Claire Keane
NASA
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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trying on a metaphor
Today's Document
art blog(derogatory)
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
izzy's playlists!
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d e v o n
dirt enthusiast
KIROKAZE
shark vs the universe
Game of Thrones Daily
AnasAbdin
$LAYYYTER
if i look back, i am lost
ojovivo
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
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@elwin-at-your-service
ELWINNN I sneezed and now my chest is in immeasurable pain what do i do
Unsneeze!
Alternatively, see your physician for an actual diagnosis and management. The likely diagnosis is a musculoskeletal strain so the prescription would probably be a warm bath with some Sasquatch salts, some gentle massage with wyrm oil, or possibly even an adjustment.
The Sasquatch could help perform the adjustment, too, but I don’t recommend it…
i have committed to a college!!!!!! had my second to last performance last saturday at dinner theater (I sang a solo in performed in various student led scenes)
the teacher made me sign up for shakespeare in the parking lot with whatever song i felt like doing (i went Adelaide’s Lament from Guys and Dolls)
I hope you are doing well, Uncle. It’s been simultaneously eventful and horribly dull
(ps i got to help grade some final projects today for what i believe is a chemistry class so that was fun and does make me feel a bit more confident in my decision to minor in education)
Ooh, congrats on making your decision!
I may be biased, as your very proud uncle, but I am certain your performances were amazing and that better ones yet are still in your future 💖🤩
As for me… life lately has been sadly dull. I can’t sing at the moment until I’ve worked through some bothersome persistent vocal strain. Everything feels slightly the less bright for it, and I look forward to being able to sing again!!
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
"The vessel is very much a blueprint, which I often recreate entirely. Aged flesh is often replaced. Whatever the cause of death was, is remedied, often by replacing the organs that gave out in old age. I expect quite a bit of longevity, since I keep them carefully and continue to do this as necessary. The process is painless, as well. Life force itself is eternal as long as the vessel is fit to hold it."
I see Inara’s brain ticking over, and am glad of the warm crystal the stranger handed me. We could be here a while.
“So, theoretically, you could not only resurrect a banshee but make it immortal? Assuming you continue replenishing degraded organs?”
"Yes, in theory. Assuming I continue to have access to replacement biotic material, and I continue to be proactive. Both of which are likely."
Inara starts to ask another question but I cut her off the same way she cut me off earlier, throwing her own words back at her.
“Save your questions; it’s too cold out here for that. Cut to the point - will you provide the banshee or not?”
There is a flash in her eyes as she turns to me, but I have played with that fire before and know she won’t actually burn me.
Much, anyway.
She hesitates again, still torn by her duty to maintain a complete catalog of species. But I know she’s already made up her mind. It’s not like we asked for the alicorn specimen; a banshee is a fairly low risk gap while awaiting a replacement, given the healthy and relatively genetically diverse population of them across the Lost Cities.
“Do you need it thawed or does a block of ice containing your banshee popsicle work for you?”
"A block of ice popsicle works," they say, hiding laughter behind one gloved hand.
Inara nods, relieved. It is quicker this way. She projects her voice into my head again.
“We’re already breaking several laws here, but I’d still rather not show off the catalog. Can you do some fancy light bending to keep it hidden as I enter?”
“Flasher 101,” I scoff silently in my own head, assuming Inara is still in there to hear it. Out loud, I hear her snort, confirming she heard me. The stranger gives her a funny look.
I turn to them. “This is the part where we admire that view you remarked on earlier,” I suggest, and I pointedly turn my body so I am facing downhill and out over the cliffs. They copy my positioning.
For all my boasting, I haven’t practiced large scale scenic light bending in quite some time. It isn’t a skill I need routinely in my Healing Centre. But I put my hands behind me as though clasped while admiring the snowy vista. Instead, I am concentrating very hard behind me, sensing the waves of light and manipulating them subtly so they refract an unchanged image back down the hill just in case the stranger turns around while Inara is interacting with the permanent Flasher-installed visual protection field surrounding the catalog.
I am starting to tire from the effort and wondering how much longer she will take when she light leaps to the arrival point just slightly further down the hill from us. She hefts a canvas sling with a cylinder of ice in it, big enough for the mortal remains of the banshee. Relieved, I let my illusion dissipate behind us as the stranger and I both head down towards Inara and her morbid cargo.
The person seems to be aware that something is up, and of your effort, though they have no way of knowing what, specifically. They cooperatively keep their eyes on the beautiful landscape downhill and onwards though the corner of their mouth forms a smile they try unsuccessfully to smooth back to a pleasant, but unspecific expression.
"You either know each other very well, or have a secondary signal I cannot decipher... that seemed more communication than words. It intrigues me. In fact, many, many things about your world intrigue me. I would like to understand, sometime. The systems, many of them make sense, but some I don't quite understand, though that may be from a lack of context or exposure."
"One is the divide. Currency is not an issue for the everyday elf. Elves work, partially out of the desire for a purpose, and for the good of the entire community, selflessly."
"But elves live a very long time. Why is the divide determined in their youth, and then honored for the rest of time? Should the punishment for a bad, unfortunately timed few years in their childhood be centuries of lack of opportunity, and a social divide, not in their favor?"
"What is the incentive to work a job you hate? The worse backlash of refusal?"
"I may be missing something. I do not mean to accuse the elves of structural injustice."
They look up briefly to the sky, as they often do, but turn their eyes again to the slopes quickly. When Inara reappears, they start down rather eagerly.
We reach Inara.
“Yes, Inara and I do communicate a little differently to many other elves. Call it a side effect of three and a half centuries of friendship.”
She just twitches one eyebrow slightly at me as she peels back the canvas so the stranger can see the entirety of the banshee within the ice.
I don’t look.
As a physician I have a stronger disposition than most elves, who cope very poorly with blood and pain and death generally, though it does not at all mean I am immune to the sorrow of mortality.
“As for the rest… you’re not as far of the mark as you might think. But we are growing past the divide we once clung to. It’s a long story, enough to fill nine and two half books to date, and while we aren’t there yet, there have certainly been some significant shifts in our cultural structure in the last several years.”
“Enough, Elwin,” Inara groans. She was such a hot-headed young elf when we met, always willing to throw her lot in with the movers and shakers of our younger years, but she has kept her head well down through the unfolding chaos more recently. She has more to lose these days. “I don’t deny it’s overdue, but many of our society are finding the pace of the change - and its cost - to be a lot. More than this poor soul needs to know.”
She strokes the ice cylinder. “Goodbye, Siren,” she whispers to the creature inside. To the stranger, “Take good care of her.”
She says nothing to me before she retreats back inside the Sanctuary. But, oh, how I’m sure I’ll be hearing a lot from her on this matter later.
“Our secret,” I sigh as I watch the secret door click seamlessly back int the mountainside behind Inara, “is not that we are ever forced to do a job we hate. Sometimes we just hate the price we pay for doing the job we love.”
I pick up the strap of the canvas sling and hand it to the stranger and then pull out my pathfinder.
“Where to now, or is this where we part ways?”
"Siren." They repeat, gazing at the frozen banshee in awe. "Her name was Siren."
"Thank you immensely. I am in your debt," they say to Inara.
They take the canvas sling, putting it over the shoulder not already occupied by their own leather satchel.
"We ought to go someplace where we can discuss repayment. The Healing Centre would suffice, unless you have a better idea. I will again retreat for the Leap, but will return upon stability."
They pause a moment before retreating, seeming to have more to say, before deciding that it can wait. Again the eyes return to brown. They draw their arms closer to themself, not as immune to the cold as the yellow-eyed maker.
I flick my pathfinder to the Healing Centre facet as asked, though I am unsure what on earth they mean by repayment. Looking at the brown-eyed version of the stranger and the straps over both shoulders, I link my arm with theirs on the same side as the leather satchel. It wouldn’t do to trap the ice between two sources of body heat.
It is harder to cast a beam now than before. The daylight has faded substantially since we arrived. I am grateful for being a Flasher - I gather enough light to cast my beam and we step into it quickly.
Once back at my Healing Centre I shed my cloak but decide I can cope with not changing out of the insulated under layer a little longer so as not to delay whatever conversation comes next. I have no means here to keep the ice solid, and I don’t want to damage Siren by allowing her to thaw prematurely.
“I didn’t enter this venture with a view to receiving payment for it,” I start to say as I drop into my chair, but then think to check which version of the stranger I’m even speaking to. I’ve gotten used to conversing with the articulate yellow-eyed version, but I haven’t stopped to look and see if they have resurfaced after their brown-eyed ward made the light leap with me.
Their eyes are closed when I look up, so perhaps they are still transitioning, or maybe focusing on changing their crystalline outfit back to something cooler, so I take a sip from the bottle of Youth on my desk and absently pat Bullhorn as I wait. He doesn’t react to Siren, given she is already dead, but the stranger still seems to unsettle him just as much as earlier.
The person changes back to their usual red suit, with black slacks and black dress shoes. They do so less theatrically as earlier, in more of a manner where a line of crystal runs over through their clothes, leaving it changed in its wake. To say Bullhorn is unsettled is an understatement; Bullhorn is at the point just before a howl. It's not quite so bad as a howl, but almost. The ward must be deteriorating somehow, quickly.
But then the eyes open, still in the swirl of color to yellow, and he calms down. The stranger hands you another crystal; this one has the opposite effect of the one before. It keeps you cool. With calm urgency, they clasp crystal bands around each of their wrists, which pulse faintly, and slide a third band around their head in the manner of a crown. A small insignia of something you don't quite recognize rests right above their forehead.
"I can handle quite a bit of knowledge." They laugh. "But it can wait, if that is best. I can do more of my own research."
"On the subject of your repayment." They sit down, cross-legged, pulling the ice cylinder onto their lap. "What are things that you appreciate? I have access to many things, things from other worlds, too. I could give you a collection of seeds from one of the tamer worlds; I've found many of these have value in affecting the physiology of living beings. I could provide you with my notes on them, as well. However, it is rude to assume that all of your cares lie in medicine. What would you like?"
“What ails your ward?” I ask, brushing aside the discussion of repayment for the moment.
If only the ward can transport between places, then their health is of great importance - the whole business procuring Siren for their world rests on it.
"They don't cling to their own consciousness very tightly. They are not assertive and submit too easily and they are on the verge of losing it." They lift their arms, showing the arm-bands. "These are a preventative measure- putting them in stasis, rather than decline, until I can get them to their dwelling to recover. They've spent too long on my quests, and think little for themselves despite my encouragement. My act of taking control so long today did not help. After this I will see to it that they have a long rest, especially from my influence."
They sigh.
