Aĉaĵego

X: Healing

"A healing soul suffers more than a withering one." It was a familiar idiom, repeated so often it was easy to forget its truthfulness. Overcoming ones flaws and atoning for ones sins was hard and miserable, but that was how you knew you were healing. If you didn't put the effort in, you'd spare yourself the pain, but your soul would wither and you'd face worse pain in the afterlife, chained to the bottom of the ocean.

Floreca now knew it didn't only apply to souls. The effects of soul-drain medicine were worse than soul-drain. She woke after a night of vague, nonsequential nightmares to a searing abdominal pain. She managed to overcome the residual terror from the nightmares and crawl out of the crevice to vomit over the cliff side, but vomiting hadn't relieved the pain – just added nausea, hunger, and thirst on top of it.

I want Franjo, she thought pitifully. It had been three days. Though the pain rose and fell like waves, it had been getting worse. She took the medicine every morning, and this was the first time the symptoms had persisted past nightfall. If she'd been at home, Karesema would have woken up with her, dragged herself out of bed no matter how tired she was, held Floreca's hair back and wiped her mouth and gotten her water and stroked her even after she fell back asleep, driving away the nightmares if not the pain. But here, trembling on the cliff side, Floreca's only company was a browning eggflower that had fallen inches from her nose. She pitied it. The rest of the eggflowers had fallen by the puddle. This was all alone, and probably as thirsty as she was, but unable to muster up the strength to reach the water source.

The Aĉaĵego was not neglecting her. But it seemed to have no idea what to do around a sick person, and Floreca was in no state to explain. It brought meat and was confused when she couldn't eat it. It curled up next to her when she slept, and didn't understand why she thrashed around in agony. It knew she wasn't feeling well, but it didn't know how to help her and that seemed to frustrate it – when she cried, it hovered over, its glowing silver eyes fixed on her and its tail flickering in displeasure.

It was still asleep now, and Floreca tried not to be bothered by that. The Aĉaĵego was a child inside, after all – the more she thought of it that way, the more its actions made sense, so she tried to remind herself every time it did something that bothered her. She wouldn't expect Jadinda to wake up and care for her if she was sick in the night, so she shouldn't expect it of the Aĉaĵego, either. She'd have to let this pass by herself, substituting happy memories for her sister's presence until the pain eased enough to allow her to fade back into sleep.

"How many days has it been?" Floreca asked, one time of many. It was hard to track the days. All that seemed to matter now were hours – how many hours of peace she had before the medicine kicked in and the symptoms worsened, and then, how many hours until the pain eased, and then how many until the sunrise, when she'd have to take her medicine again. She was getting progressively weaker as well, both in body and mind, even when nothing hurt. She often caught herself thinking things that made no sense, like dreaming without sleep. Her mind personified random objects and gave her strange emotional reactions to mundane events. And sometimes when she tried to sit up, patches of darkness covered her vision, her neck became unable to support her head, and she had to lay back down.

She longed for her sisters. She was starting to worry. Why hadn't Karesema come back yet? Even if she hadn't gotten any more medicine, why wouldn't she come to visit?

"She cast a stone at me. I loathe her, and she loatheth me," said the Aĉaĵego, when Floreca voiced the thought to it.

"But she wouldn't avoid me for that!" said Floreca, tired of chiding the Aĉaĵego to think positively about her sister. "Can't you fly down to my village and ask if she's all right?"