Retiredthalmor submitted:
There is a chill in the air, but there always is, so Celedil doesn’t pay it much mind. He just folds his mantle closer over his shoulders and chest, and bends his covered head down to meet the wind. It is not good weather, not even decent, and there is something in the air. Even Beast seems to feel it.
He hasn’t seen Ioannes for almost three weeks, a long time for the frequent contact they have had since he returned with the mer to Skyrim, but there had been suspicions and no matter how Celedil tried, he hadn’t had the time. He shifts the bag he carries, the book inside will have to do as a gift.
The feeling of something wrong won’t leave him, not at all, and there is the slight flash of a small black spider against his hand, and that feeling of dread makes him urge Beast into a trot, no matter the heavy weather.
The windows in Ioannes cottage are dark, only one single flame burning, and the door is slightly ajar.
Something is wrong.
He doesn’t bother binding the horse, just dismounts, his mind carefully blank, and hurries inside,
“Ioannes?”
He's half-asleep (or half-conscious), dimly aware that the door must have been left open, dimly aware that someone who sounds like Celedil has entered.
The cat rises from his curled spot at the foot of the bed to trot off toward the door in the other room. Ioannes watches him dazedly, pulls himself up from a curled-up position to lean back against the cool wall behind the bed, skin hot, shivering with chills, steeling himself for some sort of argument. What about, he has no idea, but that's what usually happens, isn't it?
He keeps his afflicted right arm close against himself. Jostling it is monumentally painful and the elbow is stiff, tracked bruises hard and hot, the red streaks from the site running up his arm and under his sleeve like a physical manifestation of fever. He runs his other hand across his face and recently-shorn hair--a trick to reduce fever. It hadn't worked. He waits.
