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WHEN PAVIL FIRST came out of the Mountain, the inconsolable pain that gripped his entire being came almost immediately. He had read in old books that when his ancestors did bone marrow transplants, there was no drilling. At least, not of this kind. Confined to his bed for weeks, he had not walked or done any heavy lifting, else his brother would drag him right back to bed. Maybe that was why he had healed better than Maggie. Maybe that was why he seemed to be doing better.
At least in the physical sense. Mentally, nightmares plagued his vision.
There were no real images. Flashes mostly, featuring the appearance of the drill, of the bodies lifted from the table only to replaced with more. The sounds of blended sounds of anguish and terror, the roaring of the suction as it pulled the marrow from the bodies. The screaming. The drilling. The guns. Everything would be in a nightmare.
So he did not sleep. For days, he did not sleep. Then, he'd sleep forever so it seemed. But he wouldn't dream then. So he developed a pattern. Be awake two or three days, and the nightmares would be gone when he inevitably fell into slumber. For weeks, even leading into the present, that was how he slept. How he managed to sleep. He fought with Enan about it, he fell into depressive and violent episodes. He grew more and more resentful of himself and the Mountain people.
Then Enan began forcing him to sleep every night. It was a herb, one with tendencies much like a sedative. Enan slipped it in his water or his food, and it knocked Pavil out like a light every night. He had no nightmares. Six days this happened, until Enan stopped giving him the herb. Pavil continued sleeping without disturbance.
Then he found Enan's stash of the herb, confronting him and throwing them into their first outright yelling match. Curses were thrown, insults were yelled, even pots and ceramics fell to the ground until both brothers could no longer stand from exhaustion. Like Maggie.
But unlike Maggie, Enan helped him stand up. As Pavil called for his to stay away, Enan forced himself into his elder brother's embrace, and then he began to heal.
