SRθ: Grim Inquiries (2023-2024)

Sit.11: The Grim Reaper

To be quite clear, my mind was foggy when I left The Doc's, and foggier yet when I left him next... so pardon my discrepancies against whatever you've heard of these events. This is how I remember it.

I left The Doc's care, and met him outside on a path along the wall around the fort. He was smoking the New World's leaf in a fat roll of paper, thicker than a thumb. It smelled sweeter than what I'd tried, but heavier, too. He passed it to me, and told me to puff gently, then inhale the smoke it makes. I took less than he probably expected of me, but it still burned my lungs and burst coughing and tears out of me.
He grinned. "It's from the New Tropics. Something fun I've been saving."
I held my throat, and cracked, "How much?"
He shrugged. "Barely a copper. But wait until some pomp with a bloated ship comes along and calls the whole vast land in his own name, and tells everyone he 'discovered' it. Then, it'll probably cost a golden arm and silver leg."
I looked at the horizon. The rising sun glowed red warmth into the dim grey above, and together they were violet ahead. "Who did discover it?" I asked.
"It's ancient, as old as we are. So... whoever got there first." He puffed it again, and took a drag.
I glanced at him. "Thank you, by the way. But why'd you save me, anyway? I was inches from dying."
"Try a centimetre."
"It must have been very expensive."
His lips and nose snobbed. "You're a... worthwhile test subject."
"Because I'm stronger than the average tyke?" I joked, waiting for a response.
He looked over at nothing. "You'd already met the plague, and lived. You were valuable. Quite frankly, you'd be just as good to me dead, like any other moor. But I wanted to push myself to bring you back, and I did. So, you're welcome."
I was at once grateful and yet taken aback by his casual cruelty, as if my origins made me fact-of-life worthless except as I was of use to 'im. Cold-hearted crow. "Moorish or not," I jabbed, "my blood can still boil, y'know."
He said nothing. Cold-shouldered, too.
After silence, and more smoke, I asked, "So how'd you know I've already been sick? Anything to do with my father holding your letter's seal in his grave?"
The Doc suddenly looked surprised, and took off his glasses with one hand. With the other, he put out his roll and flicked it over the wall's own fence-like wall, and onto the roof of a store of some kind below. He rubbed his eyes, and took a handkerchief to wipe the glasses clean. Thumbing the smudges as delicately as he could, I could tell he wanted to say something. Finally, he did.
"I didn't know my brother had died," he trembled.
It shocked me through my spine, not unlike the pain I'd just endured, and made the hair on my arms stand. "I knew it."
He held back tears, and then swallowed a lump in his throat. Then, in an instant, he was cold again. "I didn't want you getting attached to me. Third-sexes can be very clingy, I find." He took a breath.
I was confused. "I've been WEARING his SKULL, how did you not know he was DEAD?"
He shrugged. "I figured you were making it up, that you ghouled a stranger." He took another breath. "If you guessed me, then you've no doubt guessed my wife is your mother's sister, as well."
I nodded, my hands clasped around my temples as I leaned on the wall with my elbows. "So... does that make us family?"
"No," he remarked, "Like you, our fathers have sewn many seeds across scattered fields, as nature compels them. Still, two in one year? Trés impressionnant, Reaper."
I was shocked already, and could feel no more now, not with the smoke buzzing around in my skull. Unlike the last toke I'd had, that left me stimulated, I felt held down and mellow. I at once knew by its effects, gossiped by sailors, that it was cannabis blended with tobacco; du melangé.
"I have ONE child," I protested.
The Doc laughed. "I suppose The Lady might be telling tall tales, then. But who knows? A careful cut here and there, and you could have one yourself some day. In ancient times, you might've been revered as some kind of fertility icon." He put his glasses back on, so shiny they glinted the sun's beam off like a spark. "Au revoir, mon petit frére-sœur."
Then, he left. I watched him leave, and held my guts with one hand, the other still on the wall's edge for support. Before I could make sense of any of it, I smelled smoke. I looked down, and the store below us was catching fire. The Doc's stupid reefer! I started to run, but the ground shifted underneath me, bricks crawling out of place to trip me. My head was too light to stand up again, and all I could do was whisper, "water...", hoping that someone would get some and pour it over the wall. I rolled onto my back, and left Earthly realms for another plane.