one of these cold lonesome mornings | Glowfic Constellation

"I can certainly work with that, it would be easier if you had a second memory like that for me to compare to. Do you think you can do that for me?"

Jessily thinks again; there isn't anything quite so dramatic, but...

She is walking through a desert. Well, no, it's not quite a desert, more a kind of disappointing scrubby grassland. She has been walking for rather too long, and the skull, dangling on a ratty piece of string from her belt, really isn't helping.

Every now and again she can't help touching it to check it's still there, which inevitably wakes it up, and then it asks her why she's here, if she doesn't want to be, and then she tells it that it's none of its fucking business and maybe it should have stayed dead, and it tells her that it absolutely is dead and also that's no way to talk to a holy relic.

Eventually she comes to a treeline, and there is this idiot - a dark brown wemic - tied to a tree. She only found him because he started making these pathetic muffled screaming noises when she got close enough to see from the forest, but by Jaguar, he could have been less annoying about it, couldn't he? Anyway, she had better untie him. The skull is being smug about something, and she absolutely knows why, and she also doesn't want to know.

"Hi there," he says weakly, as she takes the gag out of his mouth. "I'm Kibo. I'm your present."

"You are the last thing I need right now," she replies. "Couldn't he have sent me some oco instead?"

"Alright, I think that's enough to work with. This will take a little bit. Just lie back and try to relax."

For a time, probably several minutes, nothing happens.

Now, that's a nice easy instruction to follow, in this floaty supported state with all the aches and pains of the last few days feeling magically distant.

Without prompting the first memory replays, it seems a bit distant a bit less vibrant than it did. The memory finishes and there's another pause while her mind is allowed to drift again.

"I think I got the worst of it. I can do a test if you'd like to get a bit more confirmation."

"Sure, I feel a lot better but I don't think I can.. violence anyone while I'm like this?"

"Alright then, I'll make sure you can't hurt yourself if the test goes poorly."

And then a rather large amount of Oco appears in midair a bit out of reach above her. The urge to grab it is a lot duller than she remembers it being.

She makes vague batting motions in its direction, but pretty half-heartedly and mostly by habit than anything else. "Yeah, I don't feel like I need to fight you for it, that'll do."

The oco disappears if it was ever really there to begin with. "I'm glad I was able to help. I was multitasking a bit so I think I should be able to finish treating your wounds." RC puts words to actions and there's a faint tickling feeling as her skin and the underlying tissues regrow. "I'm less sure about what's happening to cause the vomiting, it looks like that's at least partially magical and magical ailments are always more tricky to treat. I'll start to work on repairing the consequences at least though." It's as if something poured a bit of warmth or perhaps energy into her veins, her muscles feel stronger, she feels a bit less tired, her breath comes just slightly easier and the last of the aches and pains clear away.

"How is this even - working?" she asks. "It's easy enough to stop someone dying of wounds - well, no, it's very complicated, but there's lots of ways to go about it - but nothing deals with exhaustion like that - not without some serious side effects, anyway."

"I'm repairing cellular and tissue damage and inserting necessary nutrients and fluids where those have been depleted. As for how I'm able to do that, it's a mixture of very precise teleportation and telekinesis with an extreme ability to multitask and an endless supply of the necessary raw materials."

"That's... convenient," she replies. "An endless supply? Like, could you end world hunger? I mean, uh, actually probably don't do that, the myrmidons would just conquer everyone, but you could feed everyone who doesn't, like, immediately use the food to create a load of almost-mindless soldiers?"

"Unfortunately, no. The infirmary will give me enough to treat the patients who are here and at times I can stretch that in small ways but it would stop far before it got to quantities large enough to feed a few thousand people let alone the millions or billions who live on most worlds."

"...right," she replies. There really ain't such a thing as a free lunch, she guesses. "I guess I'm lucky to be here, then!"

"Indeed, Milliways seems to operate primarily on luck. Though there is also some element of narrative resonance according to some of the other patrons I've spoken to."

"...I think I have had about all the narrative resonance I can handle," she admits. "I'd... finally decided to... walk out of the story? It seems like instead... I've walked into another one, maybe. Or. Y'know. Fallen."

"I'm just repeating what I've heard as far as narrative goes. I don't know how much to believe it. If you don't mind my asking what are you trying to get away from? And for that matter is there anything you want to be going towards?"

"I was trying to reach my beloved - uh, now that is a long story. Anyway, him and his group set out from the festival before me. I was going to see out the whole thing, but then, um, a whole lot of people made a - very close - attempt to murder me, so I didn't want to hang around."

"Indeed, I expect most people would wish to remove themselves from situations involving attempted murder."

"It was really unfair, too! They taught me the herb lore, the gods then decided that maybe they shouldn't teach out herb lore, and so suddenly they're trying to kill me to fix their mistake."

"That's highly concerning. Are deities something you have the ability to contest? That sounds like a situation unlikely to have many solutions."

"Generally, with the gods, it's not so much about 'contesting' as 'not coming to their attention'. I know some would try to fight them, but it has not yet ended well for any of them."