"They are new. I sent them out too soon, before they could really develop."
“Is there anything I can do to support their recovery, or aid their tethering to their consciousness? I have many physical remedies here, and several psychoactive ones which I use sparingly.”
Well, I’d used them sparingly most of my career, anyway. Sophie and her gang’s exploits had upped their frequency somewhat in the last few years, though mainly the ones that induce sleep and suppress nightmares rather than ones which modify consciousness.
“Or we could postpone our discussion of trade until they are stronger?” I suggest. “I don’t want this to be in vain. That banshee in your lap is the only option for you to obtain one for your world. There is none other I could offer if the specimen - if Siren - becomes damaged.”
"They have no need to traverse more worlds before Siren is safely where she ought to be."
They reach forward into the bag, placing their hands on either side of the cylinder, and crystal slowly spreads throughout it until the cylinder is nothing more than crystal. It looks like it might have been hacked out of a pillar. It glitters, and bends the light inside of it into shapes. Siren lying on a table as several hands assess her, various parts turning to crystal and then back to flesh, before she is placed carefully in a circle where several lights are beamed on her; strange ones, seemingly swirling about like smoke forced to follow another thing's laws of physics, and she awakens, sluggishly. You only see all of this if you watch.
"I do not think your support is required, not to deny that you likely could. This is an issue with a clear cause and a logical solution. They will be alright, given time, space, and as much encouragement as I can give while also giving them space."
"You could also speak to my ward of this, if you prefer their own firsthand account."
"I wonder, though; are elves naturally long-lasting, or is it the work of your drink?"
They ask curiously. They have no indication of wanting the drink, they simply seem curious.
“I think stasis might be best place for your ward for now,” I say, mollified by the strangers confidence that the ward’s affliction has an achievable remedy.
My eyes trace the ministrations being rendered upon Siren. They make no sense to me. I can’t tell if I am seeing the present, and she has already been teleported away and reanimated before my eyes, or if I see the future as it will certainly unfold - or, if I am merely seeing what is intended (or hoped) for her.
As I watch, my had strays absently to the bottle of Youth again for another mouthful, when the stranger asks about it.
I frown. “Both, I suppose,” I muse. “We can certainly endure centuries without it; I don’t know if any of those who are millennia old have gone without. But it optimally supports all of our cellular functions, so even if it doesn’t add to our longevity, it ensures our bodies function at our peak throughout our entire span of years.”
My fingers drum against the desk. “Your seeds,” I ask, deciding that if they are intent on repaying me for my assistance then I will consider it a trade rather than payment. “I am not just a physician by profession; I am a physician by passion. I am very curious to know about their form and their medicinal effects, though I worry about introducing a new species to this world. Consequences could be… unforeseen. It would also be challenging to explain the plants’ provenance to the Council, should they ever become aware of what them.”
I break my eyes away from images of Siren taking tentative nibbles of some kind of food and lock my eyes to the stranger. “You’ve integrated species from many planets, so you’ve told me. Can you advise, then, how I could diversify my medicinal options yet maintain this biome’s integrity?”
"Well, I don't recommend letting them grow and spread freely. These plants are not inherently harmful, but many of them are hardy and vigorous and could potentially grow to be invasive to this biome. But, they have all been tested together... with the exception of... six, they grow well together and can be put together in one single ecosystem, which could be confined to one large room. I have books of notes on them and their interactions, and their properties, but surface level there is very little to worry about."
I consider my options. I’m not even sure just how many laws I’ve already broken today, so at this point, how much worse could hiding a few extraterrestrial plants make it?
“Lima and Elowen would happily add a new greenhouse,” I muse, thinking of the gnomes who share my home, Splendor Plains, with me. They are avid gardeners and I don’t doubt they’d be very willing - and very careful - as accomplices in my curation and study of this collection.
I’ve also just proven to myself that my environmental projection skills, while rusty, are intact. With a little tinkering, I am reasonably confident I could create a permanent optical installation to hide the greenhouse from Council eyes.
“In the first instance, could you provide me with the habitat specifications for the species you propose sharing, including the needs of those which don’t grow well with the others? That would give me time to create a suitable environment for them.” I pause, considering the timeline.
“It will only take around two days following receipt of the specs to construct the greenhouse - gnomes work very quickly. How soon could you return with the seeds and the literature you’ve compiled on them?”
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
"The vessel is very much a blueprint, which I often recreate entirely. Aged flesh is often replaced. Whatever the cause of death was, is remedied, often by replacing the organs that gave out in old age. I expect quite a bit of longevity, since I keep them carefully and continue to do this as necessary. The process is painless, as well. Life force itself is eternal as long as the vessel is fit to hold it."
I see Inara’s brain ticking over, and am glad of the warm crystal the stranger handed me. We could be here a while.
“So, theoretically, you could not only resurrect a banshee but make it immortal? Assuming you continue replenishing degraded organs?”
"Yes, in theory. Assuming I continue to have access to replacement biotic material, and I continue to be proactive. Both of which are likely."
Inara starts to ask another question but I cut her off the same way she cut me off earlier, throwing her own words back at her.
“Save your questions; it’s too cold out here for that. Cut to the point - will you provide the banshee or not?”
There is a flash in her eyes as she turns to me, but I have played with that fire before and know she won’t actually burn me.
Much, anyway.
She hesitates again, still torn by her duty to maintain a complete catalog of species. But I know she’s already made up her mind. It’s not like we asked for the alicorn specimen; a banshee is a fairly low risk gap while awaiting a replacement, given the healthy and relatively genetically diverse population of them across the Lost Cities.
“Do you need it thawed or does a block of ice containing your banshee popsicle work for you?”
"A block of ice popsicle works," they say, hiding laughter behind one gloved hand.
Inara nods, relieved. It is quicker this way. She projects her voice into my head again.
“We’re already breaking several laws here, but I’d still rather not show off the catalog. Can you do some fancy light bending to keep it hidden as I enter?”
“Flasher 101,” I scoff silently in my own head, assuming Inara is still in there to hear it. Out loud, I hear her snort, confirming she heard me. The stranger gives her a funny look.
I turn to them. “This is the part where we admire that view you remarked on earlier,” I suggest, and I pointedly turn my body so I am facing downhill and out over the cliffs. They copy my positioning.
For all my boasting, I haven’t practiced large scale scenic light bending in quite some time. It isn’t a skill I need routinely in my Healing Centre. But I put my hands behind me as though clasped while admiring the snowy vista. Instead, I am concentrating very hard behind me, sensing the waves of light and manipulating them subtly so they refract an unchanged image back down the hill just in case the stranger turns around while Inara is interacting with the permanent Flasher-installed visual protection field surrounding the catalog.
I am starting to tire from the effort and wondering how much longer she will take when she light leaps to the arrival point just slightly further down the hill from us. She hefts a canvas sling with a cylinder of ice in it, big enough for the mortal remains of the banshee. Relieved, I let my illusion dissipate behind us as the stranger and I both head down towards Inara and her morbid cargo.
The person seems to be aware that something is up, and of your effort, though they have no way of knowing what, specifically. They cooperatively keep their eyes on the beautiful landscape downhill and onwards though the corner of their mouth forms a smile they try unsuccessfully to smooth back to a pleasant, but unspecific expression.
"You either know each other very well, or have a secondary signal I cannot decipher... that seemed more communication than words. It intrigues me. In fact, many, many things about your world intrigue me. I would like to understand, sometime. The systems, many of them make sense, but some I don't quite understand, though that may be from a lack of context or exposure."
"One is the divide. Currency is not an issue for the everyday elf. Elves work, partially out of the desire for a purpose, and for the good of the entire community, selflessly."
"But elves live a very long time. Why is the divide determined in their youth, and then honored for the rest of time? Should the punishment for a bad, unfortunately timed few years in their childhood be centuries of lack of opportunity, and a social divide, not in their favor?"
"What is the incentive to work a job you hate? The worse backlash of refusal?"
"I may be missing something. I do not mean to accuse the elves of structural injustice."
They look up briefly to the sky, as they often do, but turn their eyes again to the slopes quickly. When Inara reappears, they start down rather eagerly.
We reach Inara.
“Yes, Inara and I do communicate a little differently to many other elves. Call it a side effect of three and a half centuries of friendship.”
She just twitches one eyebrow slightly at me as she peels back the canvas so the stranger can see the entirety of the banshee within the ice.
I don’t look.
As a physician I have a stronger disposition than most elves, who cope very poorly with blood and pain and death generally, though it does not at all mean I am immune to the sorrow of mortality.
“As for the rest… you’re not as far of the mark as you might think. But we are growing past the divide we once clung to. It’s a long story, enough to fill nine and two half books to date, and while we aren’t there yet, there have certainly been some significant shifts in our cultural structure in the last several years.”
“Enough, Elwin,” Inara groans. She was such a hot-headed young elf when we met, always willing to throw her lot in with the movers and shakers of our younger years, but she has kept her head well down through the unfolding chaos more recently. She has more to lose these days. “I don’t deny it’s overdue, but many of our society are finding the pace of the change - and its cost - to be a lot. More than this poor soul needs to know.”
She strokes the ice cylinder. “Goodbye, Siren,” she whispers to the creature inside. To the stranger, “Take good care of her.”
She says nothing to me before she retreats back inside the Sanctuary. But, oh, how I’m sure I’ll be hearing a lot from her on this matter later.
“Our secret,” I sigh as I watch the secret door click seamlessly back int the mountainside behind Inara, “is not that we are ever forced to do a job we hate. Sometimes we just hate the price we pay for doing the job we love.”
I pick up the strap of the canvas sling and hand it to the stranger and then pull out my pathfinder.
“Where to now, or is this where we part ways?”
"Siren." They repeat, gazing at the frozen banshee in awe. "Her name was Siren."
"Thank you immensely. I am in your debt," they say to Inara.
They take the canvas sling, putting it over the shoulder not already occupied by their own leather satchel.
"We ought to go someplace where we can discuss repayment. The Healing Centre would suffice, unless you have a better idea. I will again retreat for the Leap, but will return upon stability."
They pause a moment before retreating, seeming to have more to say, before deciding that it can wait. Again the eyes return to brown. They draw their arms closer to themself, not as immune to the cold as the yellow-eyed maker.
I flick my pathfinder to the Healing Centre facet as asked, though I am unsure what on earth they mean by repayment. Looking at the brown-eyed version of the stranger and the straps over both shoulders, I link my arm with theirs on the same side as the leather satchel. It wouldn’t do to trap the ice between two sources of body heat.
It is harder to cast a beam now than before. The daylight has faded substantially since we arrived. I am grateful for being a Flasher - I gather enough light to cast my beam and we step into it quickly.
