wayfarers_lodge | {Skirruk} When the Bough breaks

"Skirruk... Woodwing Skirruk, can you hear me? Open your eyes, Woodwing Skirruk, there's a good girl."

It was dark. Skirruk couldn't see, and didn't want to open her eyes. She tried to tell the voice to go away, but the words came out slurred and mumbled. Her mouth tasted like blood, and there was something heavy in her head.

"Was that you trying to talk, Skirruk? I don't understand."

Neither do I, I'm scared, she tried to say, but again the syllables came out wrong, like some mockery of the language that had made her.

Something started pressing against her chest. It hurt, and that moment of pain resolved the heaviness in her head into more pain, hot and bright like too much sun, pouring in through her head and down her spine. She tried to concentrate and block the pain out as she tried to move her hand to her chest, but it fluttered helplessly at her side as she heard the approach of soft footsteps.

"Oh good, Woodwing Leashah, you're here. Woodwing Skirruk isn't responding verbally to the chest rub, and hasn't opened her eyes."

"That is a very bad sign. What happened to her?"

I fell, Woodwing Leashah, she tried to say, but again the words came out wrong.

"She fell, Woodwing Leashah."

Through the pain, Skirruk realised that she probably should be dead. Perhaps she already was- she could not speak like a proper Illumian, could barely move. Hadn't one of the Training Mistresses said an Illumian was dead when they couldn't speak?

But she wasn't. She was stuck in her body and aware of things going on around her, but unable to react. There was only the pain and the distant sensation that there were other people there.

And... something else beneath the pain...

"I take it she fell on her head, Woodwing Illchelan?

Oh boy. Had she ever. The Training Mistress had always commended her on her ability to climb, and she wasn't showing off exactly, just hanging upside down, like she had done so many times before. After all, she was only eight- what could possibly happen to her?

And then, Skirruk's legs had slipped.

"Yes, Leashah, she did."

"From how high?"

"Quite high. Ten, maybe fifteen metres."

What on earth was that under the pain? She reached out for it, and touched something alive, something that sparked and glittered like sun on the river, that wriggled like a ferret. She shivered as she touched it, and it became still, shining and deep, like a well or a spring.

"May the Seer preserve, no wonder. Woodwing Skirruk, can you hear me?

Yes, she tried to say, Yes I can, Woodwing Leashah. I can't talk to you, and there's something shiny and exciting in my head with me.

She moaned instead. Her hand flapped up onto her stomach, falling still when she couldn't hold it up anymore.

"Good. I am going to touch your head where you landed. Stay still."

Please stop touching my head, she wanted to say, but all she could do was lie there as these fingers kept pressing where it HURT. Within her, the thing that shone stirred briefly, feeling as if it were looking for a way out. Had it always been there, waiting to be found?

"The bone is cracked. I think she might be bleeding on the inside of her skull."

There was a feeling like a cool, damp cloth smoothing over all the places she hurt, and the pain started dimming- and taking the shining thing with it. Her hands began moving more frantically- BUT I LIKE THE SHINY FEELING, she tried to shout in vain- reaching to her chest and throat weakly.

"There, see? Some healing magic to relieve the damage. Now, child, we are just going to-"

Take my shiny thing?

"NO!"

She slurred out the word, more a roar than an actual protest, and pushed out with the thing that shone. The healer reeled back, and Skirruk opened her eyes a little to see blood trickling out of one of his ears. He tried to scream and couldn't, his throat spasming with the sheer ferocity of having someone else's consciousness deposited into one's own.

She smiled a little, her eyes closing again.

"Mhy shichny fingh," she murmured as her hands went limp against her stomach.

---

"She's going to be alright?" Woodwing Nahlehntra asked, brow furrowed with concern.

"She... she is stable for now, may The Seer be praised," Leasha replied, face still pale, "But I do not know what we are going to do. Skirruk keeps attacking anyone who attempts to heal her with magic."

Nahlehntra raised an eyebrow, runes brightening in question. "Attacking how?"

Leasha shuddered. "I... it was like she took all of her thoughts, all of her feelings, all of her SELF was just... poured into me. I could feel my own fingers on her skull, the pain that was trying to fill everything, her fright at the fact that she couldn't speak or control her movement properly, and her outrage that I was trying to fix where she was broken. The whole world hummed with the power of knowing so much so quickly."

Nahlehntra's frown deepened. "So... like Divination magic? She was trying to communicate with you?"

"No. Not at all. She just wanted me to stop trying to take away her shiny thing."

"Shiny thing? What shiny thing, in the Librarian's sacred name?"

"It was... like when I ask Glautru for His grace, but not- almost as if she were handed a sword, and just swung it without understanding it."

"Is this power dangerous? Is SHE dangerous?"

"The power is definately dangerous, Nahlehntra. It is not designed to do anything else but to hurt. But I think, perhaps, she does not understand. I do not think that there is anything we can do to heal the bleed under her skull until she learns why what she is doing is so harmful."

"Can she be taught?"

"I hope so. Perhaps ask Ashehnrell to look over her once she comes back to consciousness?"

"I think so." The Training Mistress paused for just a moment, before burying her face in her hands, the runes around her head dimming in sorrow.

"By the wisdom of the Librarian, Leasha, she's only eight years old."

The other Illumian leaned over to her, resting a hand on her shoulder.

"I know, Nahlehntra, I know. I'll do the best I can."