She sat beside the human.
Around the hip and left leg, she had laid loose pieces of woven cloth. They were damp with fatty liquids. More of that thick, glistening salve smeared the human’s left foot. The shaman was working it in — With her hands.
She sat at the end of the bed, with her back upright and her petal-scales and cloak spilling around her like an elegant robe. Every line of her posture suggested composure and dignity. And yet her hands … her hands actually touched it. She touched the human’s bare foot —
Yu’s stomach twisted.
With a display of utmost calm, the shaman caressed the dirty, swollen, frost-burnt flesh, including all of the disgusting stumps at the end, these featherless and scaleless and clawless and so utterly revolting appendages that were the human’s toes. It was not a brief touch, god no, she even pressed her fingers into those tiny gaps between them, massaging the yellow ointment deep into the skin. Slowly. Carefully. As though she were not utterly disgusted by it. As though she really cared.
Yu’s evulsion spread like heat under his ribs. He looked away, anywhere else — toward Bubs, toward the krynn.
Bubs was between beds, and the krynn on the far side, next to the selder, who lay stretched on his stomach. Several glass vials lined the stone recess above the cot, their contents catching the orblight like stagnant water. One more, a thin, transparent, fragile-looking vile, rested in Bubs’ hand. In his other he gripped a strange tool, something that was either two painfully large needles attached to a metal handle or a very minimalist comb. He dipped the two points into a shallow bowl of ashen liquid that was placed on the tray in front of him, then drew it slowly across the selder’s back. He did not seem to inject the liquid. The teeth did not pierce, yet the sound was wrong, a faint rasp against skin. Each time before re-dipping, Bubs rinsed the points with the clear fluid from the vial.
Yu did not understand what Bubs was doing, but he felt relief. He was relieved that Bubs finally switched his focus. He edged closer.
Pages:
Pages:
Pages: