis said. “Match hers. Follow the path of your own enervations. When they stray, add bone along those paths, not around them. Energize from the inside out, but don’t touch the marrow. Your bones can make marrow by themselves.”

“I feel it in my tongue,” Jinyel said.

“Me too,” said the young woman, touching her own face. “Does your mouth feel―?”

“Later,” Agnis interrupted. “Neither of your tongues matter right now.”

Jinyel was fairly sure his tongue was swollen, or in the process of becoming so. But he did agree with his mentor that ribs were more important, so he placed a hand on his chest, fingers slipping under his shirt to get as close to the cracks as possible.

It was a strange sensation, spending ether on himself. But napping in the dirt had given him some refreshment, and the cracks were such small things. His enervations obeyed, but they hurt his tongue. He grimaced, but allowed the pain to wash over him. It felt like a bee had stung the back of his throat.

“My tongue,” said the young woman. “You said this wouldn’t hurt―”

“You’re hurting her,” Agnis said sharply. “Let go, Jinyel.”

Jinyel obeyed, and the girl let out a breath of relief.

“Thank you for your help,” Agnis said. “We can handle the rest.”

The young woman knew a dismissal when she heard one, and made a hurried exit.

Tongue, Jinyel tried to say, but his tongue had swollen so much that he couldn’t get the word out.

In his chest, the enervations found their proper path. Bone rejoined bone, and the cracks were sealed. When he breathed, there was no pain down there. The pain was all in his mouth.

Jinyel sat up. His whole jaw throbbed. Agnis finally looked at him as he moved on to his forearm, and the factures there. Like his ribs, the cracks were so hairline-thin that he barely needed any ether to energize them. But it didn’t stop the hurt, it just moved the hurt up to his head.

“Jinyel?” Agnis asked when he gripped his jaw.

She reached for him. He flinched away, and his attempt at “Don’t,” came out as a growl. He opened his mouth to snap his teeth at her, but there was no room once his tongue unfurled.

Agnis let out a yelp of surprise and scooted back. Jinyel let out a garbled noise of relief as the pressure in his mouth spilled outside. The pain receded under cool air. He coughed, and tried to draw his tongue back in, but there was a lot more tongue than he remembered.

“What..?” Agnis breathed. “Jinyel, what is that?”

It felt like a rhetorical question, since they both could tell perfectly well what it was. Jinyel kept drawing his tongue back in, the entire foot-and-a-half length of it. It barely fit back inside. He could breathe, but there was no way he could speak.

“Jinyel?” she asked again. “Are you… alright?”

Jinyel stretched his arm. It didn’t hurt. He breathed. It didn’t hurt. Though he was certainly surprised, all the pain was gone, and his enervations flowed smoothly through his bones.

So he signed Yes, and Agnis had been around him long enough to know what that sgn meant.

“Good.” She straightened her skirts and looked away. “Sparks do that, once they’ve gotten used to you. Graft sparks especially. They change you. They’ll turn you towards their own will if you’re not careful. Encourage you to do… things. Things you shouldn’t do.”

There it was. The catch in her breath. The way her eyes lowered to the ground. She was distressed about more than Jinyel’s injuries.

Speak, Jinyel signed. Something’s wrong. I will not guess. Then, realizing it might be too complicated a sign for her, he amended: Tell me.

She seemed to get the gist of it, or at least, decided on her own to air her grievances.

“You crippled a man with your magic,” Agnis whispered. “I saw your work in his legs. The man you sent to Old Doyen. Such a small thing you did, but he’ll never walk unless another grafter fixes him.”

Don’t fix him. He knew she wouldn’t understand, but he signed it anyway. If you fix him, I will break him again.

She didn’t understand. “Graft is the greatest power for healing on Idalos. You turned it toward harm, and… it is never to be used to hurt people. Never.”

I use my power as I please.

She pulled her shawl tighter. “That is a wicked thing you did to his flesh.”

You know nothing of wickedness.

“We are healers, you and I.”

No. Only you.

She didn’t understand a thing he was saying. She didn’t even glance at his hands, just his face, and her brow furrowed at the lack of guilt on him.

“Tell me why, Jinyel. No signs. Tell me.”

He pointed to his mouth. He wouldn’t have answered her anyway, but now he had an excuse she couldn’t ignore.

“Once you’ve gotten over… whatever that is. Tell me why you think crippling someone would ever in a thousand arcs be an appropriate use of graft.”

Because I wanted to. I don’t need another reason.

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

That’s your own fault, not mine.

“Jinyel―”

Jinyel smiled. That was enough to cut her off. There was something amusing about all this, far more amusing than the girl beating the slaver. Agnis had always been more interested in what Jinyel ‘should’ be than what he actually was. He’d wondered for a long time if his spark was simply too young to know its place, and whether he’d wake up one day with a sudden interest in human bodies and the good health of everyone he met.

His witchmark pulsed. His spark stretched across his tongue. He tasted his own enervations through the roof of his mouth, and he cared even less about human bodies than he had yesterday. His spark was nothing like its parent. Capable of healing, certainly, but not a healer. Not even close.

You’ve taught me so much, Jinyel signed, and learned so little. I have your answers. You can have them, if you want. If you learn this. I’ll teach you to speak with me, but only if you ask.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”

Jinyel shrugged, and turned toward the entrance of the barn. The magic had drained what little energy he’d regained, and if he was going to sleep, it would be nowhere near Agnis. I’m glad you can see me for who I am, grandmother. It’s taken you a long time. I’ve always been more dangerous than you, and you cannot unmake me now. I hope you enjoy what I am going to become.

[Jinyel]

Rewards Requested

Notes/Warnings: Slightly sinister vibes. Graft squishiness.

Thread: [Frontier] The Road To Recovery
City/Area: The Imperial Regions

Renown: None
Do you want this to be considered for Mark Progression? No
If so - which mark. N/A
Peer Reviewers: Please give feedback as to whether you feel this is appropriate for Mark Progression.
Once feedback is received, player should then post in the PSF.
If any PC in this thread is in a faction, please list them: N/A
Faction Points: N/A
Wealth Points: None
Collaboration: None
Local Language Thread? Yes, Common Sign

!	Message from: Pig Boy
	Done!

[Pig Boy]

All Players

Rewards

• Language: Common Sign

Jinyel

Feedback

I really appreciate the approach your PC and Agnis take toward learning of Graft. The idea of pain as a teacher as well as an extra sensory thing was an intriguing concept. The fact that Agnis couldn't heal Jinyel directly was an interesting turn, but of course that was played perfectly as you remembered that Graft sparks cannot touch their initiates/mentors.

Overall your approach to the process of healing is grisly, painful, and very visceral. The description of the process was top notch in my opinion, and you definitely played well to your skills here.

I also like the interpersonal development between Jinyel and the former slave girl. That seems like a bit of foreshadowing to some future development perhaps, or perhaps she's simply very grateful toward him.

Great writing in any case!

Rewards

• XP: 10

Knowledges

• Detection: Sound: startled birds
• Detection: Agnis: Unusual voice tic
• Meditation: Retry focus after distraction
• Meditation: Pain flows like water
• Meditation: Separate self from pain
• Graft: Technique: Self-energize