Stars of Blood

Three 𖤓 Destrine

Christopher fell asleep in seconds as soon as I said it was okay. I slathered his wounds in a concoction of honey, propolis, and shavings from a pot marigold.

I still had some of the flowers blooming by the window. They weren't the normal kind, not fed by the same water that rained from the sky, but from a bottle of foggy liquid created in northern Pillon's inner laboratories. It was where they also created the flower so we could use it in our medicines. If just a normal marigold, a calendula, or a regular pot marigold, it would do nothing for our kind and in Christopher and Jezerine's case, they would probably die.

Standing back, I examined him. He was now slouched forward, since I had to get to his back, and the thighs of his underwear now in shreds. He had taken off his pants as I had ordered him but had forgotten about his underwear, which was understandable. Christopher had been in so much pain that I couldn't stand there and watch him cry over Jezerine. Every hand was needed to help her so Christopher was left to suffer. It had been my duty to help.

I couldn't leave him sitting like that.

Laying out the blanket I had thrown, I set it down in the middle of the room and laid a few more over top of it, just for comfort. Then I set down a few pillows, Christopher always slept better if he had more than one, something about being surrounded by things that felt like other beings were there with him. I had almost asked to elaborate and regretted it instantly. I laughed at the memory of him biting my hand when I slapped it over his mouth and told him to shut up, but deep down I knew why he liked pillows. An abundance of them made up for the family he didn't have.

But now he had Eira. For seventeen years he had Eira. When Eira was born, Christopher was the only one there for him. He couldn't stand having things, messes, left alone, whether it was dirty dishes in the sink left over from kitchen duty or a person sitting on the benches waiting their turn to train because there wasn't enough partners. Even if he had a different chore that day, he would train with the benched kid and return to his chores later in the night.

When Eira was born, he had been one of the only people on standby to help. Even though he wasn't a healer, he was called into the room to help with the birth because he had the power to take away pain and the mother had been about to die. He took her pain, feeling all the pain of a mother, and while Eira's mother rejected her child because of that pain, Christopher loved him. He even went as far to name him when his parents refused.

Since the night of his birth had been encompassed by a blizzard, Christopher had named him after the snow. He had named the babe Eira and raised him after his parents fled and never returned. Christopher unintentionally became a single parent. Now, the two were inseparable and more like brothers than anything, although Christopher still liked to act like Eira's mother.

They slept together too, on most nights. Eira was only seventeen years old, still a child in pyuwa years, and Christopher was hundreds of years old. Of course, I was older than him, but in many ways he always seemed like the grown up between us, Eira our child. Since Christopher and I were best friends, I technically became Eira's other parent. When he was too scared to tell Christopher something, he came to me.

I wasn't surprised when Eira burst through my office door moments later, a blanket now over top of Christopher's mostly naked body.

Eira looked like he was going to cry, his eyes red and foggy as he looked down at Christopher. He dropped to his knees and reached out his shaky hands, grabbing the edge of the blanket that covered his brother, his father.

He looked up at me, the eyes of an innocent child who had never seen anything war, who never had to eat like we used to. He was probably one of the only truly innocent children in the whole house.