Once back at my Healing Centre I shed my cloak but decide I can cope with not changing out of the insulated under layer a little longer so as not to delay whatever conversation comes next. I have no means here to keep the ice solid, and I don’t want to damage Siren by allowing her to thaw prematurely.
“I didn’t enter this venture with a view to receiving payment for it,” I start to say as I drop into my chair, but then think to check which version of the stranger I’m even speaking to. I’ve gotten used to conversing with the articulate yellow-eyed version, but I haven’t stopped to look and see if they have resurfaced after their brown-eyed ward made the light leap with me.
Their eyes are closed when I look up, so perhaps they are still transitioning, or maybe focusing on changing their crystalline outfit back to something cooler, so I take a sip from the bottle of Youth on my desk and absently pat Bullhorn as I wait. He doesn’t react to Siren, given she is already dead, but the stranger still seems to unsettle him just as much as earlier.
The person changes back to their usual red suit, with black slacks and black dress shoes. They do so less theatrically as earlier, in more of a manner where a line of crystal runs over through their clothes, leaving it changed in its wake. To say Bullhorn is unsettled is an understatement; Bullhorn is at the point just before a howl. It's not quite so bad as a howl, but almost. The ward must be deteriorating somehow, quickly.
But then the eyes open, still in the swirl of color to yellow, and he calms down. The stranger hands you another crystal; this one has the opposite effect of the one before. It keeps you cool. With calm urgency, they clasp crystal bands around each of their wrists, which pulse faintly, and slide a third band around their head in the manner of a crown. A small insignia of something you don't quite recognize rests right above their forehead.
"I can handle quite a bit of knowledge." They laugh. "But it can wait, if that is best. I can do more of my own research."
"On the subject of your repayment." They sit down, cross-legged, pulling the ice cylinder onto their lap. "What are things that you appreciate? I have access to many things, things from other worlds, too. I could give you a collection of seeds from one of the tamer worlds; I've found many of these have value in affecting the physiology of living beings. I could provide you with my notes on them, as well. However, it is rude to assume that all of your cares lie in medicine. What would you like?"
“What ails your ward?” I ask, brushing aside the discussion of repayment for the moment.
If only the ward can transport between places, then their health is of great importance - the whole business procuring Siren for their world rests on it.
"They don't cling to their own consciousness very tightly. They are not assertive and submit too easily and they are on the verge of losing it." They lift their arms, showing the arm-bands. "These are a preventative measure- putting them in stasis, rather than decline, until I can get them to their dwelling to recover. They've spent too long on my quests, and think little for themselves despite my encouragement. My act of taking control so long today did not help. After this I will see to it that they have a long rest, especially from my influence."
They sigh.
"They are new. I sent them out too soon, before they could really develop."
“Is there anything I can do to support their recovery, or aid their tethering to their consciousness? I have many physical remedies here, and several psychoactive ones which I use sparingly.”
Well, I’d used them sparingly most of my career, anyway. Sophie and her gang’s exploits had upped their frequency somewhat in the last few years, though mainly the ones that induce sleep and suppress nightmares rather than ones which modify consciousness.
“Or we could postpone our discussion of trade until they are stronger?” I suggest. “I don’t want this to be in vain. That banshee in your lap is the only option for you to obtain one for your world. There is none other I could offer if the specimen - if Siren - becomes damaged.”
"They have no need to traverse more worlds before Siren is safely where she ought to be."
They reach forward into the bag, placing their hands on either side of the cylinder, and crystal slowly spreads throughout it until the cylinder is nothing more than crystal. It looks like it might have been hacked out of a pillar. It glitters, and bends the light inside of it into shapes. Siren lying on a table as several hands assess her, various parts turning to crystal and then back to flesh, before she is placed carefully in a circle where several lights are beamed on her; strange ones, seemingly swirling about like smoke forced to follow another thing's laws of physics, and she awakens, sluggishly. You only see all of this if you watch.
"I do not think your support is required, not to deny that you likely could. This is an issue with a clear cause and a logical solution. They will be alright, given time, space, and as much encouragement as I can give while also giving them space."
"You could also speak to my ward of this, if you prefer their own firsthand account."
"I wonder, though; are elves naturally long-lasting, or is it the work of your drink?"
They ask curiously. They have no indication of wanting the drink, they simply seem curious.
“I think stasis might be best place for your ward for now,” I say, mollified by the strangers confidence that the ward’s affliction has an achievable remedy.
My eyes trace the ministrations being rendered upon Siren. They make no sense to me. I can’t tell if I am seeing the present, and she has already been teleported away and reanimated before my eyes, or if I see the future as it will certainly unfold - or, if I am merely seeing what is intended (or hoped) for her.
As I watch, my had strays absently to the bottle of Youth again for another mouthful, when the stranger asks about it.
I frown. “Both, I suppose,” I muse. “We can certainly endure centuries without it; I don’t know if any of those who are millennia old have gone without. But it optimally supports all of our cellular functions, so even if it doesn’t add to our longevity, it ensures our bodies function at our peak throughout our entire span of years.”
My fingers drum against the desk. “Your seeds,” I ask, deciding that if they are intent on repaying me for my assistance then I will consider it a trade rather than payment. “I am not just a physician by profession; I am a physician by passion. I am very curious to know about their form and their medicinal effects, though I worry about introducing a new species to this world. Consequences could be… unforeseen. It would also be challenging to explain the plants’ provenance to the Council, should they ever become aware of what them.”
I break my eyes away from images of Siren taking tentative nibbles of some kind of food and lock my eyes to the stranger. “You’ve integrated species from many planets, so you’ve told me. Can you advise, then, how I could diversify my medicinal options yet maintain this biome’s integrity?”
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
"The vessel is very much a blueprint, which I often recreate entirely. Aged flesh is often replaced. Whatever the cause of death was, is remedied, often by replacing the organs that gave out in old age. I expect quite a bit of longevity, since I keep them carefully and continue to do this as necessary. The process is painless, as well. Life force itself is eternal as long as the vessel is fit to hold it."
I see Inara’s brain ticking over, and am glad of the warm crystal the stranger handed me. We could be here a while.
“So, theoretically, you could not only resurrect a banshee but make it immortal? Assuming you continue replenishing degraded organs?”
"Yes, in theory. Assuming I continue to have access to replacement biotic material, and I continue to be proactive. Both of which are likely."
Inara starts to ask another question but I cut her off the same way she cut me off earlier, throwing her own words back at her.
“Save your questions; it’s too cold out here for that. Cut to the point - will you provide the banshee or not?”
There is a flash in her eyes as she turns to me, but I have played with that fire before and know she won’t actually burn me.
Much, anyway.
She hesitates again, still torn by her duty to maintain a complete catalog of species. But I know she’s already made up her mind. It’s not like we asked for the alicorn specimen; a banshee is a fairly low risk gap while awaiting a replacement, given the healthy and relatively genetically diverse population of them across the Lost Cities.
“Do you need it thawed or does a block of ice containing your banshee popsicle work for you?”
"A block of ice popsicle works," they say, hiding laughter behind one gloved hand.
Inara nods, relieved. It is quicker this way. She projects her voice into my head again.
“We’re already breaking several laws here, but I’d still rather not show off the catalog. Can you do some fancy light bending to keep it hidden as I enter?”
“Flasher 101,” I scoff silently in my own head, assuming Inara is still in there to hear it. Out loud, I hear her snort, confirming she heard me. The stranger gives her a funny look.
I turn to them. “This is the part where we admire that view you remarked on earlier,” I suggest, and I pointedly turn my body so I am facing downhill and out over the cliffs. They copy my positioning.
For all my boasting, I haven’t practiced large scale scenic light bending in quite some time. It isn’t a skill I need routinely in my Healing Centre. But I put my hands behind me as though clasped while admiring the snowy vista. Instead, I am concentrating very hard behind me, sensing the waves of light and manipulating them subtly so they refract an unchanged image back down the hill just in case the stranger turns around while Inara is interacting with the permanent Flasher-installed visual protection field surrounding the catalog.
I am starting to tire from the effort and wondering how much longer she will take when she light leaps to the arrival point just slightly further down the hill from us. She hefts a canvas sling with a cylinder of ice in it, big enough for the mortal remains of the banshee. Relieved, I let my illusion dissipate behind us as the stranger and I both head down towards Inara and her morbid cargo.
The person seems to be aware that something is up, and of your effort, though they have no way of knowing what, specifically. They cooperatively keep their eyes on the beautiful landscape downhill and onwards though the corner of their mouth forms a smile they try unsuccessfully to smooth back to a pleasant, but unspecific expression.
"You either know each other very well, or have a secondary signal I cannot decipher... that seemed more communication than words. It intrigues me. In fact, many, many things about your world intrigue me. I would like to understand, sometime. The systems, many of them make sense, but some I don't quite understand, though that may be from a lack of context or exposure."
"One is the divide. Currency is not an issue for the everyday elf. Elves work, partially out of the desire for a purpose, and for the good of the entire community, selflessly."
"But elves live a very long time. Why is the divide determined in their youth, and then honored for the rest of time? Should the punishment for a bad, unfortunately timed few years in their childhood be centuries of lack of opportunity, and a social divide, not in their favor?"
"What is the incentive to work a job you hate? The worse backlash of refusal?"
"I may be missing something. I do not mean to accuse the elves of structural injustice."
They look up briefly to the sky, as they often do, but turn their eyes again to the slopes quickly. When Inara reappears, they start down rather eagerly.
We reach Inara.
“Yes, Inara and I do communicate a little differently to many other elves. Call it a side effect of three and a half centuries of friendship.”
She just twitches one eyebrow slightly at me as she peels back the canvas so the stranger can see the entirety of the banshee within the ice.
I don’t look.
As a physician I have a stronger disposition than most elves, who cope very poorly with blood and pain and death generally, though it does not at all mean I am immune to the sorrow of mortality.
“As for the rest… you’re not as far of the mark as you might think. But we are growing past the divide we once clung to. It’s a long story, enough to fill nine and two half books to date, and while we aren’t there yet, there have certainly been some significant shifts in our cultural structure in the last several years.”
“Enough, Elwin,” Inara groans. She was such a hot-headed young elf when we met, always willing to throw her lot in with the movers and shakers of our younger years, but she has kept her head well down through the unfolding chaos more recently. She has more to lose these days. “I don’t deny it’s overdue, but many of our society are finding the pace of the change - and its cost - to be a lot. More than this poor soul needs to know.”
She strokes the ice cylinder. “Goodbye, Siren,” she whispers to the creature inside. To the stranger, “Take good care of her.”
