Skyreign

6: A Scattering of Vultures

"You should not have challenged him," said Grace as she diagnosed Rose's injury with her soft, sensitive hands, "your floating rib has been broken in two places."

"It'll heal," the hardened fighter could barely tolerate being sized up and so closely analysed, as she laid back on her own bed. Her carboncloth shirt was rolled up to just under her chest. The swelling and bruising from the injury had already dissipated, to the medic's surprise, though the bones had set improperly.

"It will heal wrong unless I re-break and set them right," she dictated plainly as she pulled out a small vial, containing a thick silvery liquid. Pulling the cork on it and pouring a small portion into the palm of her other hand, she then corked it up and set it aside, lathering the matter into both of her hands.

"That doesn't look like conventional Behraanese medicine," Rose commented with a hint of scepticism.

"I do find that conventional Behraanese medicine alleviates only temporarily or artificially, most of the time," she said with some pride, "and, other times, there are numerous side effects that could make the most simple of injuries the least of one's worries.

"No, I prefer to use more--natural sources. This is simple silver powder in a Khrynthoss Thesium Crystal oil. It will feel warm to the touch and will sting around the broken bones. Apply only a few drops, and spread it thinly around the wound, twice a day. The bones--"

"Why didn't you just say 'quicksetter'?" Rose sighed, "and anyway, I'll only need the one dose, thanks."

"You are familiar with Khrynthoss medicine?" Grace rubbed the lotion across the injury, taking note of her reaction, the reaction of a patient who was used to the medicine being applied.

"Noregaan, actually," Rose replied, feeling the quicksetter sink in, singing like a pot of boiling water poured steadily on her stomach but reacting little. The rib then cracked where the breaks were, warranting a short-breathed gasp of agony which she tried her very best to stifle.

Then, the bone realigned itself and seared where the breaks were. She clutched her side out of instinct and clenched her eyes shut, tears streaming down the sides of her face.

Seconds later, the pain was but a memory, the rib made whole. As if surfacing for air from under water, she inhaled deeply, then began to laugh. "I can never get used to that," she said between pants.

While Rose suffered through the aggressive healing process, Grace placed her hands in a nanosink, a basin where one had their hands cleaned by nanites, the nanites dying and falling to the drain. It resembled water, only it had a slightly blue hue to it.

"You took that well," Grace said, once again placing her hands on the point of injury, "and the rib is now healed properly."

Rose nodded and brushed off Grace's hand, sitting up, swinging her legs over, pulling down her shirt and taking a deep breath. "Not my first time with quicksetter. Probably not my last."

"You're sure quicksetter is Noregaan in origin?" Grace asked.

"Khrynthoss and Noregaa, they're neighbours. They rub off each other a lot, but Thesium's Noregaan, after Taan-Thesa, one of the nations there."

"You must have been there then, to know this," Grace concluded.

Reminded of another time in another life, Rose nodded subtly, "long time ago."

"I heard there was a slowing of time there," Grace added, sitting in a rather comfortable leather chair across from the bed, "is it true?"

"Every two seconds on Noregaa," Rose paused, still bearing the residual burning of the quicksetter, "is like a minute anywhere else."