A/N: Very belated piece for Day 1: Monster/Doctor of vbloodlettingweek! Thought I'd combine both sides of the prompt and try my hand at a starter vamp Legs :D
The lumberjack laughs, brittle and bitter, and continues work on his house. "I've heard that before, doctor."
"I'm serious," Legundo says. He's standing at the threshold of the cottage's meagre foundations, all wattle and daub barely brushing past his knees. "I can cure you."
"Do you know how many quacks I've heard promise me that? How many snake oil merchants have tried peddling hearthside soot as saints' ashes or whittled antlers as unicorns' horns?" the man demands.
Legundo receives another laugh for his efforts, just as humourless as the first. "Believe me, no one's ever tried that line before."
It is the first duty of a doctor to assess the needs of the community, and Legundo has had lifetimes to perfect it. Within days of arriving at Oakhurst, he had separated the dire from the dying, the actively rotting from the one's merely decaying in the inevitable way humans did.
It had taken only hours to smell the death crawling through this human.
The lumberjack smiles grimly. "I'm counting on it."
Legundo stands at the threshold, the toes of his polished boots just shy of the entrance. The lumberjack could have settled in one of the ruined houses in the town proper, worked with an existing foundation, but instead he's out here, creating a home from scratch.
Despite it all, despite the decay and the dying, he's a fighter.
"You're really not going to listen?"
The lumberjack pauses in the branches he's paring, the knife lingering loosely in his bandaged grip. "I've listened enough to sawbones like you to last me a lifetime," he growls. "Find someone else to sell your miracle cure to. I'm done."
It is the first duty of a doctor to care for the health of his community.
Legundo is one of the best.
He stands at the threshold of the lumberjack's house, the notion of four walls and a doorway emerging, but still so early-days. There's a space cleared out for a hearth. Grass gathered for the roof, now drying in yellowing sheafs. It's a good start, an experienced start, but it's barely a building.
It's little more than the hope of a house.
He crosses the threshold.