She says nothing to me before she retreats back inside the Sanctuary. But, oh, how I’m sure I’ll be hearing a lot from her on this matter later.
“Our secret,” I sigh as I watch the secret door click seamlessly back int the mountainside behind Inara, “is not that we are ever forced to do a job we hate. Sometimes we just hate the price we pay for doing the job we love.”
I pick up the strap of the canvas sling and hand it to the stranger and then pull out my pathfinder.
“Where to now, or is this where we part ways?”
"Siren." They repeat, gazing at the frozen banshee in awe. "Her name was Siren."
"Thank you immensely. I am in your debt," they say to Inara.
They take the canvas sling, putting it over the shoulder not already occupied by their own leather satchel.
"We ought to go someplace where we can discuss repayment. The Healing Centre would suffice, unless you have a better idea. I will again retreat for the Leap, but will return upon stability."
They pause a moment before retreating, seeming to have more to say, before deciding that it can wait. Again the eyes return to brown. They draw their arms closer to themself, not as immune to the cold as the yellow-eyed maker.
I flick my pathfinder to the Healing Centre facet as asked, though I am unsure what on earth they mean by repayment. Looking at the brown-eyed version of the stranger and the straps over both shoulders, I link my arm with theirs on the same side as the leather satchel. It wouldn’t do to trap the ice between two sources of body heat.
It is harder to cast a beam now than before. The daylight has faded substantially since we arrived. I am grateful for being a Flasher - I gather enough light to cast my beam and we step into it quickly.
Once back at my Healing Centre I shed my cloak but decide I can cope with not changing out of the insulated under layer a little longer so as not to delay whatever conversation comes next. I have no means here to keep the ice solid, and I don’t want to damage Siren by allowing her to thaw prematurely.
“I didn’t enter this venture with a view to receiving payment for it,” I start to say as I drop into my chair, but then think to check which version of the stranger I’m even speaking to. I’ve gotten used to conversing with the articulate yellow-eyed version, but I haven’t stopped to look and see if they have resurfaced after their brown-eyed ward made the light leap with me.
Their eyes are closed when I look up, so perhaps they are still transitioning, or maybe focusing on changing their crystalline outfit back to something cooler, so I take a sip from the bottle of Youth on my desk and absently pat Bullhorn as I wait. He doesn’t react to Siren, given she is already dead, but the stranger still seems to unsettle him just as much as earlier.
The person changes back to their usual red suit, with black slacks and black dress shoes. They do so less theatrically as earlier, in more of a manner where a line of crystal runs over through their clothes, leaving it changed in its wake. To say Bullhorn is unsettled is an understatement; Bullhorn is at the point just before a howl. It's not quite so bad as a howl, but almost. The ward must be deteriorating somehow, quickly.
But then the eyes open, still in the swirl of color to yellow, and he calms down. The stranger hands you another crystal; this one has the opposite effect of the one before. It keeps you cool. With calm urgency, they clasp crystal bands around each of their wrists, which pulse faintly, and slide a third band around their head in the manner of a crown. A small insignia of something you don't quite recognize rests right above their forehead.
"I can handle quite a bit of knowledge." They laugh. "But it can wait, if that is best. I can do more of my own research."
"On the subject of your repayment." They sit down, cross-legged, pulling the ice cylinder onto their lap. "What are things that you appreciate? I have access to many things, things from other worlds, too. I could give you a collection of seeds from one of the tamer worlds; I've found many of these have value in affecting the physiology of living beings. I could provide you with my notes on them, as well. However, it is rude to assume that all of your cares lie in medicine. What would you like?"
“What ails your ward?” I ask, brushing aside the discussion of repayment for the moment.
If only the ward can transport between places, then their health is of great importance - the whole business procuring Siren for their world rests on it.
"They don't cling to their own consciousness very tightly. They are not assertive and submit too easily and they are on the verge of losing it." They lift their arms, showing the arm-bands. "These are a preventative measure- putting them in stasis, rather than decline, until I can get them to their dwelling to recover. They've spent too long on my quests, and think little for themselves despite my encouragement. My act of taking control so long today did not help. After this I will see to it that they have a long rest, especially from my influence."
They sigh.
"They are new. I sent them out too soon, before they could really develop."
“Is there anything I can do to support their recovery, or aid their tethering to their consciousness? I have many physical remedies here, and several psychoactive ones which I use sparingly.”
Well, I’d used them sparingly most of my career, anyway. Sophie and her gang’s exploits had upped their frequency somewhat in the last few years, though mainly the ones that induce sleep and suppress nightmares rather than ones which modify consciousness.
“Or we could postpone our discussion of trade until they are stronger?” I suggest. “I don’t want this to be in vain. That banshee in your lap is the only option for you to obtain one for your world. There is none other I could offer if the specimen - if Siren - becomes damaged.”
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
"The vessel is very much a blueprint, which I often recreate entirely. Aged flesh is often replaced. Whatever the cause of death was, is remedied, often by replacing the organs that gave out in old age. I expect quite a bit of longevity, since I keep them carefully and continue to do this as necessary. The process is painless, as well. Life force itself is eternal as long as the vessel is fit to hold it."
I see Inara’s brain ticking over, and am glad of the warm crystal the stranger handed me. We could be here a while.
“So, theoretically, you could not only resurrect a banshee but make it immortal? Assuming you continue replenishing degraded organs?”
"Yes, in theory. Assuming I continue to have access to replacement biotic material, and I continue to be proactive. Both of which are likely."
Inara starts to ask another question but I cut her off the same way she cut me off earlier, throwing her own words back at her.
“Save your questions; it’s too cold out here for that. Cut to the point - will you provide the banshee or not?”
There is a flash in her eyes as she turns to me, but I have played with that fire before and know she won’t actually burn me.
Much, anyway.
She hesitates again, still torn by her duty to maintain a complete catalog of species. But I know she’s already made up her mind. It’s not like we asked for the alicorn specimen; a banshee is a fairly low risk gap while awaiting a replacement, given the healthy and relatively genetically diverse population of them across the Lost Cities.
“Do you need it thawed or does a block of ice containing your banshee popsicle work for you?”
"A block of ice popsicle works," they say, hiding laughter behind one gloved hand.
Inara nods, relieved. It is quicker this way. She projects her voice into my head again.
“We’re already breaking several laws here, but I’d still rather not show off the catalog. Can you do some fancy light bending to keep it hidden as I enter?”
“Flasher 101,” I scoff silently in my own head, assuming Inara is still in there to hear it. Out loud, I hear her snort, confirming she heard me. The stranger gives her a funny look.
I turn to them. “This is the part where we admire that view you remarked on earlier,” I suggest, and I pointedly turn my body so I am facing downhill and out over the cliffs. They copy my positioning.
For all my boasting, I haven’t practiced large scale scenic light bending in quite some time. It isn’t a skill I need routinely in my Healing Centre. But I put my hands behind me as though clasped while admiring the snowy vista. Instead, I am concentrating very hard behind me, sensing the waves of light and manipulating them subtly so they refract an unchanged image back down the hill just in case the stranger turns around while Inara is interacting with the permanent Flasher-installed visual protection field surrounding the catalog.
I am starting to tire from the effort and wondering how much longer she will take when she light leaps to the arrival point just slightly further down the hill from us. She hefts a canvas sling with a cylinder of ice in it, big enough for the mortal remains of the banshee. Relieved, I let my illusion dissipate behind us as the stranger and I both head down towards Inara and her morbid cargo.
The person seems to be aware that something is up, and of your effort, though they have no way of knowing what, specifically. They cooperatively keep their eyes on the beautiful landscape downhill and onwards though the corner of their mouth forms a smile they try unsuccessfully to smooth back to a pleasant, but unspecific expression.
"You either know each other very well, or have a secondary signal I cannot decipher... that seemed more communication than words. It intrigues me. In fact, many, many things about your world intrigue me. I would like to understand, sometime. The systems, many of them make sense, but some I don't quite understand, though that may be from a lack of context or exposure."
"One is the divide. Currency is not an issue for the everyday elf. Elves work, partially out of the desire for a purpose, and for the good of the entire community, selflessly."
"But elves live a very long time. Why is the divide determined in their youth, and then honored for the rest of time? Should the punishment for a bad, unfortunately timed few years in their childhood be centuries of lack of opportunity, and a social divide, not in their favor?"
"What is the incentive to work a job you hate? The worse backlash of refusal?"
"I may be missing something. I do not mean to accuse the elves of structural injustice."
They look up briefly to the sky, as they often do, but turn their eyes again to the slopes quickly. When Inara reappears, they start down rather eagerly.
We reach Inara.
“Yes, Inara and I do communicate a little differently to many other elves. Call it a side effect of three and a half centuries of friendship.”
She just twitches one eyebrow slightly at me as she peels back the canvas so the stranger can see the entirety of the banshee within the ice.
I don’t look.
As a physician I have a stronger disposition than most elves, who cope very poorly with blood and pain and death generally, though it does not at all mean I am immune to the sorrow of mortality.
“As for the rest… you’re not as far of the mark as you might think. But we are growing past the divide we once clung to. It’s a long story, enough to fill nine and two half books to date, and while we aren’t there yet, there have certainly been some significant shifts in our cultural structure in the last several years.”
“Enough, Elwin,” Inara groans. She was such a hot-headed young elf when we met, always willing to throw her lot in with the movers and shakers of our younger years, but she has kept her head well down through the unfolding chaos more recently. She has more to lose these days. “I don’t deny it’s overdue, but many of our society are finding the pace of the change - and its cost - to be a lot. More than this poor soul needs to know.”
She strokes the ice cylinder. “Goodbye, Siren,” she whispers to the creature inside. To the stranger, “Take good care of her.”
She says nothing to me before she retreats back inside the Sanctuary. But, oh, how I’m sure I’ll be hearing a lot from her on this matter later.
“Our secret,” I sigh as I watch the secret door click seamlessly back int the mountainside behind Inara, “is not that we are ever forced to do a job we hate. Sometimes we just hate the price we pay for doing the job we love.”
I pick up the strap of the canvas sling and hand it to the stranger and then pull out my pathfinder.
“Where to now, or is this where we part ways?”
"Siren." They repeat, gazing at the frozen banshee in awe. "Her name was Siren."
"Thank you immensely. I am in your debt," they say to Inara.
They take the canvas sling, putting it over the shoulder not already occupied by their own leather satchel.
"We ought to go someplace where we can discuss repayment. The Healing Centre would suffice, unless you have a better idea. I will again retreat for the Leap, but will return upon stability."
They pause a moment before retreating, seeming to have more to say, before deciding that it can wait. Again the eyes return to brown. They draw their arms closer to themself, not as immune to the cold as the yellow-eyed maker.
I flick my pathfinder to the Healing Centre facet as asked, though I am unsure what on earth they mean by repayment. Looking at the brown-eyed version of the stranger and the straps over both shoulders, I link my arm with theirs on the same side as the leather satchel. It wouldn’t do to trap the ice between two sources of body heat.
It is harder to cast a beam now than before. The daylight has faded substantially since we arrived. I am grateful for being a Flasher - I gather enough light to cast my beam and we step into it quickly.
Once back at my Healing Centre I shed my cloak but decide I can cope with not changing out of the insulated under layer a little longer so as not to delay whatever conversation comes next. I have no means here to keep the ice solid, and I don’t want to damage Siren by allowing her to thaw prematurely.
“I didn’t enter this venture with a view to receiving payment for it,” I start to say as I drop into my chair, but then think to check which version of the stranger I’m even speaking to. I’ve gotten used to conversing with the articulate yellow-eyed version, but I haven’t stopped to look and see if they have resurfaced after their brown-eyed ward made the light leap with me.
Their eyes are closed when I look up, so perhaps they are still transitioning, or maybe focusing on changing their crystalline outfit back to something cooler, so I take a sip from the bottle of Youth on my desk and absently pat Bullhorn as I wait. He doesn’t react to Siren, given she is already dead, but the stranger still seems to unsettle him just as much as earlier.
The person changes back to their usual red suit, with black slacks and black dress shoes. They do so less theatrically as earlier, in more of a manner where a line of crystal runs over through their clothes, leaving it changed in its wake. To say Bullhorn is unsettled is an understatement; Bullhorn is at the point just before a howl. It's not quite so bad as a howl, but almost. The ward must be deteriorating somehow, quickly.
But then the eyes open, still in the swirl of color to yellow, and he calms down. The stranger hands you another crystal; this one has the opposite effect of the one before. It keeps you cool. With calm urgency, they clasp crystal bands around each of their wrists, which pulse faintly, and slide a third band around their head in the manner of a crown. A small insignia of something you don't quite recognize rests right above their forehead.
"I can handle quite a bit of knowledge." They laugh. "But it can wait, if that is best. I can do more of my own research."
"On the subject of your repayment." They sit down, cross-legged, pulling the ice cylinder onto their lap. "What are things that you appreciate? I have access to many things, things from other worlds, too. I could give you a collection of seeds from one of the tamer worlds; I've found many of these have value in affecting the physiology of living beings. I could provide you with my notes on them, as well. However, it is rude to assume that all of your cares lie in medicine. What would you like?"
“What ails your ward?” I ask, brushing aside the discussion of repayment for the moment.
If only the ward can transport between places, then their health is of great importance - the whole business procuring Siren for their world rests on it.
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
"The vessel is very much a blueprint, which I often recreate entirely. Aged flesh is often replaced. Whatever the cause of death was, is remedied, often by replacing the organs that gave out in old age. I expect quite a bit of longevity, since I keep them carefully and continue to do this as necessary. The process is painless, as well. Life force itself is eternal as long as the vessel is fit to hold it."
I see Inara’s brain ticking over, and am glad of the warm crystal the stranger handed me. We could be here a while.
“So, theoretically, you could not only resurrect a banshee but make it immortal? Assuming you continue replenishing degraded organs?”
"Yes, in theory. Assuming I continue to have access to replacement biotic material, and I continue to be proactive. Both of which are likely."
Inara starts to ask another question but I cut her off the same way she cut me off earlier, throwing her own words back at her.
“Save your questions; it’s too cold out here for that. Cut to the point - will you provide the banshee or not?”
There is a flash in her eyes as she turns to me, but I have played with that fire before and know she won’t actually burn me.
Much, anyway.
She hesitates again, still torn by her duty to maintain a complete catalog of species. But I know she’s already made up her mind. It’s not like we asked for the alicorn specimen; a banshee is a fairly low risk gap while awaiting a replacement, given the healthy and relatively genetically diverse population of them across the Lost Cities.
“Do you need it thawed or does a block of ice containing your banshee popsicle work for you?”
"A block of ice popsicle works," they say, hiding laughter behind one gloved hand.
Inara nods, relieved. It is quicker this way. She projects her voice into my head again.
“We’re already breaking several laws here, but I’d still rather not show off the catalog. Can you do some fancy light bending to keep it hidden as I enter?”
“Flasher 101,” I scoff silently in my own head, assuming Inara is still in there to hear it. Out loud, I hear her snort, confirming she heard me. The stranger gives her a funny look.
I turn to them. “This is the part where we admire that view you remarked on earlier,” I suggest, and I pointedly turn my body so I am facing downhill and out over the cliffs. They copy my positioning.
For all my boasting, I haven’t practiced large scale scenic light bending in quite some time. It isn’t a skill I need routinely in my Healing Centre. But I put my hands behind me as though clasped while admiring the snowy vista. Instead, I am concentrating very hard behind me, sensing the waves of light and manipulating them subtly so they refract an unchanged image back down the hill just in case the stranger turns around while Inara is interacting with the permanent Flasher-installed visual protection field surrounding the catalog.
I am starting to tire from the effort and wondering how much longer she will take when she light leaps to the arrival point just slightly further down the hill from us. She hefts a canvas sling with a cylinder of ice in it, big enough for the mortal remains of the banshee. Relieved, I let my illusion dissipate behind us as the stranger and I both head down towards Inara and her morbid cargo.
The person seems to be aware that something is up, and of your effort, though they have no way of knowing what, specifically. They cooperatively keep their eyes on the beautiful landscape downhill and onwards though the corner of their mouth forms a smile they try unsuccessfully to smooth back to a pleasant, but unspecific expression.
"You either know each other very well, or have a secondary signal I cannot decipher... that seemed more communication than words. It intrigues me. In fact, many, many things about your world intrigue me. I would like to understand, sometime. The systems, many of them make sense, but some I don't quite understand, though that may be from a lack of context or exposure."
"One is the divide. Currency is not an issue for the everyday elf. Elves work, partially out of the desire for a purpose, and for the good of the entire community, selflessly."
"But elves live a very long time. Why is the divide determined in their youth, and then honored for the rest of time? Should the punishment for a bad, unfortunately timed few years in their childhood be centuries of lack of opportunity, and a social divide, not in their favor?"
"What is the incentive to work a job you hate? The worse backlash of refusal?"
"I may be missing something. I do not mean to accuse the elves of structural injustice."
They look up briefly to the sky, as they often do, but turn their eyes again to the slopes quickly. When Inara reappears, they start down rather eagerly.
We reach Inara.
“Yes, Inara and I do communicate a little differently to many other elves. Call it a side effect of three and a half centuries of friendship.”
She just twitches one eyebrow slightly at me as she peels back the canvas so the stranger can see the entirety of the banshee within the ice.
I don’t look.
As a physician I have a stronger disposition than most elves, who cope very poorly with blood and pain and death generally, though it does not at all mean I am immune to the sorrow of mortality.
“As for the rest… you’re not as far of the mark as you might think. But we are growing past the divide we once clung to. It’s a long story, enough to fill nine and two half books to date, and while we aren’t there yet, there have certainly been some significant shifts in our cultural structure in the last several years.”
“Enough, Elwin,” Inara groans. She was such a hot-headed young elf when we met, always willing to throw her lot in with the movers and shakers of our younger years, but she has kept her head well down through the unfolding chaos more recently. She has more to lose these days. “I don’t deny it’s overdue, but many of our society are finding the pace of the change - and its cost - to be a lot. More than this poor soul needs to know.”
She strokes the ice cylinder. “Goodbye, Siren,” she whispers to the creature inside. To the stranger, “Take good care of her.”
She says nothing to me before she retreats back inside the Sanctuary. But, oh, how I’m sure I’ll be hearing a lot from her on this matter later.
“Our secret,” I sigh as I watch the secret door click seamlessly back int the mountainside behind Inara, “is not that we are ever forced to do a job we hate. Sometimes we just hate the price we pay for doing the job we love.”
I pick up the strap of the canvas sling and hand it to the stranger and then pull out my pathfinder.
“Where to now, or is this where we part ways?”
"Siren." They repeat, gazing at the frozen banshee in awe. "Her name was Siren."
"Thank you immensely. I am in your debt," they say to Inara.
They take the canvas sling, putting it over the shoulder not already occupied by their own leather satchel.
"We ought to go someplace where we can discuss repayment. The Healing Centre would suffice, unless you have a better idea. I will again retreat for the Leap, but will return upon stability."
They pause a moment before retreating, seeming to have more to say, before deciding that it can wait. Again the eyes return to brown. They draw their arms closer to themself, not as immune to the cold as the yellow-eyed maker.
I flick my pathfinder to the Healing Centre facet as asked, though I am unsure what on earth they mean by repayment. Looking at the brown-eyed version of the stranger and the straps over both shoulders, I link my arm with theirs on the same side as the leather satchel. It wouldn’t do to trap the ice between two sources of body heat.
It is harder to cast a beam now than before. The daylight has faded substantially since we arrived. I am grateful for being a Flasher - I gather enough light to cast my beam and we step into it quickly.
Once back at my Healing Centre I shed my cloak but decide I can cope with not changing out of the insulated under layer a little longer so as not to delay whatever conversation comes next. I have no means here to keep the ice solid, and I don’t want to damage Siren by allowing her to thaw prematurely.
“I didn’t enter this venture with a view to receiving payment for it,” I start to say as I drop into my chair, but then think to check which version of the stranger I’m even speaking to. I’ve gotten used to conversing with the articulate yellow-eyed version, but I haven’t stopped to look and see if they have resurfaced after their brown-eyed ward made the light leap with me.
Their eyes are closed when I look up, so perhaps they are still transitioning, or maybe focusing on changing their crystalline outfit back to something cooler, so I take a sip from the bottle of Youth on my desk and absently pat Bullhorn as I wait. He doesn’t react to Siren, given she is already dead, but the stranger still seems to unsettle him just as much as earlier.
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
"The vessel is very much a blueprint, which I often recreate entirely. Aged flesh is often replaced. Whatever the cause of death was, is remedied, often by replacing the organs that gave out in old age. I expect quite a bit of longevity, since I keep them carefully and continue to do this as necessary. The process is painless, as well. Life force itself is eternal as long as the vessel is fit to hold it."
I see Inara’s brain ticking over, and am glad of the warm crystal the stranger handed me. We could be here a while.
“So, theoretically, you could not only resurrect a banshee but make it immortal? Assuming you continue replenishing degraded organs?”
