On wounds, healing, and Amira’s fate
So I’ve been working my way through @scriptmedic‘s lovely book Maim Your Characters during my lunch breaks at work (on my phone, luckily, because I’m not sure how my coworkers would react to a book involving maiming~) and it’s actually been making me go back to my OC worlds and consider how healing and injuries in Nekir’s world work.
(Long ramble about healing and wounds and Nekir’s world below the cut, including a potential solution to my issue with how I had written Amira previously)
Magical healing is a thing, of course; it’s a very important Thing in Nekir’s society. In a world where magical ability is determined by the star a person is born under (an entire other potential post, concerning the intricacies and requirements and how everything interacts together, that I still only have partially worked out), someone born under a “healer” star is basically “firmly encouraged” to follow the healing path.
But at the same time, I’ve always planned on having Nekir end up partially disabled about halfway through the book. During one of his less well thought out moments (Okay, to be fair, he didn’t ACTUALLY know the full extent of the potential consequences, but I mean, he’s using an untested weapon of potentially mass destruction. Himself. With no safeguards. CONSEQUENCES, MAN.) he takes an injury to his dominant arm and has to relearn how to, well, do practically everything with his left hand and arm.
I mean everything. All the way from being unable to reliably wield his sword with his right hand to being unable to write. It’s a direct consequence of his actions, it’s an important part of him learning to take responsibility (and that actions have consequences that can’t always be handwaved away), and I stopped today and realized -- he has a healer RIGHT NEXT TO HIM basically from the moment he injures himself. A very talented, very dedicated healer who (platonically!) loves Nekir with basically everything he is. (Reasons, okay. Their relationship grows from strangers to this before this wound happen)
A healer who can potentially derail my injury plot with about a half hour of concentration. Whoops.
I wasn’t, initially, certain of how to deal with this. I can’t get rid of the Healers, there’s an entire segment of their society I’ve already built around how all this works, and I like what I have. Magical healing exists. It’s fast. It keeps people alive through things they shouldn’t be able to survive --
(A bit of research on Aunt Scripty’s medical blog gave me the injury I needed for Nekir, which was basically what I initially thought it should be; a wound through the upper part of the arm near-ish to the shoulder, clipping the nerve and thereby damaging the functionality of the arm itself. Unfortunately this also comes with the potential of clipping a very important artery as well, especially if I clip the bone, and while I COULD handwave that and just say “well he was lucky” and have it be TRUE, it’s still a danger, and something I should keep in mind.)
-- and that pretty well negates like EVERYTHING I need out of this scene. But I can’t sideline the healer. Doesn’t make sense given the man’s loyalty and the fact that there’s not much else going on besides Nekir’s stupid decision to use a weapon he shouldn’t. Which the healer is, notably, against.
But WAIT. I already gave myself the answer. Healing is fast. It speeds up the body’s processes manyfold in order to patch in moments what should take weeks or months. I’d already decided this left a person hungry at best (and that major Healing can’t be done on people who don’t have the reserves, which does become a Thing later on in the story where Nekir and his mercenaries are essentially running on empty; not enough food, too much fighting, too much Healing, and their bodies start to give out under them from the strain.), but what if I go further with it?
The more intricate or hurried the healing needs to be, the worse it actually is in the long run. Scar tissue, fragile mends in the bone, weak or stiffened blood vessels, decreased muscular strength. The body can compensate if given time and rest and an appropriate amount of effort to rehabilitate, but the sort of hack-patch job that Nekir would be getting in the field? Well, that’s going to keep his blood where it belongs, and mean he won’t have the danger of infection (very important!), but his arm is going to be trouble in the long run -- phantom pain from the nerves, weakened muscle strength compounding the nerve troubles, etcetc. Add onto that the deprivation a handful of months later, and that’s more than enough stressors to keep that injury plot on track; I’m mashing Immediate Treatment and Definitive Treatment together in this instance, but on the other side of it the Rocky Road to Recovery still exists. It’s not handwaved away. Sure, Nekir doesn’t have to deal with bandages and herbal remedies and trying to make sure the wound stays clean so he doesn’t get sepsis, but the wound is still a Wound. It’s still a Problem.
A man who prided himself on his skills with the blade, who led the charge, who essentially DEFINED himself by his abilities and skills... can’t anymore. He drops things. He can’t lift his blade, much less swing it. He can’t grip a pen well enough to draw a steady line. And yet he has a responsibility that he can’t give up; he’s a rebel leader, and he can’t just step down. Not only is he a wanted man, but he made promises to those he’s leading and suddenly those promises are both harder to keep and all the more important to him.
(And I think, THIS is going to be his Growing Up arc, instead of that... stupid piece of DUMB I had before, with Amira dying. I think she’s going to Be There with him. I think Nekir will have returned EARLY, instead of late, and he, Amira, his gathered followers, and those of Amira’s loyal followers who were also in residence, will escape and flee to the north together. They’ll all keep their heads down except for guerrilla tactics. Who knows who gave their previous base up -- do they have a traitor? Is the traitor still with them? They don’t dare contact the scattered remains of the original group -- they’ve got enough issues on their own, and all they can do is harry the army to give the remnants a chance to melt away or consolidate again.
I think Amira and Nekir will be Co-Leaders, with Amira being slightly senior due to her age and experience. This will also more obviously settle the two of them into the platonic-love equals that their relationship ends up as. She’s not someone he needs to be strong around for moral; he can complain, and whine, and cry, and vent when it all becomes too much. They’re partners. Not romantic partners, but something just as important. Just as permanent.
@bibliomatsuri it’s been a long friggin time and this isn’t precisely the proper response to our rambly exchange months ago, but I think this is a better answer to my issue with Amira? It feels better, at least. I literally haven’t answered because until I started rambling about THIS I didn’t friggin HAVE an answer. Just more waffling. Augh. I think I started and erased more partial responses than I’ve ever done before. .-. )









