And now — here they were, abstract shapes carved across the selder’s back. Circles splitting into geometric lines, and sharp angles breaking into wild curves. Coloured to separate them, yet fitted so close their lines almost touched. The longer Yu looked at them, the more they reminded him of the few examples he had seen of Faramyr.
Yu had been the one to ask Bubs about their origin, but the mianid’s rigid stare seemed to press the question right back into him.
“I heard of this one case, where …” Yu started and stopped, as he remembered how people had reacted last time he had shared a war story. Too late. The words were already out, so he had no choice but to continue. “Well, there was this one time, where the Shaira —”
A weird noise cut him short.
The human jerked, violently, once, then again. From one second to the next, her breath came ragged. Tears and whines escaped her; horribly broken, breathless sounds that slipped out between clenched teeth — too soft to be suppressed screams, too sharp for mere whimpering. Then her jaw began to rattle and her teeth clattered together, rapid, uneven. It was the wrong sound in the wrong place, because it came unnervingly close to bill-clapping, which was the fina way to show amusement. So from what Yu heard, she was laughing full of pain.
“What is happening?” He needed this to stop.
The hallway door flew open. The borman charged in.
Deltington caught him just after threshold, one wing raised like a barrier. There was no fight. The borman halted as soon as he saw his human.
Meanwhile, Bubs had covered the bowl in front of him with a lid, and discarded of the vial and needle comb in his hands. He got off his stool, pushed it from the selder’s cod closer to the human’s and got back on. By now, she was twisting, striking out with blind strength. He did not have the size or weight to contain her.
On the other side of the bed, the krynn stood frozen, staring, as useless as Yu.
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