"Yes, in theory. Assuming I continue to have access to replacement biotic material, and I continue to be proactive. Both of which are likely."
Inara starts to ask another question but I cut her off the same way she cut me off earlier, throwing her own words back at her.
“Save your questions; it’s too cold out here for that. Cut to the point - will you provide the banshee or not?”
There is a flash in her eyes as she turns to me, but I have played with that fire before and know she won’t actually burn me.
Much, anyway.
She hesitates again, still torn by her duty to maintain a complete catalog of species. But I know she’s already made up her mind. It’s not like we asked for the alicorn specimen; a banshee is a fairly low risk gap while awaiting a replacement, given the healthy and relatively genetically diverse population of them across the Lost Cities.
“Do you need it thawed or does a block of ice containing your banshee popsicle work for you?”
"A block of ice popsicle works," they say, hiding laughter behind one gloved hand.
Inara nods, relieved. It is quicker this way. She projects her voice into my head again.
“We’re already breaking several laws here, but I’d still rather not show off the catalog. Can you do some fancy light bending to keep it hidden as I enter?”
“Flasher 101,” I scoff silently in my own head, assuming Inara is still in there to hear it. Out loud, I hear her snort, confirming she heard me. The stranger gives her a funny look.
I turn to them. “This is the part where we admire that view you remarked on earlier,” I suggest, and I pointedly turn my body so I am facing downhill and out over the cliffs. They copy my positioning.
For all my boasting, I haven’t practiced large scale scenic light bending in quite some time. It isn’t a skill I need routinely in my Healing Centre. But I put my hands behind me as though clasped while admiring the snowy vista. Instead, I am concentrating very hard behind me, sensing the waves of light and manipulating them subtly so they refract an unchanged image back down the hill just in case the stranger turns around while Inara is interacting with the permanent Flasher-installed visual protection field surrounding the catalog.
I am starting to tire from the effort and wondering how much longer she will take when she light leaps to the arrival point just slightly further down the hill from us. She hefts a canvas sling with a cylinder of ice in it, big enough for the mortal remains of the banshee. Relieved, I let my illusion dissipate behind us as the stranger and I both head down towards Inara and her morbid cargo.
The person seems to be aware that something is up, and of your effort, though they have no way of knowing what, specifically. They cooperatively keep their eyes on the beautiful landscape downhill and onwards though the corner of their mouth forms a smile they try unsuccessfully to smooth back to a pleasant, but unspecific expression.
"You either know each other very well, or have a secondary signal I cannot decipher... that seemed more communication than words. It intrigues me. In fact, many, many things about your world intrigue me. I would like to understand, sometime. The systems, many of them make sense, but some I don't quite understand, though that may be from a lack of context or exposure."
"One is the divide. Currency is not an issue for the everyday elf. Elves work, partially out of the desire for a purpose, and for the good of the entire community, selflessly."
"But elves live a very long time. Why is the divide determined in their youth, and then honored for the rest of time? Should the punishment for a bad, unfortunately timed few years in their childhood be centuries of lack of opportunity, and a social divide, not in their favor?"
"What is the incentive to work a job you hate? The worse backlash of refusal?"
"I may be missing something. I do not mean to accuse the elves of structural injustice."
They look up briefly to the sky, as they often do, but turn their eyes again to the slopes quickly. When Inara reappears, they start down rather eagerly.
We reach Inara.
“Yes, Inara and I do communicate a little differently to many other elves. Call it a side effect of three and a half centuries of friendship.”
She just twitches one eyebrow slightly at me as she peels back the canvas so the stranger can see the entirety of the banshee within the ice.
I don’t look.
As a physician I have a stronger disposition than most elves, who cope very poorly with blood and pain and death generally, though it does not at all mean I am immune to the sorrow of mortality.
“As for the rest… you’re not as far of the mark as you might think. But we are growing past the divide we once clung to. It’s a long story, enough to fill nine and two half books to date, and while we aren’t there yet, there have certainly been some significant shifts in our cultural structure in the last several years.”
“Enough, Elwin,” Inara groans. She was such a hot-headed young elf when we met, always willing to throw her lot in with the movers and shakers of our younger years, but she has kept her head well down through the unfolding chaos more recently. She has more to lose these days. “I don’t deny it’s overdue, but many of our society are finding the pace of the change - and its cost - to be a lot. More than this poor soul needs to know.”
She strokes the ice cylinder. “Goodbye, Siren,” she whispers to the creature inside. To the stranger, “Take good care of her.”
She says nothing to me before she retreats back inside the Sanctuary. But, oh, how I’m sure I’ll be hearing a lot from her on this matter later.
“Our secret,” I sigh as I watch the secret door click seamlessly back int the mountainside behind Inara, “is not that we are ever forced to do a job we hate. Sometimes we just hate the price we pay for doing the job we love.”
I pick up the strap of the canvas sling and hand it to the stranger and then pull out my pathfinder.
“Where to now, or is this where we part ways?”
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
"The vessel is very much a blueprint, which I often recreate entirely. Aged flesh is often replaced. Whatever the cause of death was, is remedied, often by replacing the organs that gave out in old age. I expect quite a bit of longevity, since I keep them carefully and continue to do this as necessary. The process is painless, as well. Life force itself is eternal as long as the vessel is fit to hold it."
I see Inara’s brain ticking over, and am glad of the warm crystal the stranger handed me. We could be here a while.
“So, theoretically, you could not only resurrect a banshee but make it immortal? Assuming you continue replenishing degraded organs?”
"Yes, in theory. Assuming I continue to have access to replacement biotic material, and I continue to be proactive. Both of which are likely."
Inara starts to ask another question but I cut her off the same way she cut me off earlier, throwing her own words back at her.
“Save your questions; it’s too cold out here for that. Cut to the point - will you provide the banshee or not?”
There is a flash in her eyes as she turns to me, but I have played with that fire before and know she won’t actually burn me.
Much, anyway.
She hesitates again, still torn by her duty to maintain a complete catalog of species. But I know she’s already made up her mind. It’s not like we asked for the alicorn specimen; a banshee is a fairly low risk gap while awaiting a replacement, given the healthy and relatively genetically diverse population of them across the Lost Cities.
“Do you need it thawed or does a block of ice containing your banshee popsicle work for you?”
"A block of ice popsicle works," they say, hiding laughter behind one gloved hand.
Inara nods, relieved. It is quicker this way. She projects her voice into my head again.
“We’re already breaking several laws here, but I’d still rather not show off the catalog. Can you do some fancy light bending to keep it hidden as I enter?”
“Flasher 101,” I scoff silently in my own head, assuming Inara is still in there to hear it. Out loud, I hear her snort, confirming she heard me. The stranger gives her a funny look.
I turn to them. “This is the part where we admire that view you remarked on earlier,” I suggest, and I pointedly turn my body so I am facing downhill and out over the cliffs. They copy my positioning.
For all my boasting, I haven’t practiced large scale scenic light bending in quite some time. It isn’t a skill I need routinely in my Healing Centre. But I put my hands behind me as though clasped while admiring the snowy vista. Instead, I am concentrating very hard behind me, sensing the waves of light and manipulating them subtly so they refract an unchanged image back down the hill just in case the stranger turns around while Inara is interacting with the permanent Flasher-installed visual protection field surrounding the catalog.
I am starting to tire from the effort and wondering how much longer she will take when she light leaps to the arrival point just slightly further down the hill from us. She hefts a canvas sling with a cylinder of ice in it, big enough for the mortal remains of the banshee. Relieved, I let my illusion dissipate behind us as the stranger and I both head down towards Inara and her morbid cargo.
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
"The vessel is very much a blueprint, which I often recreate entirely. Aged flesh is often replaced. Whatever the cause of death was, is remedied, often by replacing the organs that gave out in old age. I expect quite a bit of longevity, since I keep them carefully and continue to do this as necessary. The process is painless, as well. Life force itself is eternal as long as the vessel is fit to hold it."
I see Inara’s brain ticking over, and am glad of the warm crystal the stranger handed me. We could be here a while.
“So, theoretically, you could not only resurrect a banshee but make it immortal? Assuming you continue replenishing degraded organs?”
"Yes, in theory. Assuming I continue to have access to replacement biotic material, and I continue to be proactive. Both of which are likely."
Inara starts to ask another question but I cut her off the same way she cut me off earlier, throwing her own words back at her.
“Save your questions; it’s too cold out here for that. Cut to the point - will you provide the banshee or not?”
There is a flash in her eyes as she turns to me, but I have played with that fire before and know she won’t actually burn me.
Much, anyway.
She hesitates again, still torn by her duty to maintain a complete catalog of species. But I know she’s already made up her mind. It’s not like we asked for the alicorn specimen; a banshee is a fairly low risk gap while awaiting a replacement, given the healthy and relatively genetically diverse population of them across the Lost Cities.
“Do you need it thawed or does a block of ice containing your banshee popsicle work for you?”
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
"The vessel is very much a blueprint, which I often recreate entirely. Aged flesh is often replaced. Whatever the cause of death was, is remedied, often by replacing the organs that gave out in old age. I expect quite a bit of longevity, since I keep them carefully and continue to do this as necessary. The process is painless, as well. Life force itself is eternal as long as the vessel is fit to hold it."
I see Inara’s brain ticking over, and am glad of the warm crystal the stranger handed me. We could be here a while.
“So, theoretically, you could not only resurrect a banshee but make it immortal? Assuming you continue replenishing degraded organs?”
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
The person, while you are waiting, passes you a crystal that pulses with warmth to hold or put in your pocket. It warms most of your body upon any skin contact, you find, just enough to stave off the shivering. They do not seem at any point in any discomfort from the temperature.
When Inara tells them to make their case, they fidget with one of their small crystals, flipping it against their palm with their thumb.
"You must understand, I awoke alone in a world made of crystal. I had no body, nor any recollection of my exile there, and for what must have been millennium I wandered there in the manner of a spirit or a puff of wind. It took this long to realize that any manner of change was possible, and even longer to fully understand the methods."
"The crystals that my world was made of can be traded with matter from other worlds. See, I can prove this, here..."
They take up a stone, one slick with frost. Slowly in their hand, it blanches to white, and then it becomes clear crystal, catching the light and glittering madly, as it splits the light and bends it into several colors onto the snow.
A moment later, it starts to slowly regain opacity and color, but this time it is black, and a chunk of charcoal sits in their hand of the same shape, once it is fully formed.
