You should tell us about Eris' healer mate in these trying times. What is she really like? What does she think of him?
:D my heretofore unnamed daughter.........she's actually adapted from a purely original character i created for a potential original fiction story. vibes are: she is an apothecary in one of the harsher autumn provinces, probably emile's or else one of the non-vanserra beron-pilled lords that beron lofted into ruling after his sons died. in a society where innate healing magics reduced reliability on the land for remedies + where only the highest of high fae can afford access to a healer with magic, she works near exclusively with foraged herbs and "simple" runes. she is incredibly relied upon by the fae in her town and even surrounding towns because she circumvents the rampant poverty in autumn by bartering for her goods. need a salve for a deep cut from a scythe while harvesting? yeah you can fix my loose stair once it heals. she's the one who keeps her family (undecided structure) afloat because her (mother? father? both?) were grievously injured Working The Land and so couldn't meet quota/make rent and had their fief taken from them. feudal autumn my beloved
so! she's prettttty scornful of the high lord and his many sons for creating these conditions that have not only directly harmed her family and left her with the considerable burden of making sure they can survive but also the havoc being wreaked upon her community, something she sees more than any with how she treats the sick and the injured. (fae are not supposed to be so easily damageable, but they are malnourished and work themselves too hard to keep what happened to her family from happening to them and theirs.) eris comes in one day, probably in his ren disguise, after a particularly brutal punishment. beron said he was not to see a healer—but this is no healer. this is an apothecary. he parts with his coin without her even setting a price (one of my favorite give-aways for him when he's In Disguise) and because of it she knows that whoever he is, he is not one of her own. a lord, to be certain. she immediately judges him but with actual coin she can save up for quota, buy things without having to wait for someone to get hurt/sick and have the thing she needs, help her community where she can, etc. eventually, she's even able to get her own shop to work from! (her father's name on the deed of course)
she begins to develop a fondness for this strange false lord who visits her shop only ever after hours in the dark of night and with no rhyme nor reason to his visits, except that he always smells of burns and blood and felled leaves when he does. he's not particularly verbose. or kind. or anything, really. but she feels curious about who he really is, to be of noble enough standing to have ample coin but to seek her instead of a healer despite that he could afford it. (even if he were given leave to see a healer after a punishment—her remedies just work so well for eris. far better than the ones he can make. far better than any other fae. weird!) then one day he comes in Badly Hurt. like barely conscious hurt. pure spite keeping his eyes open hurt. he has never let her actually treat him before, but it doesn't take much to make him let her. she isn't surprised when his tunic comes away and his skin is smooth beneath. i cannot treat a glamour, she says. i don't recall asking that you treat me at all, he replies. go on, then. leave, she goads. but now that he's sitting, he finds he cannot get up. his glamour, begrudgingly, loosens.
and the heir to autumn sits before her. she has never seen his face, yet she knows it to be him.
but that is a secondary concern, something to reckon with later, when she cannot see the meat of his back and the white of his rib. where apothecaries traditionally only supply the remedies, she has had to become a physician as well. who else was going to treat her folk? so she falls into a very cool, unaffected flow as she treats him. if she had done anything else, he would have left. if she had reacted at all, he would have left. but she looks at and treats his deepest shame without a flicker of anything across her face. he can smell her heightened emotions of her. he thinks: with time, she could master that, too. and he is then blinded with the bond he abruptly feels between them. he flinches. her hands still where she binds him, a half-second thing. she steps away and returns with a small sachet. for any pain, she says, then finishes her work. when he leaves, she throws up. because jesus fucking christ u kno? that is Thee eris vanserra, son of his father, inheritor of this hellscape she lives day in and day out.
