"Your house is lovely. I just - hate to think of people suffering when I can help them, that's all."

She looks down at her feet. "My husband, he—we don't know what's wrong. He started getting tired and breathless and weak, he couldn't do work anymore—it was so sudden, we have no idea what caused it—"

"I'll see what I can do."

She leads the two to a room where a man is lying in bed, breathing raggedly. What little hair he has left is lifeless and dry, he's emaciated and pale, and there are bruises visible in several places where his skin is exposed. He seems to be asleep—or, at least, his eyes are closed.

Ruava looks at him.

Light flares from his skin, faint white fading into pale blue into vivid green into intense gold into fiery orange-red, and then a deeper, darker red that lingers for a moment, and then it's gone and he's in the peak of health.

"What are you—" the woman starts, stepping forward, but Kaede extends an arm to prevent her advance.

"It's fine. This magic is... different."

And then the man is healed and whole and blinks slowly and sits up and now has a crying wife attached to him by the neck. "Thank you. Thank you," she sobs. "I could never repay—"

Ruava smiles.

"I'm just glad I could help," she says.

Now the woman is crying too much for words.

Kaede beams at Ruava like she's the best person in the world.

Her smile brightens.

"Time to go help someone else?" she murmurs.

"Yes, do let's! Who?"

"The person with the bloody cough was closest from here, I think..."

"Yeah."

The woman continues to thank them effusively and offers them food as they make their way out.

"I really am just glad I could help," says Ruava, but she accepts a bit of food on the way out anyway, because why not.

The lady with the bloody cough's brother answers the door for them. He looks like he hasn't slept in a while. "Yes?"

"I heard there was a sick person here and I'd like to heal them."

"...what? Heal? Why? We're pious people, here, we don't want these alternative gods or anything."

"...I have no idea what you're talking about," she says. "I'm not a god, I'm just magic."

Kaede blinks in equal bewilderment, and the man squints. "So what? What do you want?"

"I am visiting all the sick people in this town and making them not sick anymore."

"...for free?"

"Yes."

He seems to have no idea what to make of this, so he doesn't make anything of it and just waves them in.

His house is actually messy, and they can hear the sister's coughs from another room. "You sure you won't catch it? I don't get in there without a mask."

"I just need to be able to see her, I don't need to be close."

"Right. Well, your choice, I guess," he says, and leads them to a room—

—that's significantly less messy than the living room they walked into. It has a loom and a woman working it. She is not coughing at the moment but a tissue with red droplets of blood is on a small table in reach of her hand. She turns around to look at the newcomers and says, "Ryal, you brought guests?"

The man—Ryal, apparently—covers his mouth and nose with his hand. "Yes. They say they can make you not sick."

"Oh? Now this I'll have to—" And she reaches for the tissue and starts coughing into it.

Ruava stands back and looks at the woman.

A flare of light -

No more cough.