"It took some blind striking around with this before I fully learned how to use it to my benefit; in the expanse of space there is a whole lot of... nothing. But I got lucky quite a few times, and I was able to bring a small beetle to my world. There, I could split my consciousness with it, and walk around amongst the crystals with the body of the beetle. I sent it back to its own world, and tried to escape through it, but the manner of my exile kept me in my world of crystal. I could only be a spectator in its life for many days until I learnt to influence it somewhat, and through it, I brought back materials, trading them for crystals, enough to construct more things of a living sort, and thus walk through the world outside with the feet of another being."
"Finally, I managed to construct the body of a person. Made through patchworked flesh carefully gleaned from those fallen and traded for with crystals. I could bring it to life in my own world by sharing my own consciousness, though I could not bring it out into another world, since my reach outside is not enough to man a whole person alone. I had to continue my experiments with beetles and such."
"I found a way of magic in another world where life force is something shared amongst all beings that can carry it, one where all who had inhabited it had fallen dead of the sickness of the heart, greed, and the wrath borne of envy. The life-magic ran ambient through its soil, hungry for inhabitance and hungry to roam. My creatures transported there could gain their own life, and walk about with thoughts of their own as I spectated."
"They could not return to me, though. I was cursed with phrasing such that no creature together with its own life can be brought to accompany in my own world, or that is what I can discern from the things that I have and have not been able to do. I could transport my wards between other worlds, but not to my own of crystal, not without their life being left behind and I left with only their body."
"After years of more experimentation, though, I learned a way to bring life to creatures I've constructed in my own world by the transporting of life force in trace amounts from the world where it sings, through the crystals, to my own. Those living creatures can never leave my home world, though."
"So, I began to construct ecosystems there. I do careful study to fit them carefully together so that the balance is sustainable, and I have made it a beautiful place with many beautiful creatures, and all that they need with land aplenty to roam. I have many wards in different worlds who search and trade for crystal the things which in their own worlds will not be missed."
"I set a careful rule, though. In all the collecting, in all the gathering, I will kill nothing. No one. My wards, too, are strictly instructed to take utmost care to harm nothing in any world they traverse. This means that I cannot bring creatures while they live to my world, as their life would be left behind. I take only those which are already deceased, and use their bodies again, repairing them, and I give them life anew."
"Life is somewhat fragile on my world. It is carefully constructed. It must be. Every facet of it, is carefully made and studied by myself. It grieves me terribly whenever any of my beloved creations is lost before its time. I give them everything I can, but I am only one being, and sometimes I cannot see an issue before it is too late."
"I learned that a banshee can help with this. A banshee can alert me; though I am attentive myself, I lack the instinct that a banshee has, and can help me better care for the ones I love so dearly."
"I cannot transport a live one to my world. That would be to take it away from its own world. That would be to kill it. If I had one alive, my ward would care for it in its own world until it passed of a natural cause. One that has already passed away, I could take immediately. I would use its design and its flesh to recreate it in my own world, afterwards."
"There, it would be treated with care and reverence, as it would play a crucial role in my world. It would aid in the betterment of care for many others, in a place that I have made beautiful; it would lack for nothing."
"That is my case."
Inara pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. I hear her voice in my head, projected there telepathically. “Oh, Elwin, the strays always seem to find you and you never could help yourself but to collect them!”
I don’t defend myself. I can’t.
Out loud, she looks up at the stranger. Her head cocks to one side just slightly. “I hear your plight, and it’s as far-flung a case as I could’ve hoped to hear. I have just one banshee on ice; I don’t have the means to keep multiples. So my collection would then be incomplete until another unfortunate soul passes away. It’s a huge risk to me - I am sworn to keep this collection secure.”
I think she has stopped at this point, expecting the stranger to respond, though that seems a little unfair to me. What could they possibly respond with? But after a pause, Inara continues.
“Your science intrigues me. The reanimation comes from this life force you’ve discovered on the other world, I get it, but how does it account for the cause of death in the vessel you transplant it into, and what kind of longevity do you expect from it?”
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
The person stands still, no expression crosses their face, though a single tear leaks onto their cheek and is blown in a wild path over the side of their face and beneath the ear flap of their hat before their irises turn again to pale yellow.
"Was the trip uneventful?"
They stare out over the cold landscape, seeming rather wistful.
"The destination is certainly beautiful."
“Yes, as uneventful as could be hoped for.”
I take stock of our surroundings. I haven’t been here in probably two centuries now, but the jagged rocks towering through the snow drifts look just as I remember them. A little way off to our right, the cliff drops away into unseen depths and there is somewhat of a view across the escarpment visible in between the flurries of wispy snow stirred up by the wind. Thankfully, it isn’t actively snowing.
“This is one of the service entries to our Sanctuary. It is monitored; someone will greet us shortly,” I say.
Even as I finish speaking, a slab of rock just ahead swings open on invisible hinges. It is Jurek, keeper of the equines, who has answered the alarm our arrival triggered, though he isn’t the keeper I need.
“Good evening, Jurek, nice to see you,” I greet him. He just stares at me with distrust. He has been mistreated by the Noble class most of his life and as a result never believes that my pleasantness toward him is genuine. “Though I was hoping for Inara, if she is here?”
Jurek grunts in reply, making some kind of gesture with one arm which I hope means we are in luck. He retreats inside. The cliff wall clicks closed behind him and despite knowing exactly where the door is, I still can’t tell it’s there.
We wait for so long I think we have been forgotten. By the time the door opens again little icicles have started to form on the rim of my hood from the condensation of my breath refreezing. This time it is Inara, the veterinary physician.
I go to greet her but she cuts me off.
“Save your niceties, it’s too cold out here for that.” She eyes the stranger. “Cut to the point.”
I nod, wishing I could have delayed longer despite the cold seeping into my bones and the increasingly intense looks the stranger had been giving me as we waited. But I cut to it.
“Do you have any dying banshees currently?”
She looks offended. “All of my charges are in excellent health,” she says, though she knows me well enough to know I didn’t come here to insult her. “What is it you need, Elwin?”
“Not I, but my acquaintance here,” I say, gesturing to the stranger beside me. “They seek to acquire a banshee, but cannot transport a live one. They have means to care for a live one only short term while awaiting its natural demise, though failing that an intact deceased specimen would be viable.”
She knows I am talking about the frozen catalogs warehoused here, hidden from sight only slightly higher up the hill from here by Flashers long past. Every species to ever live in the Sanctuary also has a deceased counterpart in the catalog, preserved in ice, though our Council has long debated whether we can use the cataloged specimens to prevent the Timeline to Extinction being breached. It is one of the great ethical dilemmas of our age; the Timeline ring breached would be catastrophic, but the moral implications of our enacting resurrection are also dire.
And here I am, suggesting we circumvent our Council and all of the centuries of ethical debates they’ve held on this topic to release a specimen to a species I have never encountered from a world I didn’t know existed until today.
Inara studies me intensely for a moment then turns to the stranger. “Make your case,” she offers. At least it’s not an outright no.
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
They raise their arms slightly, and their red suit seems to lose its color. It fades to pink, pale pink, white, and then crystalizes. It would be transparent crystal, but the crystals catch the light, splitting it into colors coursing all through it, as if each tendril of light were trying to take shape but could not, constrained by the brevity of its nature. The sharp crystals along the edges of the sleeves prick the backs of the person's wrists, but no more than a drop of blood hits the floor. It looks warm. Painfully real.
Crystal climbs over their hands, and over their head, too, covering the back of it and nicking their forehead where it makes an edge.
After a moment, the crystal changes to a thick wooled coat and trousers- they look nice, well-woven wool with big brown buttons holding it closed. Their black dress shoes are now short fur-lined boots. Their hands are covered with gloves, and the crystal upon their head softens to a brown, matching ushanka with soft flaps that cover their ears and come down to fasten under their chin.
"I cannot traverse worlds. I will retreat. My ward can make it easily- it does so often. I will return once there is stability."
Their irises change slowly back to brown with a sort of swirling pattern, drawing a sudden disturbing sound from Bullhorn that is not quite a wail, but difficult to brush off, nonetheless. The person stands still, watching Bullhorn with a slow tilt of the head.
“That’s… quite the wardrobe trick,” I comment uncomfortably. I tip a few drops of Wound Wipe onto a medical sponge and ask to dab it on the little nicks in the skin left by the crystalline outfit transformation. The person looks confused but indicates their consent, watching with fascination as the small cuts seal over.
I retreat into my office and shutter the blind on the large window out to the main Healing Centre. I keep a stash of spare clothes and extra layers in my office as I never know when or where I may get a call out to render someone aid. My wardrobe transition is far less sophisticated, but draws no blood as I put on an insulated under layer and then pull my scrubs back on over top. I shrug my thickest cloak on and stuff some thick gloves into my pockets to complete my ensemble and then, overheating already (but knowing I’ll be glad of the warmth soon enough) I return to the main room.
“Let’s go,” I pant, keen to get this grim task over with. “We need to be outside to leap.” I lead the way to my personal exit, bypassing the internal corridors the prodigies must traverse - it wouldn’t do to have the physician hindered by unnecessary distance in leaping to an emergency call, after all.
Outside, I spin my pathfinder to the right facet and hold it up to the fading sun to create a beam. Linking my other arm with the stranger, we step into the shaft of light. I use my concentration to hold a field around them and am pleased to see their form intact as we rematerialise.
The wind is howling eerily like a banshee as we land. I shiver, and not from the cold.
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
"I can cope with cold. I don't know what a light leap is?"
“It’s our main means of transportation. We use a crystal with particular facets that correspond to a place, then we cast a beam of light using the crystal to take us there. It is near instantaneous, just a short burst of warm rushing to get anywhere we have the right crystal to go. But you need to concentrate quite specifically to keep your form together enough that you re-materialise whole at the other end.”
Given the stranger’s unusual patchworked physique and the fact that at least two consciousnesses seem to inhabit the body, I have a gnawing doubt that they would manage.
I cross to a small crate on one of my shelves and rummage through. In amongst various lost or discarded belongings which have accumulated here over the many decades I’ve worked at Foxfire Academy, I find a nexus that a student left behind once their concentration was strong enough to no longer need it. I’d hoped to find two, just to be sure, but one is better than nothing. I’ll just have to share some of my own concentration, too.
“Here,” I say, placing the band around the person’s left wrist, and noting as I do so that their shrivelled hand is looking just slightly plumper already. “This will help you stay intact at the molecular level when we leap, and I’ll take some Fade Fuel with us just in case.”
I appraise their brown suit. It isn’t very thick.
“We’re going to the Himalayas. You’ll need something warmer than that - do you have a warm coat, gloves, and scarf?”
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
"Well, all needs to be intact... it can be preserved, frozen..."
I sigh. I have an idea that should be able to find what they need, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
“How well do you cope with the cold?” I ask. “And do you know if you are able to light leap?”
