Marbles: The Hawk Who Refused to Die a Virgin

Chapter 23. Mole People

Things were not going well for Languin. Really bad, actually. He was limping along behind the party and using the survival sitar as a crutch. The bell end of his survival sitar was stuffed under his armpit, and the bedroll-wrapped neck of the sitar was plunking against the ground. He had been hobbling on like this for weeks, which really made the rest of the party feel bad for him, because Languin never complained.

He would even still hunt for them, lying prone next to wild flint piglet warrens with a blowgun clutched in his dry and dark gray lips.

"Is he supposed to look like that?" asked Marbles one night, as Languin, even though he was bundled up in all their blankets, began to visibly shiver by the fire.

"Marbles please," said Opal. They were all worried about him. He looked like hammered shit. Each night, Lucy had tried a different salve or chant from her healing arsenal on him until Languin finally admitted to his latest deception.

"It is of no use, Lucy," said Languin as Lucy was rolling powdered healing spices into a translucent healing cigar of dried flint piglet skin. Although she had recently become intimately familiar with elven external anatomy, their inner workings and biochemistry were still a relative mystery to her. She assumed that they were similar to humans, but she didn't want to miscalculate and send Languin into shock. The party had been resting by this fire for a few days now, because even though they had been walking slowly, Languin had shown no signs of improvement. He had kept saying he was fine for the first week, and that walking was actually good for him, but now there was no hiding it. He was at death's door.

"You don't know that Languin," said Lucy. "I still have a bunch of stuff I can try. I don't know whether it's poison, or an infection, or what. But here, inhaling this may help you." She handed Languin the cigar, which Languin demurely waved away.

"No, Lucy, I mean that despite your best efforts, elves cannot heal unless they are in direct sunlight," said Languin. "You can stanch blood flow, you can numb away pain, but I will never truly improve without the sun. In fact, as my body tries in vain to heal itself, I will begin to waste away, and die. Like so," Languin said, waving his hand from his sallow face down over his chest, which was rapidly rising and falling with his shallow, labored breathing.

"Why didn't you tell me?!" pleaded Lucy, incredulous. She was so mad. He was using all their supplies, he was making her hope for his healing in vain, he was just...deceiving her, yet again.

"Because I knew that when you knelt next to me and tried to heal me that it would be the only time when you would touch and talk to me again," said Languin.

"Aww," said Marbles.

"Alright let's go catch some bats, buddy," said Opal, holding his right arm down at his side and extending two fingers.

"No, Opal, it's fine," said Lucy. She was trying not to cry again because for the first week, she had not even really tried to heal Languin. She had faked the healing chants, mumbling human pop songs, human nursery rhymes, anything she thought an elf might not have heard before. She didn't want him to be in worse pain, but that didn't mean she didn't have to necessarily use all her daily spells to speed the healing of this lying piece of shit anyway. If he was willing to risk all their lives for his last chance at abs, then he could limp a little, she had told herself. This attitude would eventually cause spasms of catastrophic guilt to rack Lucy every minute of every day.

She had vowed to be a healer, and as a healer you were supposed to do everything in your power to save sapients, regardless of who they were or what they may have done. And then one day when she had peeled away the dressing from his ankle and saw that it might be turning gangrenous despite her initial genuine efforts at healing him immediately after he had tripped, she freaked the fuck out.