A person enters your clinic, and stands hardly past the doorway for a good while, looking at the shelves for a good while with unfocused eyes. They wear a brown suit, and carry a bulging leather satchel.
I glance at Bullhorn, who has woken up and is eyeing the newcomer warily, but hasn’t moved or made a noise to indicate the person is critically unwell. Despite the banshee’s silence, something in the way his whiskers twitch tells me he senses that the person needs aid nonetheless.
“Hello, there,” I say, getting up from my desk and smiling. I keep my body language welcoming and I don’t summon any orbs yet (though the light is calling to me).
“How can I help you on this fine morning?”
They step forward slowly, still eyeing the shelves, and then turn their gaze to you.
"What do you know about other worlds?"
Their irises are a deep, warm brown. They seem to almost choke the words out, having difficulty speaking or maintaining eye contact. There is nothing wrong with them visible to the naked eye, other than their strange manner.
The brown eyes make me think of Sophie, who has only left the Healing Centre half an hour ago after a mishap during her morning Agriculture lesson.
“Very little, when there’s still so much to learn about this one, and about how to help and heal with its bounties,” I reply with a small chuckle. We meet in the middle of the room.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask the stranger. “I’m a little concerned by your thick speech and unsteady gaze. Have you suffered a head injury? Come, sit down on the bed and I can run some orbs over you to see the cause and set you back to rights.”
They walk slowly to the bed, and perch upon the edge of it, still looking at the potions and knickknacks upon the shelves. It takes them a good long moment to speak, and when they do, it is halting, as if they need time to consider every phrase.
"I did not visit for my health. Does this world have many unique biotic life forms?"
The person's pulse and breathing rate is very slow. All of their bodily functions seem to be happening very slow. Their body functions fine other than that, though. The flesh seems to be put together of many different samples; they have no scars, but it is in patches and does not quite match. Their bones have the same shape, porous, and include marrow, but are made of crystal. One of their hands seems withered as if roots had been consuming it, but there is no sign of the roots, other than quite a few small welts on their palm, and white marks on their index fingertip, which is the most withered.
It is their mind that is out of place. It is hard to tell what is going on. It seems weakened, or somehow divided, as if their focus is not quite present, and unable to be. They are not at all distressed but they almost pulse with an impulse like a command. Something driving their searching eyes, the halting queries. Their brain works at the slow pace of the pulse of their impulse. There is more of it that could be awakened, but as of the time of diagnosis, it is not.
My orbs seem to throb in time with the slow pulse running through the stranger. This is curious; to influence the very light itself suggests factors not found naturally in elvin physiology - or, indeed, in the physiology of any of the Intelligent Species.
“Life takes many forms here. Their measure of uniqueness depends on how you define it - there are distinct classifications, though there are also genetic, functional, and adaptational similarities.” The stranger does not respond to my answer to their question, so I pose one of my own.
“Why a Healing Centre, if you have no need of healing?” I have noted in my peripheral vision that Bullhorn has not yet relaxed his watch on this person and therefore neither have I. Many who need healing initially deny that they do - particularly those with brown eyes, in my experience!
"Healing Centres contain much information, I have found."
They watch the orbs, reaching out with the more withered hand, which is their left, to attempt to touch one. Their eyes land on Bullhorn.
"Which manner of creature is this, and is it lone, or is it replaceable?"
I let the stranger continue to play with my orb with their withered hand, cataloging the damage to it as I answer.
“A banshee. Mythical by human standards, but flesh and blood mammal nonetheless. He’s the only one I have and he is dear to me, so no, he’s not replaceable, but there are others of his species elsewhere.”
The aforementioned banshee is still on alert, but hasn’t left his bed. I don’t think he’s blinked since the stranger walked in. I trust his senses implicitly after all these years together, so I know there’s still more to this strange being in front of me than I’ve found so far.
“How many other Healing Centres have you been to? And what aid did they administer?”
"Not been... to many. I discovered many interesting... things! Have you, a sample of flesh?"
They tilt their head slowly but sharply at the banshee.
"Does it scream? Where are others found? Ones less dear."
“Less of a scream, more of a wail. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of one, either way!”
I select a salve from the shelves the stranger has been so fascinated by, ignoring the question about procuring a different banshee. I don’t trust to know the motivation behind it.
“I don’t keep flesh in stock, since it has so few medicinal purposes and such a short shelf life. I can, however, repair your own flesh with this regenerative ointment with twice daily application for three days, if my diagnosis is accurate.”
"I do not need ointment. I can meld flesh..." They say, tilting their head the other way. The person did not say it decisively, not altogether unwilling to try the ointment.
"A wail sounds beautiful. Where are others found?" The question comes again. As they become more articulate, their irises change color jarringly from warm brown to a pale, washed-out yellow. The voice is no longer halting.
I try not to stare too obviously at the stranger’s eyes. This was not covered in my textbooks - and I had a great many textbooks in my century-long physician training program.
“The wail is not beautiful, given it means someone is close to death. Haunting describes it better.”
I try not to think of the times I’ve heard Bullhorn wail. Some I saved; some I couldn’t.
I offer the salve a second time.
“We’re generally beyond the use of the flesh of others in our society. Trying my treatment won’t hurt, and even if it’s not wholly successful on your physiology, it will tide you over until you find somewhere more willing to offer you a source of external flesh for your ‘melding’ purposes.” I am kind but firm on this point. Healing one being ought not harm another.
“Banshees are native to the fae moors, and a few packs still persist there in the wild. There are also several living in the Sanctuary, and a couple of specialty breeders where a registered physician may obtain one. But, if I may ask, why the intense fascination?”
"A 'haunting' wail is quite lovely to listen to, and for the purposes of detecting near death in the environment of my kin, in the company of multitudes, and precarious multitudes at that, could be quite useful in timely preventative measures. Many of our endeavors are quite delicate, as bringing life to things that were not naturally born can be a finicky form of magic. We have too many casualties. Banshees would provide at least some manner of warning. The world we are constructing is built of samples of contributions from many, many worlds, and we would like to expand our collection so that we can best create diverse and sustainable ecosystems. To do so we need to study many organisms. Banshees would be a crucial part of ecosystem 56, and for our own purposes, having to do with medical aid and avoidance of crisis, we could keep domesticated ones as well."
They hold out the hand. "Will I be applying it myself, or do you plan to do so?"
I offer them the jar of salve to apply themselves, guiding them as to the right amount to use.
“Your speech seems to have come a long way,” I remark as I supervise the application. It’s the smallest detail out of what they have just told me - mundane in the scheme of what sounds like madness - but it is the one my mind chooses to latch onto while I struggle to process the rest.
Is this being really telling me about whole Frankenstein worlds? I remember Mary writing that book and the initial derision it received on publication from an audience of humans too small-minded back then to take its concepts in stride. I decide not to judge the humans so harshly as I did at the time - right now I feel like the only difference between them and me is scale. They reacted to one creature in a work of fiction. Here I am struggling to know how to react to the potential of an entire world made the same way, and if it weren’t for my own orb readings I’m not sure I’d believe it at all.
They apply the salve very carefully.
"My ward requested assistance."
The pulsing of the impulse detected by the orbs is stronger now, and seemingly more controlled, as if being read from closer to the source.
"You must understand, to sustain the life we have brought to our world, we must propagate many things in careful order. Our world, after all, was hardly more than crystal..."
I screw the lid back onto the salve and put the rest of that jar plus a spare into a small carry bag for the stranger, meaning to send them on their way, but still finding myself intrigued.
“Your ward?” I enquire. “There are children in your society?”
"In a way. I was referring to the faltering newbie who spoke to you a moment ago."
The light calls to me again, but though my fingers feel its presence, I don’t summon any new orbs. This being (or, as seems more likely now, these beings) have piqued my intellectual curiosity, but my compassion remains decorous.
I hear a chime in the distance, reminding me that my Healing Centre sits inside a school - and lunch has just begun. There is often an influx of minor issues during the lunch break, and I can’t begin to know how the stranger/s and any prodigies may react to each other.
Again, my sensibility tells me to send them on their way, so I go to give them the bag of treatments, but my hand only extends most of the way then hovers as I find myself asking another question instead of completing the handover.
“How many are you?”
"I? I am one. I have many wards, though. I am in my own world of crystal, now. My wards traverse the worlds to seek out samples to send home."
They seem more or less spooked by the chime.
"Would you meet me someplace other than here, at a time convenient for you? I have a favor to ask of you, and we can discuss your repayment."
I hand the bag of salve over.
“After the school day finishes I will likely be available. Here in the Healing Centre will be fine, then, as the children will all have gone home. I sometimes get call-outs after hours, but rarely drop-ins.”
I steal a glance at Bullhorn, whose demeanour has relaxed somewhat since the more mature version of the stranger has been speaking, though he has not settled back to sleep and continues to watch warily. Clearly, more remains unresolved than meets the eye.
They nod, examining the salve. "Many thanks," they say, before exiting the Healing Centre.
Close to half an hour after school is finished for the day, you become aware of them standing beside the door, so still that it almost takes a triple take to determine if they're alive. The person's irises are still that pale yellow, and they are peering into some sort of crystal contraption. It has the shape of a conch shell, with a lens at the opening.
“All are welcome here; come on in,” I encourage from my seat at my desk, bemused. They came right in uninvited earlier, yet now that they are expected, it surprises me that they remain by the door.
Bullhorn twists around my feet. He sometimes does this when he thinks I ought to get up faster - though sometimes he wants me to get up for a patient and other times he just wants me to get up for his kibble. Either way, he’s awake and aware right now but not showing any of his tells. The more mature version of the stranger does not unsettle him the way the “ward” does, despite them seeming to inhabit the same body.
That alone intrigues me, given it is supposed to be physiological factors that trigger a banshee’s instincts.
The stranger does not seem to hear me.
A full seventy-three seconds later, they finally look up, and step further into the room. Their hair is now in a neat French braid that travels in a single ridge over the top of their head, from the center of their forehead to the nape of their neck.
"A good afternoon to you. I would like your aid in the acquisition of a banshee, it matters not whether dead or alive, though one that is alive will be treated with the utmost care."
“One that is dead will not wail for you,” I say.
It comes out of my mouth before the thought has finished forming in my mind, memories of disconcerting conversations from this morning flickering back to the fore more quickly than I can get my filter functioning.
"Consider it a... blueprint. A living one cannot be transported, as the process would be utterly inhumane. ...in-elvane, to you? It would have to be cared for in this world until it passes on from natural causes."
“They live a long time.” I’d never considered that a downside, until now.
“How… ‘freshly’ deceased does your blueprint need to be?”
